Weighty Issues

Oh! I don't really want to write any of this down but I feel if I do it'll keep me in line a bit better. No!I don't want to write about sleep, which I never get enough of. I am feeling frumpy. I weight 180 right now which is a lot better than weighing 190. That's where I was stuck for many many months after Hannah was born. You see I normally gain about 40 lbs when I'm pregnant. I gain five the first trimester- even though I have a really tough time eating (especially with Hannah). I gain maybe five-ish pounds the second trimester and then the last couple of months it's as if my metabolism crashes and I gain all the rest then. With Hannah's pregnancy I was 214 at my highest weight. With Noah I was just about 220. I started out five pounds heavier at the beginning of Noah's pregnancy. Right after I gave birth to Hannah I weighed 190 and stayed there for over a year. Right after Noah's birth I weighed 204. I had only lost 16 pounds. However I wasn't in labor for four days with him. It took less than 4 hours (really two if you're counting). In being totally transparent I must say that I'm a foodie. I run to food for comfort. I'm lucky I don't weigh a lot more than I do. I don't like the feeling of hunger because that means that I'm a half hour away from feeling like I could crumble to pieces if I don't eat. I must eat to feel good. I've always liked food but food became more of a comfort for me when my parents divorced when I was 12. I over eat. I don't binge (not that I havent eaten a lot of a junky food before) and I could never throw up on purpose. If there is something wrong at all, especially emotionally, I start to think about eating so that I don't have to think about what's wrong. The silly part about that is that it's not as if I'm not emotionally healthy. I am. I deal with my issues but I delay dealing with issues by thinking about food. I call this my root beer float rut. About 11 years ago I was very unhappy with my life. I was living int he Bay Aread working as a nanny and eventhough I had a very sweet, nice roommate, I was lonely. I needed to have a bigger circle of friends to hang out with and someone I could shoot the breeze with someone I really connected with. I didn't have it at the time so I just thought about what would taste good on my tongue. One day I was driving over the San Rafael/Richmond bridge and I was thinking about eating a root beer float like I had been for days, when it dawned on me. Hey I'm trying to avoid all this pain and insecurity I feel inside by thinking about food. Now it's not as if I suddenly was able to think about something else, hence the reason I call it a 'rut', but I realized I was using my foodie thoughts to buffer the pain I felt inside. Something I had done for years and years by this point. Well, back to weight gain and pregnancy, I counted calories for one month and lost ten pounds. I didn't exercise a smidgen but I was breast feeding and the pounds flew off. It was one of the most difficult times of my life. As I said before I HATE being hungry. So now my plan is to count calories for six weeks. What's so magical about six weeks. Well, not much but I think that I need to work at eating less for at least six weeks. The nice part is that since I'm breastfeeding I actually don't gain weight easily so what ever weight I end up at by the 4th of July I'll be able to maintain with ease since I've still feeding Noah.

These are my goals in the next 6 weeks:
-eat under 2000 calories a day
-plan my food daily
-prepare as much food as I can the night before and the morning of
-be mindful of what I'm eating
-keep track of every calorie no matter how much I've eaten

In doing the above I hope to attain the following:
-my old wordrobe back
-more self confidence
-NO MORE WEARING MATERNITY CLOTHING
-LOSE THE BELLY