Weight Loss

For the first time in my life, I managed to achieve a weight loss goal I set for myself. Which is to say that I've dropped back down to my pre-pregnancy weight, 11 weeks after giving birth. And since I've been wanting to write about this achievement for years now (as I steadily gained weight), it was the kick I needed to return to this blog. I never meant to neglect it to this degree. But it's so easy to let days or weeks slip by without getting on the computer. There's so much else going on, and my precious free time has mostly been devoted to reading (I also need to catch up on my book blog).

But this is about losing weight and what finally worked for me. It turns out that the key was breastfeeding a baby. Not only am I burning a ton of calories producing his food (he eats ~500 calories/day, which means I'm burning at least that much making milk for him), I have less time to eat. It can take me two hours to make and eat a sandwich. So even though I'm still getting enough to eat, I'm more okay being hungry, which makes it easier to eat a little less. I'm not dieting so much as readjusting after being pregnant and eating everything in sight.

All this has added up to shockingly rapid weight loss. For the first few weeks, I was losing a pound a day. Eventually it slowed down to something more reasonable. Then when I was 5 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight, it seemed to stop altogether. I held steady there for a couple of weeks. And just when I I'd given up hope of ever getting back down to where I was, Christmas ended. Once I stopped eating a feast every night with a different group of family member, plus filling up on cookies and sweets between, the last few pounds melted right off.

I'm still hoping to lose some more weight. I'm trying to not set a specific goal, to just be happy with any weight I do lose. And I'm trying to be okay with not losing more weight if that happens, too. But I'm optimistic that I'll be able to lose some more weight in the coming months. I know I'll plateau eventually, I just hope it's at a smaller size than what I've reached in the past several years.