Are you one of those moms that walk out of the hospital with your pre-pregnancy pants on and lose weight while your breastfeeding? Well I'm not talking to you (I am so jealous of your luck) I'm talking to moms like me who have to work to get that extra weight off. With each of my kids I come back from the hospital (in my prego pants) and jump on the scale to find that I have only lost their birth weight! I'm like, "what?!?!?!" What about the water and the placenta? Didn't those weigh anything? And I lose ZERO weight breastfeeding. Infact, I gained weight with my first one while breastfeeding.
I've had to make lifestyle changes and do it myself.
What got me thinking about this is I was down on myself for this extra baby weight that I am carrying from my newest 4 month old baby and I realized I'm not giving myself enough credit. I did the math and as you can see above I could have easily gained 130 lbs overall but I've been doing so good, having already lost about 70% of my baby weight. That gave me the boost I needed to keep going!
Do some of you need to loose baby weight? Or just plain self induced weight? Well I think I'm becoming a bit of an expert. Haha not. But I do have my experiences and my opinions.
We all know how to loose weight. Exercise more and eat less. Plain and simple. There are no magic answers... BUT there are programs and products I have used to help me eat healthy and get moving.
Baby K
Gained 45lbs during pregnancy
Gained 5lbs breastfeeding
Lost 25 lbs
"Jillian's 30 Day shred" DVD-didn't work for me. I wasn't seeing the results fast enough, I lost interest, and couldn't stay committed.
P90X- workouts and modified diet - This was a great program. I did the workouts and loved them! I really felt the burn and I swear I could feel the weight dropping. We also did the diet kinda. We didn't eat fish and I did my own protein drinks and bars instead of buying the P90X stuff. I was losing 5 lbs a week. But was only able to do it two weeks before I got pregnant with my second child.
I would probably recommend this program to people who are used to working out, because it is very intense.
Baby G
Gained 45 lbs
Lost 50 lbs
Wii Fit- I started on this and was so upset when the wii fit guessed I was 60 years old. I did lose some weight on this and finally got down to the right age. I would only recommend it to people who are very out of shape. It isn't that much of a challenge.
UP band- the up band kept me moving. I set it to buzz if I hadn't moved for 30 minutes during the hours I was awake. It kept track of my movement, so i could make sure i was getting enough steps a day. Not only did it help me loose weight but it helped get a lot of stuff done. The only down side was I didn't like the cover over the head phone jack. I would always come off and I would lose it, but I would use something like this again.
During this time I walked 30-45 minutes a day pushing a double stroller with a baby and toddler. I was surprised at the results I was seeing from this simple activity.
Lose It app- I put it on my phone and found a lot of success using it.Basically it is a calorie counter. My favorite feature is a scanner for food you eat that has a bar code. It made logging calories convenient. I also liked how you could eat anything as long as you didn't go over on your calories. Naturally I just stopped eating crap food because I learned if I ate those foods they would leave me hungry and I couldn't eat anything else. I also had a lot of family support, at the time we were living with my husbands family and they were all really supportive.
Baby C
Gained 35
Lost 15 (so far, only 4 months out)
Gym- Jon's work gives him a free membership to a gym so we were able to up grade to a family package for a great price. We are so blessed. I do their classes, use their weights, walk their in door track (which is very useful during the winter) and play basketball with my husband! I have a WHOLE other post on my gym experience.
http://sclifeasawife.blogspot.com/2013/04/gym-mom.html
Skinny Rules by Bob Harper- I got this book at my local library and read it. I think it is a great set of rules for eating healthy and I agreed with almost everything he said. It was nice to have those rules to look at and keep me on track, but I mainly used the book for its menu's and recipes. With three kids it was nice to just follow his menu's and not have to plan meals, and worry about what to buy at the grocery store.
My goal is to ultimately lose 30 more pounds, and 20 of those pounds by time she is 9 months. I try not to be to hard on myself and take it slow. After all it took 9 months to put the weight on.
One woman who really inspires me is Natalie Hodson. I met her when we competed at Miss Idaho and she is an amazing woman.
She has had two kids and is great at getting back in shape in a realistic way. She documents every step of the way and shows us that things take time and we need to love our bodies in every stage. This is her website http://nataliehodson.com/, but I really love following her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/NatalieHodsonOfficial?fref=ts
So tell me about you, what things have you tried? what is your story?
So tell me about you, what things have you tried? what is your story?
