Since giving birth a year ago, losing weight has been a bit of a struggle. Okay, it’s been a seemingly impossible task. I have been more successful lately since no longer having to take in extra calories for nursing purposes. Now, it’s all on me without an excuse of “well I just had a baby”. That excuse sailed the minute my baby turned one. I don’t need to lose weight for my husband; that poor sap loves me regardless. This is for me so I can feel myself again. I never once stopped to think that I would never want to feel my limbs again. To assist me in this, I use Noom. This app on my phone can easily be a credit to my losing the 15lbs I have since my stalemate with the scale after the scale stalled when I lost the water weight and swelling. Not bad in a month and a half.. I don’t think so anyways.

Exercise helps, but the main culprit is the food you take it and how much of it you take in. I count my calories… well I log my food so Noom can count my calories. It’s hard sometimes to enjoy yourself though, as I’m currently writing this while suffering through a Healthy Choice meal consisting of whole wheat ziti. The rest of the food wasn’t so bad… but damn that pasta tastes like cardboard. The rest of the meal was barely tolerable, leaving me to realize that Lean Cuisine makes the more palatable diet food. But Healthy Choice was on sale… I’ve started with Slim Fast shakes, which once you get over the weird chalky feeling left in your mouth and the constant need to shake it if you don’t chug it in one shot otherwise it tastes vile, isn’t so bad. I’m finding half the time lately I’m eating less because the food is sometimes terrible and not because I’m starving myself to be an anorexic twig.

I do my exercise diligently, alternating daily with which routines I do. Yesterday Noom dared me to do 10 “burpees”, which I had never heard of but decided after watching the video that it couldn’t be that bad. Today, my legs feel like they are detached from my body and I cringe when the baby asks to be picked up because I want to forget I have arms. I am happy to report I did successfully accomplish 13 of them though. But at what cost? I didn’t need to walk or do anything with my arms anyways. I’m a glutton for punishment so after Zumba tonight, I will try to beat my record. In fact, I’m going to try every day to beat whatever record I have set because if I’m this sore the day after, it must’ve been good for me.

That’s the biggest lesson I have taken away from this: if it tastes bad or makes you hurt afterwards, you’re doing it right. Not really. You can luck out and have fantastic diet food. Lean Cuisine pizzas are better tasting than most of the frozen pizzas I have come across. But you don’t necessarily have to restrict what you eat, sometimes just not having as much of it. Portions seem to be the real key. I’m losing weight, and I’m feeling pretty well. I have more energy, which is great because on days like today I feel like I need more energy to try and move my muscles around. I hope to meet my targets I have currently set: I want to be back to my pregnancy weight by my husband’s work’s Christmas part; I want to be a few pounds less than that for my birthday; and I want to be back down to my weight in college by the summer. These are achievable goals, especially if I keep at this nearly 15lbs a month loss. Losing weight takes work and it takes a level of discipline and will-power. You can’t expect to live off of fast food and take out and lose weight. Starving yourself makes matters worse, not better. And exercise is great for your physical and mental health. Don’t give up though, imagine how much time it took to put on that weight and it’ll probably take that if not more to lose it again. I focus on that and how I want to be around to see my future grandchildren, and it helps keep me focused and determined to get healthy.