Good Gifts

Since Carter was born I made an important choice.  I wanted to give him a good gift, a gift only I can give him and only I can take away from him.  A gift that will affect him, the children he will have someday and my husband. 

I am choosing to give him the gift of health.

These people I love are counting on me to do life, life to the fullest, with them.

I've never had it easy when it comes to weight, but I'd be lying if I said I always made the best choices when it comes to food and exercise. I know what to do, but in the moment, making the right decision happens less often than not.  

Being a first time mom at 34 I want to be around a good, long time so help me God.  I want to see him grow up, I want to see his children grow up.  My husband didn't have the joy of grandparents.  I had/have wonderful ones.  I lost my maternal grandmother way too soon, before she could meet my husband, or her 5th great grandbaby.  All of our parents are still here and we love watching them love our son.

I decided that for the first month of being a mommy I wasn't going to worry about my health beyond recovering my my c-section.  We had friends & family bringing sometimes healthy, sometimes not, delicious meals and I didn't have a whole lot of say about what I had in my kitchen to eat most days, and that was OK.  What I did make sure of was that I walked with the baby almost every day for as far as I could go.  The first week home that was maybe 10 minutes around the block and now at 5 weeks we're walking 3 miles most mornings together.

I've been on every program, EVERY program.  I chose the 21 Day Fix program from Beachbody to start my journey back to health(ier) after baby.   It's not that this program is any more magical than another, but it gives me a plan.  I just finished my first 30 minute workout while baby napped.  I had to workout with the 'low impact' gal in the video (holy humbling). I am so inflexible, out of breath and out of shape, but I don't care.  I won't feel that way for long!  I modified the ab portion even more than low impact already did, afraid that my doctor was wrong and sit ups would make my innards spill out (they didn't, ha).

The workouts are all 30 minutes and luckily I know if nothing else when that baby closes his eyes I have at least 30 minutes to get the workout done...plenty of time to better my health.  There's also an eating plan I'm looking forward to embarking  on as well to get my nutrition on point.  

In the spirit of transparency, I gained 36 pounds with my baby.  20 of it is long gone and came off effortlessly once baby arrived.  This leaves me 16 to go to get to my pre-preggo weight, but closer to 40 really to go to get to my goal weight.  I was roughly 20 pounds heavier than I wanted to be when I got pregnant.  Trying to get pregnant I sort of gave up on being healthy figuring I was going to get fat anyways with pregnancy so....wont make that mistake again, having a c-section would have been a lot easier with a flatter, firmer stomach to begin with!

38 weeks pregnant (I only went to 38+6)/3 weeks post partum

Oh, and I'm running a half marathon in March...seemed like a good idea last March (only 4 months preggo mind you) to sign up for...motivation, you know.  Thanks, self!  ACK!