As with most women who have had children, I now have an appreciation for my body that I used to not have. It is an amazing piece of human machinery that conceived, grew, birthed, and fed two children, and as far as I know, could continue to do so.
But, oh, vanity.
Before I had any children I was not completely satisfied with my body. I could stand to lose ten or fifteen pounds, I ate junk, drank too much, didn’t exercise, and so on and so forth. How I did wrong by my body is enough to write several essays on. Then I got pregnant. I had to take care of myself and suddenly enjoyed taking care of myself. I ate better, but I still would snack constantly. Also, where I worked was a place where vendors tried to schmooze us (schmooze? It is a word?) and would often bring by doughnuts and cookies and the like. My wonderful co-workers always made a point to let me have the first go at them. “Better let the pregnant lady go first!”
I happily would. I ended up gaining about fifty pounds.
After Faith was born I didn’t even care first about all that extra weight. I was just so in love with my baby and everything else took a backseat. Every once in a while, though, I would get up the courage to try on a pair of my old jeans. Try and FAIL, for months.
Then I began walking. I really didn’t do it as much for exercise as I did it to just get out of the house for half an hour. I would put on the ipod, my shoes, and take off around the neighborhood. Later, I began cutting out sugar from my coffee. Then I stopped using butter. Then we stopped frying food. A little change would lead to a bigger one, and eventually all of my eating habits had changed. One day I tried on my jeans again and not only could I button them, but they were too big. In a fit of glee I tried on everything I owned and all of my clothes were too big. I bought new jeans. I lost another ten pounds on top of that. My father-in-law told me I needed to eat some biscuits. My sister let me try on her clothes, which were also too big, and my sister is an extremely tall, extremely thin woman. This was just weird. Awesome, but weird. Right when I was getting used to it I got pregnant. “This time,” I thought to myself “I will not gain fifty pounds”.
I gained fifty-one.
Losing weight the second time around has been different. I no longer live in a sub-division so walking is not the same exercise as it used to be. Jeff is a lot busier so times that I do walk I have to take the kids with me and it’s not so much exercise with two tiny people. I seem to have more of a love for food than I used to. I don’t know. Excuses.
James just turned nine months old. He has been out of my body as long as he was in it. I am one pound away from my pre-pregnancy weight. I fit into most of my old clothes (one pair of jeans, my teeny-tiny jeans, they just aren’t working with me).
It’s exciting, being able to do this again. A tiny bit harder than last time, but I did it. Almost. You know, one pound to go.
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