Postpartum Weight Loss: 3 Months

It's the long awaited and very necessary postpartum weight loss post. It's been 3 months since kiddo was born, so I figured I'd give a little clarity to my situation.

sigh.

Let's do a run down:

• At the end of pregnancy I had gained a whopping 51 pounds. Not exactly the ideal weight gain, but I also was retaining a stupid amount of water.
• In the first 2 weeks after birth, I lost 30 pounds. Some of that was placenta, some it was baby (of course!), and some of it was water.
• Now I'm left with 20 additional pounds to the weight I gained during the last 5 years of marriage (which, to be honest, has brought me into the overweight BMI category, though, happily not excessively so).

So now what?

Well, I was tired of the extra pounds before pregnancy and this extra postpartum weight finally got me motivated to systematically do something about it.

I have used different exercising videos, strength training workouts, and even logging apps. At one point I'd even had a paper journal to document my progress. Through this journey I can say I did lose inches, and a few pounds, as well as gained a lot of muscle. I discovered the exercises I hated and the ones I loved.

But I didn't really lose. Nothing was really working - not the way I wanted and I didn't understand why. Then I got pregnant and I packed on the poundage.

With these extra pregnancy pounds, now I feel like I need to do a great shedding. I need to get to a place where I feel good about my body again. I decided I needed to try something different - I needed to change how I was eating. I needed to take my exercise up a notch.

I looked through the Google Play store and found Noom Weight Loss Coach. It's got a free version and seemed to be very popular, so I downloaded it and tried it out. It's a food and exercise logging application that makes weight loss into a kind of game (or at least that's how it feels to me). It also isn't a calorie counter. I mean, yes, calorie counting is involved, but that's a very small portion of the whole thing.

I found my salvation.

Well, I've lost 4 pounds in the month I've been using it - not a lot, but something (including the Thanksgiving holiday!). The bigger deal however is the inches. I lost 2.5 inches in my waist. I lost 2 inches in my hips. I even lost a total of 2 inches on my thighs. The beauty of this is I haven't completely given anything up. I still eat some of the things that trainers would put on the no-no list (though in moderation). And yet my pants are getting baggy (and I'm still retaining water! Thanks hormones!).

But I still have a long way to go. I've been afraid to take out my pre-pregnancy jeans. I have a few inches to go before I feel comfortable trying them on. I know where my numbers used to be and I can't remember how loose my beloved jeans were. I've brought out some of my pre-pregnancy shirts, but I've been wearing them sparingly. When I put them on they're just a reminder to me how much weight I'm still carrying because they fit differently, even if they do fit.

The goal now is to first get rid of the pregnancy 20 I'm carrying, and then to get rid of the embarrassingly high number of non-pregnancy related pounds. I'd like to wear some of those gorgeous dresses hanging around in my closet once more. Currently I'm hoping to have some major changes by May 31. Why? My cousin's getting married at the end of May and it would be great to feel, well, great while visiting the whole family.

I know I can do it. It may be slow going, but it's going. I'll keep you posted on my progress.