Old Habits

Oh, you guys. I just re-read this post and wanted to cry for how badly my 38-week-pregnant self thought of herself.

(Also, I wanted to tell her to effing relax! The baby’s fine and that’s all that matters!)

I have been lucky enough to lose the pregnancy weight, plus about five pounds.  I have worked at it by doing the Weight Watchers thing, but really it’s luck. In the past, I’ve worked a lot harder at various stages of my life to lose weight, and generally made much, much slower progress. I am lucky that my body produces a lot of breast milk and that it has helped me lose the fat I accumulated over my pregnancy.

The bad thing is that I can feel myself starting to get hooked on the weight loss. There are the compliments, which are of course a nice ego boost.  But it’s more insidious than that, really. When I worry about Henry, like when he was hospitalized the second time, I would weigh myself and think, “well, at least THAT’S going well.” It’s like this one thing I have control over. One thing that I am currently consistently and objectively successful at, when I have no idea if I am being a good mother or really accomplishing anything of value at work.

I read Nico’s post yesterday and realized that I cannot go back to the hypothalamic amenorrhea mentality. I used to eat and exercise on a strict schedule. I would never fall of the wagon, and I had such tight control over myself. Any social event involving food or disrupting my schedule was a difficultly to be gotten past, not something fun to do with my friends. All my brain power went to counting calories.

I cannot do that to myself, and to my husband and baby, again. My life deserves my full attention.

(Plus there is the fact that I had a period at six weeks post-partum, and haven’t had once since.  Is this a breastfeeding this or an undereating thing? I’m worried about it, a little.)

I am trying to wean myself off of Weight Watchers tracking. (I already went on their maintenance plan a few weeks ago, which helped a little because it was more food, but still required me to enter everything and plan my eating a bit obsessively.) It’s hard, though. It always feels like I’m eating “too much” (because I need a lot of food what with pumping 45 oz a day), so I still will stop and count up points in my head to see what is “okay” for me to eat.

Anyway, hopefully I will get there.