Back in the middle of March, I had one of the worst conversations of my life, and I'll spare you those details, but it came down to this - I had realllly slipped on taking care of my health - exercise and diet.
Background:
I did some kind of exercise almost my entire life - gymnastics, ballet, karate, working out at the gym(mainly in college) and then Beachbody workouts in my 20's. I had been relatively fit my whole life up until bearing babies. I have generally eaten well, also.
When I got pregnant with Samuel(9), I had pubic symphysis disorder(SPD). You can look it up, but I had it with all four of my pregnancies...it's super painful and essentially your pelvis starts separating far earlier than it needs to during your pregnancy, making working out, even walking, sometimes very difficult and very painful...this was sort of where my downhill trend started... I also had diastiasis recti- a huge separation of my ab muscles - yes, all four babies...and after a while, it's so hard to feel like you can put that kind of damage back together again...
Long story short, I lost all my weight after I had Samuel doing some PiYo through beachbody, but eventually gained a lot of weight back due to weaning him, stress, and a miscarriage. Then I got pregnant with Emilia, same SPD pregnancy, same post partum experience - lost the weight, but I weaned, had Laban (my stillborn) and then the weight didn't budge after that, despite many hard-fought attempts.
I had Edmund in November 2020, and I lost the weight to get back to pre-pregnancy, but I started to slowly creep back to my new max weight ever. Culver's sundays, general tiredness, lack of motivation to lose weight, and decreased overall activity (I quit my job in early 2020) led to all of these issues. I felt entirely overwhelmed to add a workout routine and healthy eating to my life, as well. I also miss Lucky's, our former healther grocer, as it had gone out of business and we were left with few healthy, affordable options :(
So back to the conversation, in March 2023. I'm exhausted - still nursing a 35 pound toddler multiple times a night with no end in sight. I am fat - working out when you are fat is so frustrating, defeating, depressing...
But about a week after that awful conversation, I decided to try doing an old workout I've done dozens of times before - a Turbo Jam classic - Fat Blaster. I liked it, I did it. I did another the next day and added a short stretch and meditation after.
I changed how I was eating. I had already been doing protein shakes in the morning, but I stopped doing my easy lunches(pbnj, mac and cheese, etc), and swapped for high protein salads, and tried making *some* low carb dinners. I also stopped eating excess sugar - though I didn't eat much prior, little indulgences weren't insignificant in their frequency.
So I kept doing it....a 30-ish minute exercise, a 5ish minute stretch, and 10 minute meditation. Nearly every day. I took a few rest days here and there, our AC died and I didn't exercise on those days.
I really wanted to prove my husband wrong - he said if I just put my mind to it, I would lose weight. I told him I wouldn't - so I made my mindset about 4 non-scale things: mobility, strength, endurance, and energy. I didn't and couldn't focus on weight loss being the goal, because I knew if it came at all, it would be so slow, and that would be defeating all on its own! While I often do a lot of things like long Sea World days, long hikes, gardening for hours in the hot sun, there was definite improvement to be had on the physicality front.
So I shot for: 30+g protein every meal - B/L/D
Extra protein through my day - collagen in my coffee (11g), 2 cheese sticks(16g), kefir (8g), etc...
And in just a week and a half, I didn't lose weight, but I was way stronger, way more endurance, and way more energy, overall. More calm, peaceful, and clearheaded. I walk with better posture, I can easily squat to the floor to tend to a kiddo, and stand up easily.
At the end of the 21 day meditation cycle(missing a few days, so taking me closer to a month to finish), I can officially say I've lost 5 pounds. Surpisigly so. I've finished 38 total workouts (including those short stretching sessions)
I want to say it hasn't been easy. At all. To make time to workout, I am not tending to the dishes, or the laundry....my kids have learned, at this point, to not bother me *as much* but it is a huge challenge to work out with 3 needy children around - stopping to kiss boo-boos, break up fights, grab a snack, prevent lunches from burning, and erase markers off of walls...you get the picture. I make my salad ingredients once or twice a week to keep that easy and simple to prepare - finding time to sit and eat it is another story. So here's a list of the products I use, and what a normal day of eating looks like for me.
Electrolyte powder Protein powder Collagen powder
So a normal day for me looks like:
Wake up: glass of water right away.
Cup of coffee with collagen (11g protein)
Glass of water with electrolyte powder
Workout - ~45 minutes
Protein - 1.5 scoops, water, a dash of heavy cream (~30g protein)
Lunch: big bowl of organic salad greens, 3 hard boiled eggs, 1 oz of cheese, 3 pieces of bacon (~33g protein)
Snack: two cheese sticks (16g protein)
Dinner: a good sized serving of meat and veg, and carbs (if wanted or needed) shooting for 30+g protein)
Evening glass of kefir(8g protein)
This brings my protein to around 130g per day. It’s the only macro I count or pay attention to at all. I try not eat carbs/sugar during the day and keep it an easy/low quantity at night. But I’m still eating pasta, pizza, the occasional piece of chocolate…etc…
Ideally, two of my three meals are my high protein salad, and my protein shake, the third being kind of whatever I want it to be, in reason, and with hopefully close to 30g of protein.
This is the workout schedule I’ve been following….
I use beachbody on demand. I have been using Chalene Johnson's videos - Turbo Jam, Turbo Fire, Chalean Extreme, and PiYo for many many years, and she has many workouts in those series that I am very comfortable with and truly enjoy doing them. I like Andrea, from XB, and her personality and way of explaining things. The meditation is just an added gift to my day. With my background in karate and ballet, I definitely trend towards kick boxing and ballet-barre type workouts, but my post partum body doesn't like the impact. Even within these workouts, some of the modifications, are still too hard for me, with where I am at. So I do the workout as best as I can, even easier than the easiest option, and I'm still seeing results. I highly encourage you, to just do it, just try. I cannot do pushups, I do them on the wall or on my knees, but I can do the squats great! Keep focusing on each sucess and try harder on your next growing opportunity. Even if that one success is that you did a perfect jumping jack, or did a set of punches and kicks, or that one sit up was pretty easy...keep going, be proud of yourself and your work!
Anyways, my ultimate goal is another 40 pounds to lose. Once I get there, I may re-evaluate and try to shed another 15 off, but I honestly don't know my thin body anymore...It's been 9 years since I've seen it and weight loss is still not my goal - energy, strength, endurance, and mobility are! And I'm definitely seeing changes in all of those areas, despite the scale hardly budging!
So if you are in this weird space of not eating well, or exercising, and not seeing a way out of that path...find the path. It might just be a slow thing, of replacing one meal with a protein shake. It might just be doing a single workout, or a simple meditation. But you might find that finding your path, helps you find yourself a little more. I hope this encourages you!
In slightly better health,
Becca H.
