When people see me now, they mostly comment on how thin I'm looking. While this is great, it's also awful. I seem to have lost most of my pregnancy weight from Nathan, but I've still got my pregnancy weight from Janel & Zoe to lose. I reckon there's a good 10-15kg there that could easily disappear without anyone noticing it. My ribcage has expanded outwards, along with every other part of my body*. All my clothes, apart from my preggie pants and pyjamas, still fail to fit me around the waist, hips, ribs, arms, thighs... oh sod it! I still feel horribly uncomfortable in most of my clothes. I still feel fat. (I don't care what you say - I may hide my rolls and flab well, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.)
One of my problems during pregnancy was that I simply couldn't exercise because my pelvic girdle (the bones that your hips are the edges of) was loose; so loose, in fact, that any movement of my legs was incredibly painful. I had to wear a special girdle thingy just so I could walk. Stairs were a no-go for me. Long distances (anything longer than from my classroom to the staffroom!) were a no-go. If I forgot that little rule and tried to go for a walk, I'd suffer for hours and possibly a few days afterwards. It all started at the beginning of the pregnancy, with the girdle thingy becoming a daily feature from the 3rd month. Just think - 5 months of no exercise at all, with a further 2 months of next to nothing at the beginning and another 2 months of next to nothing at the end while I was waiting for my pelvis to come together again. That's a HANG of a long time to go without exercise.
Since coming home from the hospital, I've been trying to get more exercise. However, it's very hard to break old habits - in this case, a 9 month-long habit. It's much easier just keeping the status quo of doing nothing, of being lazy.
I've been reading some of the latest research on weight loss which seems to indicate that exercise does NOT help you lose weight. It helps you get healthy, yes, but in non-weight related ways: it reduces blood pressure, increases lung capacity, increases flexibility and bone density, etc, etc. It does NOT help you lose weight. In fact, it's been shown that regular doses of moderate activity (note: not exercise) every day helps you lose as much weight as going to the gym 3-4 times a week. So there's no point (from a weight-loss perspective) in spending hours sweating it out at the gym.
If exercise doesn't help you lose weight, what does? Eating right. Plain and simple. Eating whole foods, eating unprocessed foods (i.e. cutting out sugar in all its forms), eating smaller portions, eating more vegetables and fruit, drinking more water and less caffeinated drinks.
Now, anyone who knows me will know that I am a chocoholic. No doubt about that. However, I am also a snack-aholic. Trying to restrict my portion sizes has, to date, only caused me to snack after the meal because I still feel hungry. I can wolf down a very decently-sized main meal, have two decent-sized helpings of pudding, and STILL have space for a snack. Not healthy when one's metabolism is no longer that of a rapidly growing pre-teen or teenager, but rather that of a rapidly-approaching middle aged potato that's been sitting on the couch for the last 9 months. I have tried, really I have, not to snack, but I wind up getting ratty and irritable within a very short space of time. My body craves the calories. Failure to get them = G and the kids have to put up with Ms Snap-your-head-off-if-you-so-much-as-look-at-me-wrong-and-even-if-you-don't-I'll-still-snap-it-off-because-I'm-hungry-and-need-to-eat-SOMETHING.
All of this left me feeling rather hopeless. If I don't have the willpower to get up from my desk chair and get the exercise I need, and if exercise doesn't help anyway, and if I don't have the willpower to moderate my food intake, I'm in serious trouble. I don't want to wind up like the people on 'The Biggest Loser', but I feel like I'm heading that way if something doesn't change, and soon.
This week has brought me a revelation though. We ran out of bandwidth last weekend. (That in itself was a revelation... wow - internet-lessness is... like... wow.) While waiting for the new month to begin, I decided to get started on the garden that DESPERATELY needs attention. Shortly after lunch on Monday I got stuck in. Apart from a few hours on Thursday and Friday morning, I was in the garden during daylight hours for the remainder of the week. I dug holes, laid gutters, weeded, planted plants, planted more grass runners than I care to think about, hauled 6 Vibrocrete wall slabs from the back of the property to the front (MAN! those things must weigh a ton each! I could only carry one at a time, and even then: only just!), hauled 6 concrete paving slabs from the back of the property to the front, hauled bricks around, and built brick borders for the beds.
It may not sound like much, but it was hard, physical labour that took me all week. (We now have a front garden, as opposed to a front building site.) Even now, there is still one small area that needs a gardening solution before I will be happy declaring that the front garden is fully completed. For now though, it's as done as it's going to get until I have more money to spend on plants. (And if I say so myself, it looks pretty damn good, even though the planting still has to mature and the grass has to grow.)
As I was reflecting on the effect of all this activity on my body, I realised that my food intake has changed this week. Firstly, I am not eating more. This surprises me because I've certainly been working like a dog. I would have thought that (as usually happens with exercise) the increased metabolism would cause me to increase my calorie intake. Not so. Secondly though, and probably even more important, my snacking habit has been greatly reduced. Again, I have been very surprised by this. I can't really explain it, except to think that my snacking is actually a comfort thing, rather than a need for extra calories, as I had always thought.
Maybe my snacking has more to do with my state of mind than my state of body. If this is true, then I think I've just found my personal key to losing weight. I haven't craved chocolate or biscuits or rusks or sweets in the same way. (Of course, I've still wanted them, but I've been satisfied by smaller quantities, and I've had days of no cravings at all.)
Most of my snacking is done after supper. Of course, since I've been asleep in bed by 9pm (or earlier) this week, it would have been rather hard to snack, even if I'd wanted to**. But here's the thing: when addicts talk about recovery, one of the things they mention is that in order to break a habit, you need to change your pattern of behaviour. If you normally have a bottle of wine when you get home from work, then don't come home directly after work. If you normally have your cocaine at the night club, stop going to the night club. In my case, that could read, if you normally snack after supper, go to bed as soon as you can after supper so you can't snack. (As a long term solution though, going to bed this early doesn't bring me much joy.... no more Desperate Housewives, no more movies, no more going to cell group, no more socialising, no more anything...)
Because I'm hyper-flexive (yup, my body is just one long catalogue of deformities, infirmities, and such like) I've always been nervous of sports that require my muscles to work hard to prevent injury. That rules out pretty much everything except horse riding (been there, done that, broke my spine doing it), cycling (been there, done that, not so effective with a broken spine), swimming (been there, done that, couldn't be arsed with the early morning training, the cold water, the foot cramps or green chlorine-induced hair colour) and yoga/ callinetics (been there, done that, too expensive to pay for classes). I've always known that it was hard work (my favourite work avoidance behaviour at school and university was weeding our lawns at home), but until this week, I never really rated gardening as a solution to my eating habits. Fancy that?!
So, surprise, surprise, it would seem that: garden more = eat less = lose weight. Plus it's fun. There are only two problems with this: one - it's a very solitary pursuit, which means that (certainly once I'm back at work) it will mean even less time with my family; and two - I have a small garden, which means that once the back breaking work is done over the next little while, there shouldn't been too much to do in the line of maintenance work (or is that just my fantasy?).
Still, I've got a month and a half left. Let's see how much of me is left when I go back to work before I make any final declarations though. Until then, here's hoping that all this work at least gives me the start of my summer tan.....
*I'm seriously thinking of investing in a few corsets to help my ribs return to their previous size. The only problem with that is that whatever fat is residing inside will be pushed outwards.... Maybe a nip and tuck with a boob job would sort it all out? Nah, I reckon a corset is the cheapest and least painful solution.
**Sex is also supposed to be a fun way to lose weight. I wouldn't know. Being asleep so early put rather a damper on finding out. Even if I'd wanted to (and I was too tired & too sore to want to, sorry), it's rather hard to be energetic about sex when you're fast asleep - and snoring, apparently. I wouldn't know about that either - I don't listen to myself when I sleep. Do you?
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