CLJohnson8

She’s wonderful and perfect and I love her…but my weight is out of control. She turned five months yesterday which is plenty of time for me to start losing the weight, but I have only just started yesterday.

…is my baby girl!! She’s not here yet, but her due date is in 3 1/2 weeks, and I’m thrilled beyond belief to meet her.

That being said, I have gained 41 pounds so far. Before I got pregnant, I had lost 34, so I’ve gone over my loss by a bit. I’m a little sad that I didn’t watch more closely, but at the same time, I feel good that I’ve been eating relatively healthy the past 9 months and that the weight gain has been necessary to grow my little one. I’m SO excited to start exercising again. I always thought that I would do yoga and swimming throughout pregnancy, but it was very difficult to motivate myself to exercise (besides walking which I have been doing a TON of the whole time). If I can’t exercise for weight loss, it’s difficult to even care. Lame, I know :p I can’t wait until I can re-join the gym and start feeling proud of my self-image again.

I’ll post a pic when she’s here, and then I’ll start my weight loss when I get the all clear, which should be in a few months

I am in the ninth week of my pregnancy, and I have gained 3 pounds. ‘They’ say that it is healthy to gain no more than 5 pounds in the first trimester, and with the end of my first trimester being December 4, I am watching the scale. I haven’t been weighing myself everyday, though…just a few times a week.

During the second and third trimesters, I will be watching more carefully to make sure I don’t go over the maximum recommended 1 pound gain per week.

A few days ago, I hit my first (and only) mini-goal of 153, which also happened to be the weight at which my BMI declared me healthy! I have been waiting for that for SO long. I can’t describe the pride and joy I felt. Yesterday morning, I learning that I am pregnant Oh, the irony…
My husband and I just started trying for our first baby, and while I am insanely excited, I am also a little sad that my hard work is in a way going down the drain. I was reading that someone at a healthy bmi should expect to gain between 25-35 pounds in pregnancy. I have lost 34 in my journey and really would rather not revisit that territory, but I know that it’s going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me AND that I’ll know exactly what to do to get it off. And it shouldn’t take a year to get it off if most of it comes out at birth

I’m so excited!!

Yesterday a co-worker asked me, “have you been dieting?”

My immediate response was, “NO!”

To anyone else, this would have been a compliment, and I’m sure she meant it that way. It was simply the wording that threw me. I am 100% NOT dieting; I have spent a year changing the way I think and therefore the way I eat, and that has led to my loss of 32 pounds paired with exercise. No quick fixes for me–I’m in it for the long run even if I have to say it took me two years to lose 50 pounds :p

Today is my one year anniversary of my weight loss journey. My anniversary for buddy slim isn’t until next month

To celebrate, I bought myself a heart rate monitor that I’ve been watching for a while. The fact that it was 75% off at Target didn’t hurt either. I LOVE this thing. It transmits my heart rate from chest device thing to any of the cardio machines I’m on. So rad!

In one year of losing weight, I have lost 31 pounds. I honestly thought I would be to my goal by now, but I’m not disappointed. I know that I’ve done it safely and that the pounds are gone for GOOD.

I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and 5 minutes on the stair stepper–pretty easy, but it was fun

Just a quick thought:

This is going to seem so silly, but how early is too early to eat dinner? I know half the people on this site struggle with eating too late or snacking at night, but my schedule is quite strange.

I leave for work at 6am and eat something light on my way out, eat a snack at 9am, eat lunch at 12:30pm, and eat dinner anywhere from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. Strange, right? Well, the reason I eat that early is because I go to sleep at 9pm so as to get 8 to 9 hours of sleep (a necessity!). The general rule for night time eating, unless I’m mistaken, is to eat five hours before going to sleep to give your body the time to digest everything. When I eat at 3:30pm, I don’t get hungry again all evening, but I do wonder if I’m doing my body harm in some way by eating this early. Is it okay for my body to go without food for 15 hours? I definitely get all of my calories in split evenly among my meals and snack. 

When my husband got a new job last month and started getting home every evening at 7pm, I tried to eat that late with him, but I gained and gained every day. By eating as early as I do, I’m definitely losing weight gradually. Any thoughts?

In my experience, summer is the most difficult time to live healthy; this has definitely been true the past few months for me. I have gained 4 pounds from my all-time low, which was a month or so ago. The low was 156, and I was SO close to being a ‘healthy’ weight! A healthy weight for me at 5′5.75″ is 153. I can’t WAIT to get there!

For some reason, summer has me itching to cook and bake–especially bake. I have been baking desserts and fresh bread almost every other day, and that unhealthyness does me no favors. It doesn’t help that the only people to eat it are me and my husband…but I’ve gotten really good at making bread

Since we went car-less in March, I have been walking around 1-2 miles each day to get to work and to run errands. When I don’t walk, I bike. This constant activity is great, but it also means that I am not at all motivated to run or go to the gym after I get home.

I can say that aside from eating baked goods and bread, I have been cooking fantastically fresh and healthy dinners with the help of farmer’s market fresh produce. I have been learning to love almost every single vegetable I can get my hands on. I even crave vegetables sometimes–this is HUGE for me! It’s all about how they are prepared, but growing up, I only got them out of a can…yuck.

So I guess you could say that I am living healthy by eating lots of veggies and healthy foods and by transporting myself all over the place. However, I am not losing weight. Right now, I’m okay with that. Of course I would love to be losing weight, but I feel like the lifestyle I’m living is on track, and I need time just to embrace that without the stress of the scale and its numbers.

People are starting to notice my weight loss 30 pounds later. I went to visit family back ‘home’ in Minnesota, and I got some very nice compliments and questions of ‘how did you do it?’
Co-workers have been noticing too, and it’s really nice

As much as I am loving summer, I am definitely looking forward to the fall. I know from past experience that the fall causes me to re-evaluate (much like other people and January 1st) and make changes.
My husband and I want to get pregnant next spring or summer, and I am determined to be as healthy as possible for that time. I want to take part in a home birth or use a midwife at a birthing center rather than the hospital route (netflix users see “The Business of Being Born.” Seriously). To be a candidate for non-invasive pre-natal care, you have to be in great health. I also want to avoid any complications with the birth or unnecessary weight gain during pregnancy, so I feel extremely motivated to get my body running at its most healthy for this life changing eventuality

I guess that’s all for now. I really should blog more…it helps. I appreciate all of you buddies, and even though I don’t often comment on blogs, I check up on you all almost every day and silently cheer you on!

My, it has been quite a while since I’ve blogged. I sign onto buddyslim daily and keep up with my everyone’s blogs and progress, but my blogs and my progress have gone nowhere in a very long time.

I have been more active throughout the day for the last month or so since my husband and I sold our only car. We now rely on our legs (via bike, public transit, and walking) to get us everywhere. In addition to transportation activity, I walk all day long at work, so it seems I’m always on the move. I’m also ALWAYS HUNGRY these days! I’ve tried eating around 2000 calories to make up for the daily activity, but I always end up gaining. For the first seven months or so of my weight loss journey, I can honestly say that I was seldom hungry. I often made myself eat a meal for the calories but wasn’t actually hungry for it, but that nice time has been gone for about a month now. I also started drinking water in the last month. Yes, that’s right. I shamefully admit that I have, for the past 22 years of life, lived off of less than about 2 glasses of water a day and have always felt fine. I did not change my water consumption habits when I started my weight loss journey because I figured my body knew what it needed, and what it needed was not a whole lot of water. Once I hit a couple month long plateau in the 160s, I decided to give water a chance. I try to drink 80 ounces a day, but I usually hit around 50 or 60. I have to admit that water helped me lose weight at the beginning. It was like a miracle juice, and I was so pleased. Well, now that my body is used to it and my metabolism is adjusting, I’m just plain stuck again.

So to summarize: I drink water, I eat healthy almost always, I am always hungry, I haven’t exercised for months besides getting myself from place to place, and I haven’t lost weight for a few months. On the other hand, I haven’t gained weight either.

There are reasons why I haven’t been exercising, but I’ll get into that in a part II blog. It’s complicated, and I need advice about it.

I hope everyone is doing well!

It’s been awhile since a blog from me, so I thought I would update. I have pushed past the 160s that have been nagging at me for about 3 months, and I feel SO GREAT! I’m finally back to the point where I feel sexy and comfortable in my body But I’m not stopping here.
Yesterday I went to a favorite store–Forever 21–and actually fit in their clothes! I couldn’t do that for a while. I even ended up buying a medium size dress. I had to buy a whole new bunch of summer clothes last year because everything was too small, and I’ve been weeding those things out of my closet slowly. It’s a great feeling!

I am only 7 pounds away from being in a healthy BMI. There’s something about the label of being ‘healthy’ that is undescribably exciting. It means I’m not obese. It means I’m not even overweight. It means I can hold my head high, love my body, and push my body to perform amazing things because I am healthy. 

I have had some trouble lately with finding foods that suit my needs. I never seem to be hungry anymore, but I always eat four meals a day. Most the time, I feel like I’m stuffing myself more than I need to just to reach 1200 calories. The solution I’ve come up with is to find calorie dense healthy foods, but apparently this is not an easy task. Here’s what I have so far: nuts, cottage cheese, english muffins with peanut butter, beans…
That’s kind of it. If I eat carrots for one of my snacks, I will have to stuff myself full of about 500 of them just to reach the same calorie count I would in a 1/2 cup of cottage cheese. Can anyone suggest other healthy high calorie foods?
I’ve also been eating the bulk of my calories in the first part of the day rather than at dinner, and it’s definitely satisfying and helping me with my morning weigh ins.

I’m slowly figuring it out and loving it every step of the way.