I am nearly one month in to my weight loss journey, and well it’s been a bit up and down to be honest!

Diet

I am following the idea of the original Weight Watchers plan. My MIL had all the books and paperwork which meant there was no cost involved, and I am not a huge one for joining groups. Hubs introduced me to WW when  I wanted to lose weight after Monkey and I found it worked really well for me.

I like to think of it as an everything in moderation diet because nothing is completely off-limits. You get a points allowance (much like the current WW system) and you work out how many points are in any food and then you can add up how much you are eating throughout the day to meet your allowance. Points come from calories (70 calories per point) and saturated fat (4g sat fat per point) and your personal points allowance is calculated using your current weight, height, activity level etc.  I am not sure how the current system works but I think it takes more nutritional values into consideration than just calories and sat fat.

The reason it worked for me so well the first time was because it really made me pay attention to what I was eating, and how many calories were in everything I ate. I could still eat anything I liked but when things have a points value associated with them, and you have daily total, I found that I would make healthier choices, eat foods with lower points, as it meant I could eat more throughout the day.

I did really well on it the first time round and had high hopes it would be pretty easy again but it has been a bit harder so far. I started off really well and according to the scales lost about 5lbs in the first week. then things  very much leveled off, even though I was still following the same plan. I have written before how I am not relying totally on the scales as I am not sure how accurate they are as a measure, and how for me, it is more about how I fit in certain items of clothing.

The trouble is though that it is easy to feel disheartened when the needle on the scales stops moving south. It is easy, when feeling disheartened, to go off the rails a little, and I have definitely done that a few times. I could make excuses, we still have a very small baby, I am still shattered after being up in the night with her and then looking after her and a toddler every day… and they are very true, but that is how I got overweight in the first place and not good enough reasons for going back to old habits.

The good news, I have lost weight. I can now do up my red shorts – I mean they are still ridiculously, uncomfortably tight but I can do them up, which I could not even nearly do 2 weeks ago. So regardless of what the scales say, I have lost inches and I need to focus on that.

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Not exactly a huge difference from 2 weeks ago but hey it is a start!

Exercise

I have been walking more and I went to a postnatal yoga class last week which was really good. My back has been terrible over the last month or two, so when I saw the taster session for postnatal yoga I was immediately interested. The class was great, the instructor took things very slowly and said it was all about rebuilding the strength in our muscles. The exercises (mainly breathing exercises) were very simple but effective and I could feel them working.

The downside? Little Miss. The idea is that you take your baby to the class and they will either doze to the side or happily gurgle at you while you do the exercises and at times you can include  them in the class. Most of the other babies there did that, LM ooh no. She wanted feeding shortly after the class started – not easy to lie down doing back strengthening breathing exercises when feeding a baby! Then she needed burping, then she wasn’t happy on her back. Out of the hour long class I got to do about 10-15 mins of the exercises and was watching the rest of the time. Better than nothing and the one exercise I remember does help when I find the time to do it at home.

I would love to carry on the class but with LM having no routine at the moment I don’t feel like there is much point. I don’t want to pay for an hours session if I can’t actually do the exercises. I know she is only a few months old and a few  people have said I shouldn’t be impatient, it is just what a baby is like and I get it, but it is hard to carve out time for myself when every day is so totally different. I keep changing my mind whether to join up or not, and, well I shall keep you posted I guess. The other option is to get a dvd I can do at home but it is very difficult to know which one is good. Any recommendations for a gentle post-natal exercise dvd, please share it!

I need to concentrate on strengthening my back though as it has gotten worse this last week. For a few days my whole left side has been very painful, from my neck all the way down to my knee. My knee especially has been agony at times. Hubs has regular physio for his back and because I was so uncomfortable he looked after the kids for me on Friday afternoon and gave me his appointment. It definitely helped and is all just stemming from my issues with my lower back, so I really, really have to make time to work on it if I want things to improve. I shall keep you posted with how that is going!

I need my body to be strong again and carrying excess weight isn’t helping either so I am re-doubling my efforts to stick to the diet – and I need to ask hubs to stop tempting me with offers of my favourite naughty foods in the evenings. I actually crochet-ed some baby booties for LM recently and concentrating on something and keeping my hands busy definitely stopped me snacking so much, so I think I need to crochet some more things, if only for that reason lol!