Biggest Loser____journey back

In March 2016 I miscarriaged at 12 weeks. I was weighing in around the 115kg mark. All thoughts of keeping healthy went out the window. I ate my feelings of sadness, confusion and disappointment. Fast forward to August 2016 when we found out we were expecting another baby. I was so so happy but then got on the scales. I was weighing in at 133kg. I had never in my life ever been that heavy on the scales or even close.

In fact in 2015 when I started the Cohens diet I was 118kg and felt that was close to the heaviest I had ever been. So here I was pregnant with a high BMI. I knew the pregnancy was going be hard and that besides eating healthy and walking I couldn't even think about weight loss anymore. So I did the very best I could to avoid putting on weight while pregnant. My weight before delivery was 146.6kg. During my pregnancy I had to do two glucose test, multiple blood draws, several visits with North Shore Hospital OBGYN department and even got told that I should definitely have an epidural for delivery because if not I would probably die if I needed an emergency C-section. Well (and thankfully) my beautiful daughter was born without any interventions on May 7th.

On May 14th - feeling like a super women and full of endorphins after giving birth I got on the scales. 140.6kg. I was a little disappointed I had not uh expelled more weight from delivery but nevertheless the cloud of my miscarriage, the joy of my daughter being born meant I had a new determination to begin working my way back down the scales. I set myself small steps along the way to achieve. My biggest obstacles were my husbands and I late night takeaway purchases, my constant need to have a block of chocolate in the house, my fear of exercising on hills that sent me out of breathe so easily. Then when I was 8 weeks postpartum my sister and her husband invited us to join a biggest loser. I was fearful of joining because I was breastfeeding and could not really restrict my calories but having heard that you can lose weight from breastfeeding I felt if I could just cut out all the crap eating maybe just maybe it could work. My husband was keen to join and so RELUCTANTLY I joined. I had very little expectations and seriously thought I would just go up and down but really not lose much at all as I was not going to do anything to jeopardise my milk supply for my baby girl. My weight on weigh in day was 136.9kg.

Our approach was simple..... small, even meger changes. The first week was simply not to buy takeaways at night. Here I was thinking I would have no trouble with it and that I would have to support my husband but man was I so wrong. Instead he has surprised me over and over having to be the one to tell me NO! I found an APP called the 30 day fitness challenge. It has been so good for us. The goal is slowly building up strength over time so each week the amount of exercises increases. We exercise together each night after the kids are in bed and it is so so good mentally and helps curb all the late night hunger. We are not perfect. We have still purchased late night takeaways but we keep sticking to our goals of small steps big changes over time. We are trying to achieve something for a lifetime and instead of beating ourselves up and throwing in the towel we actually just keep going, keep eating healthy, keep trying to make the small changes that will mean big changes in the long term.

This morning I got on the scales and saw 129.8kgs. I have finally gotten out of the 130s. I vow, hope, scream, rejoice and commit to never ever return to those numbers again. I have started to post some of my journey on FB. I didn't think much of it but the response from friends and family has been overwhelming and so so motivating. In 2015 when I did Cohens I did not post one single time. How dumb is that? I lost 26kgs but not once did I share my progress publicly. I have no idea what shame or fear was holding me back from rejoicing but I did and it is something that I really regret. My husband says I should start a blog on my journey or an instagram or something for people to follow and I may start doing that, or I may not and just continue to share updates as I want to. To date I have not had a gain week - I have during the time lost only a meger 100g but it was a loss and a LOSS is a LOSS. Also I have owned every time I have indulged in the yummy stuff because I don't ever wanna get to a place where I don't eat chocolate or cake or KFC. I like those things, they make me happy but I want to get to a place where they are apart of my life but not the MAIN part of my life.

 
The point of all of this is to say that you can do it so slowly. There is a quote I love that say something along the lines of it doesn't matter how slow you are going you are still lapping everybody on the couch. I also love - there is no such thing as a bad workout. This is a slow progress. Heck I have given birth to 5 kids so all that weight aint gonna go away over night because it wasn't overnight that I gained but all I need it is commitment and TIME. So heres to using time to get to where I want to go and to keeping it at small steps = big changes.