Here it goes, guys. The whole world has been waiting, I know, on pins and needles.
When is she gonna talk about the weight she’s lost?!
All right, all right, I fully realize. You all have lives outside of Facebook and you most certainly have not been waiting with bated breath for me to talk about my own personal journey. But I do figure that some of you might like to hear the story – how things got started, how I lost the weight, what’s happening now.
First off, let’s clear up a few things:
- I’m not selling you anything. Nothing at all. I’m not gonna tell you that you, too, can have the same results as me for the low, low price of only $20 a month for the rest of your life. Different strokes for different folks and all that rot.
- I do not believe that thin = happiness. Let me be the first to tell you: life is just as weird and screwed up when you’re a size 6 as it is when you’re a size 18. Excess weight might be a symptom of unhappiness, but it is almost never the true cause of it.
- I also do not believe that thin = healthy. There are plenty of thin people who eat like shit and never exercise. Likewise, there are a lot of heavy people who eat right, exercise, and just don’t see the pounds falling off. If you like how you feel and look, GOOD ON YOU.
Okay, then, now that we’ve got things cleared up…
Jade was born in February of 2010. I had gained almost sixty pounds while pregnant, going from a reasonable 165 lbs to 220 lbs. My wonderful OB never mentioned my weight gain in a negative way, even though I knew that I had gained far more than I ought to. I’ve said before that I am not graceful in pregnancy, and I got pregnant after a long period of attempts at weight loss, so I took pregnancy as my carte blanche to eat as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. Candy, ice cream, fast food, pizza – it’s a wonder I didn’t get gestational diabetes. There was more than one day that I baked a batch of cookies and then ate every single one myself. It was my therapy, my way of coping with the maladies of pregnancy and the emotional freakout I was having about impending motherhood.
They say that breastfeeding can help take off pounds, and they were right! By the time Jade was four months old, I was within ten pounds of my prepregnancy weight and wearing my old jeans. I had been eating a little more sensibly, and the extra calories burned by making so much milk helped a lot.
Those of you who know my kid know that she basically didn’t sleep for the first year of her life. It was worst from the time she was 4 months to the time she was 9 months, and during that time I pretty much ate to stay awake. I was also suffering from hardcore postpartum depression, although I was in complete denial about that fact. In that five months, I gained back twenty pounds. A couple of friends got married that fall, and I looked at a family picture taken by a friend and thought, “Who IS that?” I was pretty much gobsmacked by the person I saw in my place.
The real moment of truth came when I was sitting in the window of our local brunch joint, drinking coffee and sharing a waffle with Jade. A woman passed by the window and suddenly stopped and STARED at me. I realized that it was Jules, my old Weight Watchers leader.
AlliMonster Speaks 
I think formerly pregnant women are way too tough on how they look. Or rather, society is. Instead of celebrating the notion that you’ve just done an act of creation and love, most women spend the first two years after birth bemoaning their weight…which translates to not really loving their body. How could you say to your body that just underwent the toughest thing a female body can do, “Yes, well, that’s fine, but just LOOK at you…you’re a wreck…”?? I certainly didn’t. When I look in the mirror and see the saggy bits, I’m actually rather proud. And when I look on the Sektion scar, I feel even more proud (and humble). This body has fought impossible battles and won. Damn right I’m proud of it. You don’t have flawless victories. There are always marks of your struggles.
Check out http://theshapeofamother.com/. Very, very reassuring.
Also, a minor point: you don’t just “get gestational diabetes” by eating crap (although I imagine anything is possible). That’s the same line of thinking that all fat people will get diabetes because all they eat is junk food. Or that a fat person who has diabetes got it because they ate poorly. Gestational diabetes is largely genetics-driven. Or it can just hit out of the blue. If it were true, then everyone who ate poorly during pregnancy would be stricken, regardless of weight. And that just doesn’t fly, as you proved yourself. I don’t know if you had to take the GB test, but I did. You feel like you’ve been dx’d already just taking the test. I had to do the finger prick thingthree times a day for two months, account for everything that I ate, and do the horrible glucose tolerance test. Everything came back negative, and the docs all seemed a bit stunned. Go figure…a fat pregnant girl DIDN’T get GB. How on earth is that possible!? *headesk*
I love how you write! Keep going! 🙂
Also, really love the points you made at the beginning.
Pregnancy definitely does a number on me too… last time my ob kept telling me at every other appointment– “You’re gaining too much, really watch your carbs, especially fresh fruit since it’s summer.” A month later “You’re not gaining enough, make sure you eat more!” A month later “You’ve gained too much…” sheesh that was an emotional roller coaster.