I started a new blog. Then I decided I have enough on my plate right now and don't really need another blog to babysit. I made the executive decision to move my first post to that blog to thisa one here. Are you still with me at this point? Good, because sometimes I confuse myself. I figure all eight of my loyal readers won't mind reading about my efforts to get healthy. We all family, right?
So here's the first post from that short-lived and now defunct blog, newly pasted into this one. Enjoy!
I got on the scale today. However, the scale isn't a great measurement of health and wellness - sure it provides a number but it isn't the whole picture. It's just another bit of data to add into the mix. What really matters is how my clothes fit and what my blood work shows.
So here's the first post from that short-lived and now defunct blog, newly pasted into this one. Enjoy!
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I got on the scale today. However, the scale isn't a great measurement of health and wellness - sure it provides a number but it isn't the whole picture. It's just another bit of data to add into the mix. What really matters is how my clothes fit and what my blood work shows.
(Stepping off soap box).
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatev'.
I know I shouldn't care as much about what the scale says but lately, I DO. (Sorry darling, wonderful, and amazing Teresa Tapp. You have taught me better but just let me be naughty this one...or twice, OK?)
This morning, the scale told me I have lost exactly 10 lbs since May 29.
Hallestinkinlujah!!!
I know much of this has to do with the fact I weaned my little princess completely on that same day. She was well over one year old and I had grown epically weary of GAINING 1/2 - 3/4 lb a week. Yes, you read that right.
I GAIN WEIGHT WHILE NURSING.
I gain weight even if I am eating ridiculously clean and walking 3 miles a day. My doctors (one VCU Rams internal doc, two Johns Hopkins trained endocrinologists, and one Harvard trained ObGYN) are completely baffled by my body. If you think they are baffled, try being me!!! This has happened with each of my babies. At first I was like, "What the Sam Hill?" and blamed it on my poor behaviors because after all, everyone looses weight when they nurse, right? If I wasn't loosing weight but gaining it, then it must be my fault!!! The next baby I was all, "This AGAIN???? What am I doing wrong?" By the third baby I was like, "Oh yeah. 'Lucky' me. *sigh*"
With this last one, after much consultation with doctors, blood tests, and other proddings and pokings, they were able to only determine my vitamin D was almost ZERO but everything else was essentially fine. I finally resigned myself that this is just how it is for me. In the words of one of my esteemed endocrinologists, "Melynda, sometimes we doctors just don't have the answers for why something is happening. We just have to help you manage the symptoms." So I have had to accept and embrace my truth:
I get fat when I nurse.
Managing the symptoms for this little crisis is as simple as eating as well as I can and trying to not get to discouraged. (Meditating on the joyous wonder of baby toes is helpful for that, I have discovered.)
So you lovely lactation specialists and nutritionists can tell me all you want what a great tool nursing is to loose weight. You can tell me all you want that I just need to eat less food, exercise more, and I won't gain weight. You can tell me all you want about how you can't keep weight on and get all skeletal looking when you nurse. Yipee for you! Go right ahead and knock yourselves out.
It won't make a lick of difference to the 39 pounds I have put on over the course of the past year or so since Princess P. was born, even while eating well and exercising fairly regularly. It won't make a lick of difference to my crazy endocrine system that thinks I need to be all fat and happy to make milk for my baby. You can lecture me all you want as you stand there in your size 2 jeans but my reality is this:
I GAIN WEIGHT WHILE NURSING.
On the upside, I have amazingly healthy babies and I wouldn't trade this weight for one moment of nursing them.
That being said, can I tell you how excited I am that I have lost TEN POUNDS?
Smooches -
M.
P.S. Dear Teresa: I started bootcamp this week. I can't wait to post the results in 11 more days! I sure love you, even when I am cursing your name at 5:30 a.m. in the morning.
4 comments:
Melynda - I do not gain weight when nursing but I can't lose one freaking pound while nursing. When Cassie was about a year old and I just finished nursing I had lost 10 pounds from my 9 month pregnancy, 7 and a half pounds was my daughter! You are not the only one.
So glad it isn't just me that doesn't loose weight when nursing, Jeannette! Sometimes I felt like such an aberration of nature, you know? If I had a quarter for every time I have heard someone tell me to just eat less and exercise more so I wouldn't gain weight while nursing, I would be a millionaire by now. Those weeks when I wasn't good about my eating and exercising, I would actually gain 2-3 pounds!!!!!!!! So a half or three-quarters of a pound a week was actually a huge improvement.
Those days are over now, though. On one hand, I miss it terribly - I love the morning snuggles with my baby girl but on the other hand seeing the scale move in the *other* direction is such a good thing!
I lose weight when I'm pregnant. Don't know why. I wish my metabolism was always as fast as it is when I'm pregnant. I also lose weight when I'm nursing. But when I'm neither of those things, I gain all the weight back. I'm weird.
And I've never worn size 2 jeans, so....I'll never tell you how to be while wearing them! Size 2, I can't even imagine. At my skinniest I was a size 6.
Marisa - Isn't the female human body a complicated and fascinating thing? To think that there is one answer that fits all of us is absolutely absurd, but that's how some nutritionists treat us.
I think I wore a size 2 when I was like...seven years old.
M.
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