Kabobs & Apple Pie

Weighing In

I’m one of those lucky people who really like to exercise. I love the feeling of moving. The faster, the better. But I sometimes hate taking the time away from Azita since I see so little of her when she’s awake during the week. On the exercise front, this has been one of the biggest roadblocks to getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Some days I come home and just can’t bear to leave Azita for an hour to workout, so I don’t. But from past experience I know that I need to exercise at least 5 hours a week to get the results I want.

So, in my renewed mission to lose weight, I decided to tackle this issue. It was tough, because I’m used to wanting to workout for an hour and half or more per day. I didn’t know how to deal with not wanting to do this other than to just not do it. The warmer and increasingly brighter days have helped some. When I miss my baby too much, I take a break from more rigorous exercise, put Azita in my Mei Tai carrier, and go for a long, brisk walk. The more hills, the better. Getting exercise while spending time with Azita has been an effective strategy for sure.

I’ve also been for the past several months working out at butt crack of dawn thirty, or 5:30am as some of you may know it. It sucks. But it only sucks for the first 10 minutes. Once I’m warmed up, things pick up a bit. It helps me wake up in the morning. When I’m done, it feels great to know that I’m done for the day. I can go for a walk in the evening or just play with Azita and know that I don’t need to find a way to fit in a workout. And the best part is, I get the workout in when Azita is still asleep, so I don’t miss any more of her waking minutes than I need to.

On the eating front, I’ve been maintaining my usual healthy diet. Just less of it. Getting back to recording all of my food intake has been a good exercise for me. At the very least, it renews my focus. And, it’s going pretty well.

How well?

Well, I’ve lost 4 pounds, and I fit into all of my pre-pregnancy clothes as of this past weekend. There’s nothing like going shopping for a new spring wardrobe in an old box of clothes sitting in the corner of your closet. Especially when that box is labeled “pre-pregnancy.”

Now 16 more pounds to go. But, I’d be happy with just 6. Yeah I said it. It’s so very NOT Type A of me. Can you believe it? I’d be happy if I don’t do as well as I want. That’s the sound of Zahra getting zen.

2 Comments

zahra, March 16th 2010 | Tags: diet, exercise, food journal, walking with baby, weight loss
Posted in Food + Fitness

Baby Booty Boot Camp

It’s been over a year since Azita was born, and I’m still a good 10-20 pounds over where I’d like to be weight-wise. I don’t really have the aspirations I used to have when it comes to my weight. This is a good thing, because my weight goals in my 20s were not exactly healthy. They are decidedly more relaxed now. I’ll admit that I am so lazy as to aim for the very highest healthy weight to give me a healthy BMI.

Here’s the thing. I don’t think that’s possible without starving myself. Before Azita was born I worked out a minimum of 1 hour a day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Some weeks I would take a day off. Most weeks I would put in an hour and half a day with some really, really long workouts on the weekends. And that’s not all. I went hiking on the weekends, I went for long walks, I spent time outside kicking a soccer ball around or playing in a pickup game. In other words I was very active. And the quality of my activity was high. I never did easy workouts. I did advanced step aerobics classes, extended high intensity spinning classes, bootcamp classes, long runs, interval workouts — everything was very intense. If my heart rate didn’t get up to 80-90% of my maximum, I wasn’t satisfied.

My diet wasn’t so bad either. I ate a healthy vegetarian diet — that means I actually subsisted mostly on whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and lean soy protein. No mac n’ cheese or giant bowls of pasta for me. I actually kept track of every calorie that went in my mouth and made sure to keep my total daily calories at 1500 or less.

With all of the above — guess what? My weight still put me in an overweight BMI. Go figure. But I didn’t care, because I enjoyed exercising and I’ve always felt much better when I eat well. And I was healthy. Really healthy.

When I started trying to get pregnant I loosened up on things a bit. I worked out throughout my entire pregnancy, but not as hard. I ate whatever I wanted. I gained a crapload of weight. We’re talking Jabba the Hut proportions here. Well I’ve lost all of it except 10-15 pounds, and I’m finding myself stalled. I haven’t lost a pound in over 3 months.

Maybe it’s because I’ve relaxed just a little bit on the intensity of my workouts. I’m just so exhausted sometimes between work and taking care of Azita and more work. And yet more work, and then trying to cook and take care of the household — and that’s with a husband who is actually helpful around the house. Sometimes it’s easy to convince yourself that you deserve to take things a little easy. I’ve also gotten a little lazy about recording what I eat, and I suspect I’m probably eating a little more than I should. Ok, I lied. I know that I am eating more than I should, because after decades of counting calories I can estimate pretty accurately how many calories I’m ingesting. And it’s bad. Embarrassingly so.

The thing is, I want another baby, but before I get around to trying for one I want to make sure I’m as healthy as I can be. So it’s time for me to kick myself in the butt and put myself in baby booty boot camp — as in I need to get serious again about losing this baby booty. I need to step up the intensity of my exercise and get back to some major calorie restriction. At this point I have no one to blame but myself for my current situation. After all I did give birth over a year ago. I believe the saying is “9 months on, 9 months off”, not “18 months off.”

Normally I wouldn’t blog about this, but I’m hoping putting this out there will hold me to this task. It would be too shameful for everyone to know I’ve failed, right? Maybe. We’ll see.

Wish me luck, friends. I need it.