I'm going to start this off with a picture.  Just so I can see what I looked like when I started.  It's a good thing I just had a baby, there were actually a couple of pictures to choose from.  Normally, I take pictures only when absolutely necessary.

 As you can see, and as I mentioned before, I had a baby recently.  Bennett was born on October18, 2011 and is now 11 weeks old.  He is the love of my life and I enjoy every second I am with him and miss him every second that I am away from him.  He also did me a great favor last year while I was pregnant for him.  I started off last year  (January of 2011) at the heaviest I have ever been in my entire life.  I won't mention my weight (cuz I'm just not that brave). I found out I was pregnant on February 7th.  For the entire month of January I was dieting and exercising religiously.  Then, in my normal routine, I stopped reaching for my goals. When I found out I was pregnant, my doctor said that he would rather not see me gain much weight if any during this pregnancy.  I thought it was going to be impossible to maintain my weight being pregnant.  But doctor visit after doctor visit, I kept losing weight.  At about 4 months pregnant, I had lost 10 pounds.  By the end of my pregnancy, I was down a total of 15 pounds after losing and gaining some weight back as the baby grew.  My doctor and I were very proud of this accomplishment.  However, I did nothing different to lose the weight.  I ate what I wanted and didn't exercise any except for the large amount of walking that my job entails I do.  I didn't have a large amount of morning sickness, but I had some.  I think that the constant growing of the baby was keeping my metabolism running, when it normally would not have been.  This is what I think my problem is - low metabolism (but that is a whole other post).

When I had the baby in October, I was down 15 pounds and could not wait to have this baby.  I thought that it was almost a given that I would lose more weight when the baby came, because he wouldn't be in my belly anymore.  I was almost disappointed when I came home from the hospital not having lost any more weight.  But I was so swollen from the C-section, that when it finally started going away the pounds were dropping off again.  Within 2 weeks of giving birth, I was down 25 pounds from the beginning of the year!  And right now, after all of the holiday eating for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's Day, I am still down 22 pounds from January of 2011.


Now I just need to stay on this track and keep it up.  Unfortunately, I don't have my little calorie burner in utero any more. And I am definitely not ready to get pregnant again.  So, I will have to rely on hard work and determination - wow, I sound like Dolvett from the Biggest Loser :-)


Day 1 started out a little rough for my husband and I.  We both didn't want to get on the scale this morning, but knew we had to see where we were starting.  This is when I learned that I was still down 22 pounds.  However, with a new baby who doesn't sleep through the entire night and wakes up very early, I didn't prepare myself for success on day one.  I threw lunch together with no protein (I had hummus and vegetables) and ate a container of Greek yogurt for breakfast.  I brought a oatmeal breakfast bar and a Fiber One brownie with me for snacks.  When I plugged all of this information into my calorie counter app on my cell phone, I realized that I had over 1300 calories left to consume in the day and only had dinner left to do it in.  As I sit typing this post, I still have a little over 500 calories left to consume today and I know it will not happen.  I will work harder tomorrow to eat more complete meals so I can spread out my calories better.  I don't think binging at the end of the day to get my 1970 recommended calories in every day would be a good thing.

P.S.  The app I use is called My Fitness Pal.  It is a free app on Windows, iPhone and Blackberry phones.  The app asks you for details like height and weight and goal weight to give you the amount of calories you should consume each day.  Then you plug in all of the foods you eat at each meal and it will tally your calories.  They have tons of food items in their calorie counter catalog, so it should be easy to find the items that you are eating.


As I mentioned before, I am using this as a motivation tool to keep me accountable.  How do you keep yourself motivated?