Category: Fitness

Working on my Fitness

As of this morning, I am exactly 3 months away from turning 35.

Yikes.

I don’t exactly feel old (except on nights that Jack wants to have an eating party at 3am), but I definitely thought I’d be in better shape by time I hit my mid 30’s.

I’ve never really been into the whole eating super healthy and working out thing. I had a period of time in my early 20’s where I actually went to the gym on a regular basis, so I was in pretty good shape. However, settling into ‘happy marriage’ mode means that some extra poundage has crept onto my body.

And as nice as it is to have an awesome husband who loves what he sees, sometimes I feel like this video is almost exactly my life (with one kid instead of three, of course):

He may see a saucy mama (who wears way too much eyeliner), but I see a frumpy mom running around like a mess!

Before the baby, every so often I’d decide to drop some weight by working out like a fiend and eating nothing but veggies and air to get some quick results. I’ve tried the Special K diet, the 4 day diet, the eating nothing yummy diet – and {surprise surprise} they don’t work long term. Wow, such a mind-blower, right!?

I didn’t really have an incentive to get in shape before I got pregnant because I was just going to gain pregnancy weight anyways. I actually dropped what I gained while carrying Jack pretty quickly without doing anything special and am now within about 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight. However, it seems like everything shifted around a bit and I’m not so happy with the results.

Since I have my birthday coming up, in addition to a baby who will soon start eating actual food and emulating my eating habits – I feel like now is the time to make a permanent change.

My goal isn’t to get super skinny. I happen to like my curves; I’d just like them to be a little… less.

Like that Tim McGraw song, “My next thirty years, I’m gonna watch my weight. Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late.” I need to start making better choices instead of just having whatever I want. So, I’m using this opportunity with my quick three month deadline to push myself to get back into shape. Or at least, START getting back in shape.

No quick fixes this time. I’m combining a few different things together to make my own fitness plan. Which I’m calling Get in Shape, Girl (imagine that Chelsea Handler is saying it, that’s how it sounds in my head). And yes, for any kids of the 80’s I named it after the super awesome pink and purple workout program of my youth:

Now I kind of want a fun ribbon to spin around with and some weight bracelets… Anyways, moving on.

Here’s my 1-2-3-4-5 plan to being a hot mama:

  1. Now that Jack is able to control his neck/head and I can use my jogging stroller, I’m going to get back into running. To keep me going, I signed up to do one of my favorite 5k races with a girlfriend in the Fall.
  1. I work on an incredibly beautiful college campus and I’m going to start taking advantage of it by taking walks at lunch.
  1. I’m joining a local group called Stroller Strides, which offers outdoor workouts WITH your baby in his stroller. From what I can tell, it’s a mix of walking, running, situps, pushups, etc. I’ll take my first class on Friday and can’t wait to try it out! If I like it, I’m going to go to classes on both Friday and Saturday mornings.
  1. I picked up a copy of the Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30 DVD – which has awesome reviews (including the super buff mom next to me at the Target that credited the DVD in part for her awesome body). The workout is only 30 minutes long, which is great to fit in when I don’t have time to suit up and go out for a full run.
  1. I’m going to go back to eating a lot healthier. Not super-dooper-life-sucks-because-I-can’t-eat-anything-good healthy, just more fruits, veggies and whole grains. And less soda and sugary snacks. I’m not saying that I’m going to cut out all the “bad” food, just put it back into that “in moderation” column, instead of the “I’m hungry, get in my mouth NOW” column.

So, that’s my plan. My goal is to lose 15 pounds by September 19th.

By telling you all, I’m hoping to hold myself accountable instead of sticking with a diet for a week or so and then reverting back to soda and French fries.

Wish me luck! Change is always hard, but I’m hoping that I’m able to make some permanent lifestyle and eating changes that stick with me for the long-term. Not only do I want to achieve “hot mama” status, I also want to set a good example for Jack to look up to.

 

And yes, I totally referenced three different songs in this blog post. If only my life was like that musical episode of Scrubs with everyone singing instead of speaking. Without the brain tumor though, that would be a drag.

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Moving, Gestational Diabetes & Cholestasis…Oh My!

Its official – we have moved into our new house!

Little batches of stuff had been trickling to the new place over the preceding week. However, our official moving day to get everything out of the rental was this past Saturday. We were super lucky and had a bunch of strong, manly guys [insert grunting noises here…] to help us make the process go as smoothly as possible. Everything was loaded into our new house by noon, with the moving boxes generally going to the correct rooms (or at least the correct floors of the house).

We went back to the rental on Sunday and cleaned the heck out of the place so that it’s ready for the next renters. So it feels good to be done with that and fully on to our new house. Now, it’s just a matter of unpacking everything and making the house into our home.

Of course, it looks like we might have a little less time to do that then originally anticipated. At my doctor’s appointment on Friday we discussed the specifics of my double diagnosis of gestational diabetes and cholestasis.

It seems like the gestational diabetes will be manageable, just really annoying. Basically I have to eat a super healthy diet and keep an eye on the amount of carbs I’m ingesting. I have target carb goals for each meal that I need to stay under, so figuring out what I’m allowed to eat is taking a little more thought than usual. Since I don’t like the taste of diet sugars, this also means I’m going cold turkey on soda and coffee until the end of my pregnancy. Yikes – I miss the caffeine already! I have a handy, dandy little insulin testing machine that honestly doesn’t hurt much at all. It’s actually kind of cool in an immediate gratification kind of way to see whether I’ve done well at each meal by testing my blood sugar an hour later.

The cholestasis is a bad mamma jamma though. Basically if I go all the way to 40 weeks of pregnancy, the baby may die. Actually, he can die at any time due to this condition and there is nothing I can do about it. Which is pretty much the most terrible and scary thing a doctor has ever said to me.

Starting this Thursday and continuing twice a week for the next 6 weeks, I get to go to the doctor’s office to do a special test where I spend 1 ½ hours hooked up to machines to check on the baby. As of now, the plan is to induce me to deliver at 36 or 37 weeks, but if he seems as if he is in distress I may have to deliver sooner.

It’s pretty understandable that I had a bit of a crying freak out in my car after leaving the appointment. However, I have an amazingly awesome friend who also was considered a high risk pregnancy that talked me down out of my hysteria. She went through the twice-a-week tests for another condition, ended up delivering early and her baby is perfectly fine. So it helped me a lot to hear her take on things.

Now that the news has digested a little bit, I’m able to concentrate on the bright side. Although cholestasis is quite rare, many women do end up having perfectly healthy babies. Hopefully our baby will be healthy and born at 36 weeks, which is considered full-term, probably just a little skinny (which is most likely a good thing considering my husband is 6’4” and I’ve been concerned about having his giant baby).

Until then, we get to see our baby a lot with twice weekly ultrasounds. I now have an incentive to learn how to eat healthy again, which is good news for dealing with that post-pregnancy weight. Also, since I will be induced then I won’t have to worry about spontaneously going into labor at an inconvenient time or place. I’ll know exactly when it’s going to happen so that I can plan around it with both my work schedule and life in general. This is pretty much the most awesome thing ever for a Type A personality like me.

So instead of having until April 13th to get everything ready for the baby, we now have until March 16 (ish).  Which means the next 5 ½ weeks should be quite interesting!

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