Come With Me to Regain My Sense of Self - Week 2
Hi Postpartum friends!
Background: I'm 30 and have been working harder than I'd like to be lately to love my body and enjoy leaving the house with her. I'm 6.5 months pregnant postpartum and am grappling with an 85lb weight gain from my pregnancy. I have found myself looking through old photos and reminiscing about how I used to look and being so angry at myself for not appreciating it at the time as well as "letting it go" with pregnancy. Not to mention, like I'm sure many of you do, I see the posts online from new moms who look fantastic shortly after giving birth and hating myself even more for not being more like them. I'm sick of hating myself so I'm doing something about it.
Currently I'm on week #2 of my fitness journey with a goal weight of 145lbs. My hope is that by sharing my journey with you all that I can hold myself accountable to these changes and maybe even inspire someone in a similar position. IThis will probably read more like a journal-type entry than anything else because I'm far from a professional, please feel free to offer advice! I'd love to hear any suggestions.
Ideally I'm trying to focus on sustainable lifestyle changes. More than wanting to lose weight for my own self confidence, I also want to be able to demonstrate a healthy lifestyle for my daughter. I don't want to project my own insecurities and negative self talk on to her and perpetuate a cycle.
So this morning, at the end of week #2, I started off by going to the gym at the ass crack of dawn - 5am. Thankfully I'm blessed with a baby who sleeps through the night otherwise I don't think this would be sustainable but right now waking up an hour and a half earlier to get some time to focus on my self is doable. So I go and do about 10 minutes of cardio followed by weight training. Mondays are usually arm day, Wednesdays are legs, and then I tie it all together with Full-Body-Fridays. Realistically I know that I need to work my core a bit more but that's my weakest point and I haven't figured out a way to be brave enough to do that at the gym yet.
My usual breakfast is plain greek yogurt, raspberries, ground flax seeds, and some granola. Lunch is brown rice, mixed veggies, and chicken breast, and then dinner lately has been roasted sweet potatoes, and ground chicken mixed with spinach and onions. This all usually amounts to 1600 calories and 140g of protein. I try to drink 2L of water but I'm happy if I end up with 1.5L.
For Week 3 my goal is to keep moving forward with my gym plan and go 3x per week. I also want to get out on more walks. The area I live on can be quite hilly so walks tend to be nice in one direction and hellish on the way back but going out more would be good for the baby anyways. I also hope that when I weigh myself next week I can report a weight of 229lbs!
Thank you to everyone who has joined me to the end of the post! If you have any suggestions please leave them, otherwise I'll be back in a week! Ciao.