Let The Post-Baby Exercise Begin!

Today is officially one week after Zach was born. That's a crazy thought. My doctor told me not to exercise/lift anything over 10 pounds until today and I can see why... Since the whole not lifting thing was pretty much impossible *think a 30 pound 2 year old who wants my attention and is literally begging me to carry her around the house* I of course overdid it a few days and yup. The dr was right. By the end of the day my hips hurt so bad I wanted to cry.
But today I am feeling really good - good enough to attempt some exercise in addition to occasionally carrying Chelsea. I managed to chug out 30 sit ups with Zach on my chest and do some light swimming for about half an hour.
I got brave and stepped on the scale on Tuesday and *holy cow!!!* I am only 1 pound short of being back at my pre-pregnancy weight! I was so excited I decided to be brave again and pull out my old pants and was able to get them on and wear them for about an hour. After that hour I had to sit and nurse for a while and the pants are still tight enough that was not entirely comfy. But on the days I get feeling like I can't take another day hitching up a stretchy panel that immediately moves right back to where it was, I have 2 pairs of pants that have a button and fly that I can wear!
So in 5 more weeks I have to go for my 6 week check up with my OB and my goal is to lose another 11 pounds by that day and be 10 pounds lighter than the day I first stepped in his office.

Still Chugging

It's been a tough week for exercise - even the short sessions that PACE requires are tough to get in when the baby is teething, and the big boy caught the cold, and you spend several days traveling. But the cool thing is that it's still working. I'm down another pound and a half. When I get rid of that pesky half pound I will have lost everything I gained on our trip to North Carolina. Not too shabby: it's been about two weeks since we got back. I'm noticing other stuff too: I can breathe better. Lots better. Enough to make a difference when I sing. I'm getting stronger. Moving is more fun. I like the way I feel. I sleep better. That could also be related to the baby suddenly sleeping longer in his own bed before he wakes up for his night-time snack. Night-weaning is a bear, and it's not going to be fun. I'm waiting for those teeth to settle down before we tackle that. The Hubs is also noticing some nice improvements. So far, this new PACE style workout is a smashing success.

PACE

Well, we went out east, attended a wedding, visited friends and then came back by way of the Kirtland temple. Brought back lots of pictures, a few souvenirs, and 5 extra pounds. But 3 are gone already. I'm crediting the new workouts Andy and I are doing. We're using a system called PACE, and I think that my favorite thing is that I'm seeing results, and my next most favorite thing is that the workouts, at no more than 12 minutes, are easy to slip into a busy day without feeling like I need to choose between sleep and exercise or choose between my kids and my health. And it seems to be working!

Checking in

10 days in and still feeling pretty motivated (though, there's still room for improvement with my eating habits).

That app on my phone has a cycle of 5 or 7 days, depending on the food plan I pick. Basically, it gives suggestions for meals and gives allotted times for eating (which is SUPER good for me now that I'm working from home). I picked a 5 day one. I think I did quite well sticking with it the whole time.. but I've only done it the first 5 days, I completely fell off the wagon with the second cycle.

I'm only going to weigh and measure myself once a month (that worked really well for me when I was losing weight for my wedding), so I haven't gotten back on the scale since Sept 20th, but already I feel small changes in my body (my clothes fit better so I know good things are happening).

I've gone back to using that workout plan that I used when I was losing weight for my wedding. It's only a 6 month plan, but my hope is that by that point I will have a routine that I'm in and that I'll have made good habits and be more likely to stick with it better this time 'round. With my wedding the goal was to get in shape for my wedding.. now, it's to be more healthy and to reach a healthy weight, increments at a time. So, by Dec 20th I hope to weigh 15lbs less than I did on Sept 20th.

To help me quantify how active I am, I got a pedometer. I read that a "healthy" person walks at least 10,000 steps a day. I wore it for a week to see what my normal number of steps were. Turns out, it was nowhere near that many. Even when I went for my walk/jog in the morning, the most I was walking was just over 7,000 steps. (though, this site says that a spectrum, but above 5,000 is ok)

However, my Hubby and I have been talking and he's feeling like he wants to step up his workout program too. He's super busy at work, but is really good at fitting in a visit to the gym 2-3 times a week. The downside is that, since he has to cram it into his lunch hour, he's only doing the aerobic workingout for 15-20mins at a time and he's feeling like it's not enough to fight the battle of the bulge. So we're going to work together to adjust our lifestyle.

Mon-Fri, after he comes home from work, we're going to go for a walk in the park up the street (twice around the walking path, just over 2 miles). Also, we're going to do the food plan together to motivate each other, and he's thinking that measurements on top of weighing-in, would be the way to go.

We started the walking today (I hit my 10,000 steps at 2pm.. woo!) and we'll start the food part tomorrow, after I go to the grocery store today. Wish us luck!

Wanting What Was

There's something extremely motivating about watching a slideshow with pictures of my younger, thinner self, that makes me determined to lose some of this excess I've gained in the years since.

This past weekend, I went to an old friend's wedding. It was a wonderful weekend.. good company, good times, great fun. But a million pictures. It's been a gradual thing, but I'm finding that I really don't like myself in pictures these days (not a good sign) and then, at one of the events, they played a slideshow of pictures of my friend, with several including me, from our college days.

Partly I was stuck by how YOUNG I looked (I know I was somewhere around 22, but I look like a little baby!) but, mainly, it was just how much thinner I was then. This realization has been a long time coming.. I know I've been gaining weight.. but I'd just pout and tell myself it was impossible to change this path.

I'm done whining about it. WeightWatchers didn't work for me. It's a good program, but I didn't stick with it. So, now I'm trying something new. I've downloaded an app on my phone that has menu planning and nutrition guidelines.. I'm also going to start keeping track of my measurements and weight again (I haven't weighed myself in ages), and also make a plan to be more consistent with my workouts.

My goal is to have lost 15 lbs by Christmas.

Here I go!!

Battle of the Bloat

Well, I'm up from last week, but I'm pretty sure that it's bloating. My numbers have been all.over.the.place this week, but I ended up being up just over a pound from last Wednesday. However, I'm still down some from my peak, so it's not as bad as it could be. And I'm pretty sure that my hormones have been doing things this week. Not that I could tell you what: still no cycles after the baby, probably because we still nurse a lot. Plus, getting enough water is a constant battle.

Turns out that Kris, of Eclipsed, is following a meme from a blog called Confessions of a Snowflake. So I'll be linking up there. This week, they're supporting each other with posting recipes. The recipe  made most recently was cupcakes with pudding in the middle... think I'll blog about that on the other blog, rather than here. Seems sort of out of place... but I will be browsing their recipes to see if any of them would please my family.

Sidebar Update

I've been updating our sidebar. This evening I re-did the blog links, including all the family blogs, plus Eclipsed, which hosts the weigh-in I'll be participating in. If anyone else has a blog they'd like to see on there, particularly a fitness or weight-loss blog, I'm happy to put it in. Can't remember what kind of permissions we did when we set this up. Anyway, I also re-did my "goal" thingy on the sidebar. Thought I'd mention it so that if you girls want to update your stuff you can.

Working Together

I am trying to lose weight also. I peaked about a month ago. I am down 5 now. Very slow. But constant and in the right direction. I am doing the same thing - trying to eat better - doing fruit for snacks and drinking more water. Writing down everything I eat to keep me focused. I also added walking - this last weeks heat sabotaged the walking a bit. I will get back to it on Monday.

Maybe we can work together on this and help each other out. :)