Today was the first day my husband went back to work. With a few hiccups from my impatience with the kids, the whole thing went surprisingly smoothly. I didn't even feel stressed, until I realized I had a drawn out binge tonight. Too many cookies, too much carb-laden junk, and too little discipline after a few weeks of laxity. Add to that the fact that breastfeeding makes me ravenously hungry, and I am having quite a heck of a time staying in any sort of calorie or food allotment, when my bottomless stomach mixes with stress and unhealthy eating.... Let's just say I remember what prompted me to get help and start a plan in October '08.

Let me backtrack. My friend Melynda's post that I read this evening got my brain turning, so even though it is 1:31 am and I have to wake up and pack all three kids, ALONE, to a doctor's appointment for Seth in the morning, I decided it was worth posting on the subject while it was fresh in my mind. So here is my brain dump, of sorts, for tonight.

My biggest stress today, and one that has been wearing on me and my husband for the past few weeks, is that we're having some discipline problems with the girls while I am feeding/putting down the baby, and my patience is so much shorter than it should be! I am praying about that and working on it, I know God will help me through this and give me the grace to respond lovingly instead of in anger, but I am struggling with my hormones and personal sinful selfishness right now and it is impacting my parenting a bit. So I need to work on that for my own peace of mind as well as for the sake of my wonderful (if a little disobedient) children.

That stress is really my biggest, honestly, and it. Is the reason I am having some trouble controlling my food. I am also breastfeeding and that makes me starving, so the two factors are culminating in the perfect storm for weight gain. I see this, and as much as I wanted to wait until November to get into gear, it will serve me better to put the breaks on this eating issue now and not later. I still need to lose weight this year, to get as close to my health insurance goal as possible (and thus reduce our rates when we self-insure in the coming year), so discipline is called for tomorrow morning, with the first bite. No more laxity, my body and health needs me to tighten up and feed myself with more healthy fare in healthy ways, not junky, brain-chemistry-altering fluff that makes me look and feel awful.

Friends are still bringing me meals and my freezer still has a lot of prepared food that has higher fat content than I need, so I am just going to have to adjust by using my old standby strategy of filling up with fruits, veggies and a good tall glass of water first, then carefully measuring my main portion so that I am not mindlessly eating larger amounts than I need. If I am still hungry, I will satisfy myself with healthier food and NOT dessert, and if I need more of the main course, it will be measured out and not grazed upon. I have to commit to doing this, here and now, so I will.

My calorie budget is the same one I had during pregnancy. I may need to up it by a good 250 calories or so, if I am still feeling physically hungry after a few good days plan, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. I don't want to lower my calories too much, so 2000-2200 is a good target that shouldn't have me so low that I will have a hard time losing once breastfeeding ceases. That requires I drop my calories a bit, and as long as I am over 200 pounds I don't want to eat less than 1800 or so calories a day while losing. I want food amounts and types that are sustainable for me long term, and dropping calories too low doesn't work for me. It makes me want to binge. So that's my basic starting point - around 2000, mostly healthy calories. No baking treats, no grazing.

Psychologically and physically, I want to exercise, but i am only two weeks postpartum and even basic household tasks like cleaning and cooking do a number on my energy and physical state. I am not sure my stitches are ready for walking or the stationary bike, as standing too long makes my pelvic floor ache, but I was going to tentatively try the bike on Wednesday and see how it went. Nothing hard and nothing too long, I am aiming for reaching the benefits of exercise (elevated heart rate, mood improvement, a little calorie burn and muscle stretch) without adding any significant fatigue to my current bodily load. So no working out until I am sore, stopping when my abs and pelvic floor start aching or feeling heavy, and no strength training or more vigorous walking work (like Leslie Sansone DVDs, too much bouncing and too fast!) for another few weeks. My stitches still aren't fully dissolved, I feel comfortable going nice and slowly while I am still literally healing from a huge body-altering event. I don't want to restart hey postpartum bleeding either, so exercise is really a very minor activity and the first to go if I am feeling anything less than great while doing it!

I'm hesitant to post about this subject just because I fear getting flack for doing too much or being too hard on myself. In real life, I'm not mentioning this to anyone but my husband, and not really talking about it on Facebook either. For most women, this would be a bit drastic this soon postpartum. But I have to put my foot down, now, in a definitive way, or the backslide will just get worse (as it is, I have caught it before gaining any appreciable poundage that cannot be attributed to salt intake). For someone like me, with a lifelong struggle with food, I know the signs and symptoms of a regression when I see it. I can't control my physical energy, my sleep, or what people bring me to eat... So these factors will take care of themselves, but I CAN control what and how much goes in my mouth, and that is exactly what I intend to do. I need a few good days of being the model dieter again to get my body and mind back in the mode of what healthy eating and living looks like. It generally isn't a big struggle for me to lose weight and commit to moderate, healthy habits, but I HAVE to break myself out of this unhealthy sugar fog first. It's a cycle I must disrupt sooner than later, and there's no good way for me to do it effectively without a calorie budget and strict food logging.

I just want to get back to a good place with my eating and look/feel better. As tough as it is to get back on the horse, it. Is worse to keep avoiding doing so! This applies mainly to my eating, but to exercise too. I did a decent job of keeping with my bare bones family schedule today, I am getting back to normal and working out what life looks like with three kids three and under, now. Finding out how to live healthfully and continue to lose weight with this new paradigm is all just part of it for me. I can do it, but it requires a commitment and dedication to my goals.

I lost sight of them for a month or so there, but no longer. This chapter begins NOW.

For the record, cookies put me at 215.0 this morning, after 214.0 the day before. It's as good a starting point as any, I suppose, and I am looking forward to seeing 209 by December 1st or so, if I stick to my plan like glue. I can't wait!