Retraining Myself

What’s that feeling?

Oh, right.  It’s hunger.

By the end of my pregnancy I was eating a lot–and throughout most of the day.  Mostly because I was bored and it gave me something to do, but also because I know I’m an emotional eater and I was quite emotional.  So now that I’m not pregnant anymore and I’m slowly returning to my “normal” self I find myself re-evaluating when and what I’m eating.  It goes without saying, but it’s a necessary part of getting my weight back under control.

So, when I reach to eat something during the day, I have to actually stop and really concentrate to decide if I’m actually hungry or just have the munchies.   And believe it or not, it’s been difficult for me to tell if I’m hungry or not!  It’s been so long since I’ve been truly hungry!  During pregnancy I would get nauseous if I got hungry, so I kept it at bay by just eating around the clock… so I felt great but gained a lot of weight.

I’m also trying to make a conscious effort to eat more of the good stuff.  More fruits and veggies–less baked goodies.  I discovered a renewed love of spinach salads, so I’m enjoying that as well as baby carrots (which I really like because I can’t eat them too fast and I can pretty much eat as many as I want!)  I haven’t convinced Chloe that she likes carrots yet, but I figure the more she sees me eating them the better.

It’s been just over 4 weeks since I had JD and I’m about 30 pounds down.  Which… well… isn’t all that great since he was almost 10 pounds himself!  But I’m also not exercising yet so I’m not at all worried.  We have, however, started taking walks to get myself easing back into being active again (with a double stroller that Kristen graciously let me borrow–which is awesome but also a bit heavy and bulky, so that’s a good workout just by pushing it!).  Anyway, I figure I have a good 30 pounds to go to where all my really great clothes fit again and I’m back below my pre-pregnancy weight.

My goal this time around is to get moving on this whole baby weight loss thing sooner than I did last time.  It took me a year and 3 months to lose the weight last time, so I’m hoping I can do it faster than that this time!