Post Partem Weight Struggles… they’re real for me!

After we delivered our first baby, I was only 15-20 lbs more than my pre-pregnancy weight right after I had him. I had a lot of trauma at delivery and was restricted with TONS of physical therapy for the five months following, and ended up putting back on the weight I lost immediately after giving birth. I finally started losing weight again when our baby was about a year old… just in time to get pregnant all over again. My weight soared to 199 lbs. It was brutal. When I gave birth to our second son, I immediately went down to about 175lbs, and within a week or two of that I was 162 lbs. I wasn’t doing anything to warrant it, but I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the face, so I let it happen. The weight loss stopped and in November 2017, I was still around 162 lbs. By December, I was 191 lbs. I had put on roughly a lb a day. I was exercising, I was eating right, low grain consumption and healthy, mostly veggie everything else. I cut back calories from 1800 to 1400 and continued to exercise, and my weight finally stopped going up, but it wasn’t going down much either.

I finally went to a doctor…well, and resident and her attending, and they both acted like they didn’t believe that I was working out or eating right, and he suggested the 1/2 C of white rice I ate each week was the cause. The resident (who was in her twenties) said “sometimes when we get older, we have a higher weight. I was mortified and angry with the experience. I don’t enjoy going to the doctor. Alex had to stay home with our kids so I could go, they saw me an hour after I got there and then they didn’t listen to a word I said. They ran one thyroid test, with no follow-up. I had a 3.75 which is high-ish but still within a normal range and didn’t explain the extraordinary weight gain. I was 188 lbs at that appointment in June.

In late-August, Alex suggested we try Whole30. Its kind of like paleo. No grains or legumes, you cannot have dairy on whole30, but you can have potatoes. It was kinda weird. It worked great for Alex! He was down 10 lbs in a week. I had gone down three and then gone right back up three. I felt like garbage. I went to the message boards for the Whole30 meal plan, and they said it can take longer if you’re coming from a Standard American Diet and proclaimed “just give it time”… my vision was getting worst, my headaches were unbearable and I had come from a healthy eating plan. I decided to try something else.

On September 6th, I started a vegetarian Keto plan, desperate to lose weight, and by today, the 11th, I’m down 9lbs. My body wanted something and I FINALLY found something thats working, at least for the time being. I’m so excited, I have no words. Finding a way to ditch these pregnancy lbs has been an ordeal, but I’m committed to doing whatever it takes to get to a weight thats healthy enough to sustain me for the next few decades as my children grow.

My only advice, don’t give up. Just…never! Don’t give up. You’ll figure out whats right for you and the miracle will happen even if its not tomorrow or next week.