The Final 10

Pregnant people gain weight...obviously.  Some pregnant people gain A LOT of weight.  Yours truly fits into the latter category, unfortunately.  If you're a regular reader, you that as I've discussed it in other posts usually in pretty vague terms.  Part of that is because I really am not sure how much I weighed when I got pregnant with Levi (or Colton for that matter) and I also refused to look at the scale as the pregnancies progressed.  I'm going to ball park figure, though, that I gained about 60 (and maybe even 70) pounds (!!!) with each of them.***

With Colton, I lost the weight pretty easily.  Not easily in that it just melted right off, but I followed the Weight Watchers system, exercised regularly, and within about 9 months, I was back to my skinny weight.  I figured the same would occur with Levi, considering I'm pretty much a dieting expert.  

For the most part I was right.  Once again, I followed the Weight Watcher system, exercised regularly, and lost about 50 pounds in the six months or so after having Levi.  But then my progress slowed...or stalled, more accurately.  For the last six months or so, I have been stuck at a weight that I consider ok, but is definitely 10 pounds above where I would want to be.

my first selfy post-Levi...aah!

my most recent selfy...taken a few weeks back

       

Several people have told me that this is the case with the second child: those final 10 pounds just don't go!  But I also think there are other factors.  Honestly, after losing 50-60 pounds I was kind of over dieting for awhile, so that definitely contributed.  I also find that not having a job with a predictable, regular schedule also means that I don't eat as predictably or structured either.  Plus, with the boys, I'm around a lot more junk: PB and J, pizza, cookies and other snacks, etc. than I ever have been which inevitably leads to a bit more snacking.  

But even when I did commit to healthy eating and was very diligent with what I was eating, the scale just wasn't budging.  I was totally frustrated and was venting to a friend of mine.  Well, friend happens to be a dietitian (score!) and told me I was going about my eating totally wrong and gave me a few tips.  Now, I don't profess to be any sort of expert, but I am going to share because I know a lot of us are in search of dieting tips.  Take these for what you will.

First and foremost, she said I HAD to have protein at each and every meal or snack (hmmm considering my former diet only had protein at dinner usually).  She also said I should eat more frequently and should always have an afternoon snack.  And finally, she suggested I download the MyFitnessPal app and use it to track my calories (I haven't paid for Weight Watchers for a long time, since I had pretty much memorized the system, so I had just been tracking on my own).  

Those three simple suggestions made a huge difference on what I ate each day:

Breakfast: 

used to be Special K each morning before leaving the house

now I have peanut butter (1 tbsp.) and jelly on an English muffin...half before I leave the house and half after I work out each morning

Lunch: 

used to bagel thin with cream cheese, a waffle, or turkey on bagel thin (generally anyway)

now turkey on bagel thin, Greek yogurt, protein bar, and I even tried avocado egg salad with crackers

Snack

used to be 100 calorie pack or I'd skip it

now: 100 calorie Greek yogurt, string cheese, VitaMuffin, or sometimes I'll even allow myself the 100 calorie packs if I'm feeling like I'm not that hungry and can easily make it to dinner

Dinner:

really no difference in what I eat, but because I'm precomputing my recipe calories in my app I know exactly how large my serving should be instead of guesstimating

Dessert:

used to be 1/2 cup Breyers Chocolate Peanut Butter Loaded

still is!  Not going to give that up!

And those changes have made a huge difference.  For one thing, I'm not starving all day.  In fact, I generally don't even get hungry before I eat which is awesome because I've always had a hard time getting "unhungry" if I manage to get hungry (anyone else?).  Because I'm not hungry, I'm also doing less accidental snacking throughout the day.  Before, I would oftentimes sneak a handful of goldfish here or a few Teddy Grahams there and not even count it in my day since it was nowhere near a serving.  However, I'm sure all that added up to something significant by the end of the day.  

And most excitingly, I have actually broken through my freaking plateau.  In the almost two weeks I have been following my new plan, I have lost 3 pounds, which may not sound like much, but is at least a step in the right direction.  So, hopefully if I can keep this up, I will be back at my happy weight by the time summer officially starts!