I weigh myself daily (starting last week) and my weight has flucuated between 5 lbs. Since I started "dieting" last week I'm down 2.6 lbs. it might be a fluke though because I have done NO dieting- I am waiting until Thursday (payday) to hit up our farmer's market and trader joes. We are going to start making Colin's food so I need to get some organic veggies. I've been eating alot more oatmeal this week though which helps because it's warm and makes me feel full. I'm vowing to NOT buy anything unhealthy when I go to the market on Thursday. NOTHING. not even bagels and I adore bagels. love them.
Also- how the hell do mother's with infants exercise? Michael and I are never home at the same time (he works evenings and I work during the day). I can take Colin to the park for a walk(which I admit can wind me) but I'd like to find time to go to the gym. I guess I could try to find a gym that has a daycare. that makes me uneasy though- am I just a paranoid first-time mom? the only people who've watched him so far are family and a couple of friends. maybe I'm just making excuses!! :)
4 comments:
I am the queen of excuses - but I am with you!!! Although, Sarah did a lot of pilates the first year on this blog - when she lost 35 pounds or so - and she said she would do it in the house and Connor would be all over her. There are also exercises where you exercise WITH your baby - google it. Bench press Colin and you will build up some NICE calorie burning muscles. Katie and I used to religously do the 10 Minute exercise videos and that actually DID seem to help. I can send some out to you... Taking a walk while at work - 20 minutes is about a mile - is also something to consider if the weather cooperates. There are ways to squeeze it in - but it takes dedication. The dedication is where I fail.
Oh - and another thing - I used to weigh myself daily OBSESSIVELY - but the only way you can really track progress is by picking a single weigh in day and compare that each week. If you were 135 last Tuesday and 131 this Tuesday you are making progress. I used to see HUGE jumps and drops on a daily basis - but my overall trend has been steadily up.
I weigh myself daily (ONLY once daily -- I don't weigh obsessively, since anything other than the baseline is silly) but I don't sweat the daily weights -- I only really consider them if my Tuesday weigh-in (our "official" weigh-in day here) is vastly out of line.
I will add, though, YES, you are a paranoid first-time mom! It comes with the territory and you are ALLOWED to be that way! But I did not exercise regularly until baby #3 when I was no longer so paranoid and joined a gym with childcare (and it certainly helped that I had an articulate 5-year-old who could tattle if anything strange happened in the kids' room). I *love* the childcare at our current gym -- there was one sitter the kids and I hated but she wasn't incompetent, just bad-tempered about interacting with kids -- and all the current sitters we have I would be perfectly willing to hire at home. This gym screens their sitters very carefully. Some of the secondary sitters are even other moms looking to get a break in gym membership -- you might even consider asking the local gyms if that's a possibility, because then you'll get to know the other sitters first-hand.
Failing that, or in addition to that, start going for walks with your baby in the stroller (or even in a sling, if it's not too hot), or get a jogging stroller if you're dying to move faster (good for non-sidewalk terrain, too -- all the strollers in Norway looked like joggers because they had to traverse ice and go on and off buses easily). If you want to ride a bike, get a trailer -- you can get them for $80-90 at Target new or for less if you watch Craigslist or the like -- and if he's too young to sit up well enough put him in his carseat in the trailer. Or get a backpack baby carrier and go hiking -- I have one sitting in my eaves going unused, and it was awesome with a two-year-old in a foreign country when a stroller would have been intractable. Or, as Amy said, Google exercises with baby -- we used to play "Bench press the baby" all the time and it led to Mary's first belly laugh!
I had the same issue for a long time--I worked days and my husband worked nights, so getting away to exercise was always an issue. My solution was to exercise during my lunch break (yes, you're allowed to take those!). I'm lucky that I work at a college and have access to a gym on campus, but honestly I rarely use it--I'm more likely to just change clothes and go for a run outside. There are also lots of good videos for home exercise--Amy mentioned the pilates that I liked to do. Emily used Walk Away the Pounds, which gets good reviews from lots of people. I also keep hand weights at home for light weight workouts. Once in a pinch I spent 30 minutes running up and down the stairs of my house, then going outside and running around the house, then jumping rope for a minute, rinse and repeat. It was exhausting and my son sat on the porch and jumped up and down with excitement when I'd start the jump roping. For an hour afterwards he kept bringing me the jump rope so I could entertain him some more.
It really is just a matter of deciding you're going to do this and then doing it. It's not easy or convenient, but we gave up convenience the minute we had kids, so you just figure out a way to make it possible and don't let yourself make excuses.
In the "if she can do it, what's wrong with me?" category--I have a friend who lives in Las Vegas. She's a teacher and her husband does lighting design for shows. They have four kids. They only planned two, but she ended up with triplet boys, all with special needs, when she got pregnant a second time. When the boys were about a year old, her husband took a job that required him to move to Japan for a year. That was the year she took up running marathons (previously she had just been doing pilates and walking). She's kept it up ever since (the boys are five now). I seriously don't know how she does it, but clearly it's possible to raise four kids, including infant triplets, work full time, no husband around to help, and still train for a marathon.
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