Let's Get This Started

Ok so I have been thinking about how to set some realistic goals for myself during this pregnancy so that I have something to work towards to stay healthy. I guess the only outcome I am really looking for is to maintain a healthy weight, only gaining baby weight and not extra on top of that. In order to do that I need to keep active and eat healthy. Sounds simple, but with going back to work soon I definitely have to set some guidelines for myself so that I can stay on track. They are simple and seem like no brainers but I still need to put it in writing so here goes:

1) Eat five servings of fruits / veggies every day. If I do that I am less likely to fill up on things I don't need.

2) Exercise four times a week. This will be hard when I go back to work, but I am willing to at least try to go for walks on my lunch break or go to the YMCA that is right next door to my office. I will also have kickboxing on the evenings for as long as my belly doesn't get in the way.

3) Go to bed at a decent time. If I don't get enough sleep, I don't function well at work and tend to not plan ahead for lunches and snacks.

That's it. Most people would be able to do these things no problem but I tend to cave under stress when I am working and forget to take care of myself.

The good thing is I will have to be home every night at a decent time, because I will want to have some quality time with my sweet little girl. I also think that planning healthy meals once I go back to work won't be too bad because I have a child to feed now - it's not just about me.

I have these ultrasound pictures on the fridge that I hope will keep being a reminder when I have the urge to skip a workout or order take out.

Everything looked good at the ultrasound last week. Heart beat was 160. Measuring right on schedule for a due date of August 17th! The grandparents on my husband's side are hoping for the baby to be born on the 16th because they already have grandchildren with birthdays on the 14th, 15th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th of various months. So the 16th would fill in the gap! 

And here's a preview of what we have in store for Maya's 1st Birthday coming up in March with all of our family and friends!

Personalize an invitation

It's Time

Source

You remember when I had the cookie standoff? I had those cookies in my cupboard forever, never touched them. Then this week, the pregnancy cravings were in full force and let's just say the bag is half gone. This has got to stop. I can't use pregnancy as an excuse to abandon all my beliefs I have established about eating healthy (more on that in another post).  Seriously, I went through the whole holidays not touching any desserts, sweets, dips, finger foods, etc. But ever since new years I have been letting things slide. So it's time to start setting some new goals. Once it's on here, it's the rule and I have to follow it! I'm gonna think about this for a few days so stay tuned...

Time to talk about some stuff.

Ok, now that I am pregnant again things are so much more simple and so much more complicated at the same time. I don't even know where to begin. I will start by saying I have not been giving this blog much attention lately, and I think it is partly because I have been wanting to change the focus a little bit and revamp but just haven't had time. Plus with being pregnant and not announcing it yet it was hard to write about my weight loss journey without talking about it.

So details. I am currently 12 weeks. My due date is August 17th (same day as my cute little niece's birthday).  I found out pretty early, the morning we were getting ready to have my in-laws over for a Christmas get together. There was a faint pink line, and my husband and I were trying to react without waking up our guests who had stayed overnight. So we kept silently mouthing what we were thinking to each other and smiling at the news. At the same time we were kind of like, "What did we get ourselves into?". Our little ones will only be 17 months apart - almost a year and a half. But although it was a bit scary to think about, we were so excited about the idea of our family growing.

We told our close family and friends early, because we knew we were going on a vacation with Chris' parents and we wouldn't be able to go the whole two weeks keeping it a secret from them - especially when I would have to turn down a glass of wine (or sangria in this trip's case). I still have not had an ultrasound - where I live they do a routine one at about 11-14 weeks and another one around 18-20 weeks. I have one scheduled next week.  Hopefully the results will come back without any worries, but if something does show up we will handle it.

So this change will have a major impact on my goals of getting healthy and losing weight. It really has been difficult for me to wrap my head around what defines healthy eating because my goal has always been to lose weight and now my goal is just to maintain. The first thing my doctor told me was to quit the meal plan I was following (because essentially it was a diet) and just eat normal healthy food. On the other hand, I still have the issue of my gall bladder - doc says that I will have to try to get through this pregnancy without too much gall bladder inflammation because they only do gall bladder surgery on pregnant women in cases of emergency or infection. So essentially I am still supposed to eat low fat, high fibre - which was exactly what I was doing before. So she said that in my case I may actually lose some weight during my pregnancy instead of gain weight depending on how much fat intake I limit myself to.

Over the holidays I have been trying so hard to find what foods cause me gall bladder pain so that I can avoid them, but it seems that no matter what I cut out or eat I was still getting pain. Then all of a sudden after New Years the pain kind of went away. And again, it seems no matter what I ate or didn't eat, it didn't seem to make a difference. So I started eating things like margarine, milk, olive oil, and lettuce again (all things I was told to avoid). I still tried to stay clear of desserts and the like and was able to avoid them all together until I went on vacay.  So now lately I have just been eating whatever I want because there does not seem to be anything upsetting my gall bladder at this time. But I do wonder if I am just playing "russian roulette" and the time will come when I have another attack. So I really should still try to eat low fat as much as possible.

And that brings me to the other factor affecting my eating right now. Major morning (all day) sickness. I had it bad when I was pregnant with Maya and it has been back this time with a vengeance.  I have been taking diclectin - a safe pill you can take for sickness during pregnancy and it has definitely taken the edge off and some days I actually feel normal. But it has affected my appetite and I have had a few food adversions. I have been staying clear of chicken, it grosses me out, and have switched from ground turkey to ground beef for the same reason. I have been wanting mostly bland comfort foods like pasta dishes and toast and cereal. And omigoodness I have been craving sweets!

And now that I am pregnant I have been secretly telling myself that I can get away with eating things that before I would not have touched. I am gonna have to watch out for that! But more on that later.

So, yeah, things are a changin' for me. I am currently trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of weight maintenance rather than weight loss. I am trying to motivate myself to have some new goals specific to my pregnancy, which I plan to talk about on here.  I am still going to kickboxing, I got the green light from my doctor to continue. I am sticking to the basic moves and watching my heart rate. I am so glad that I will still be exercising cause during my last pregnancy I quit kickboxing and felt like crap because of it.

In the next few weeks I will be changing some of the stuff on this blog - updating things and deleting things - to keep up with the new changes and to reflect where I am in my journey right now.

This blog started out as posting daily reasons of motivation to no one in particular, mainly as a way for me to keep accountable and focused. It has since evolved into sharing about my life with others and saying what's on my mind.

I hope that you will enjoy reading about my journey as I continue to write about my experiences! Good or bad, no matter whether I accomplish or fail, I will always try to be honest about what I share with you all!

For now I will leave you with a few cute pictures of Maya on our vacation!

An Announcement From Maya

Lots to talk about....

Sunny Florida

We're in sunny Florida for a two week vacay!  Don't even think about it burglars, we have someone staying at the house along with a very protective dog!  I won't be blogging much while we are here, but there is going to be big news when we get back.  Big news!

.....and then there will be lots to talk about! 

Retirement

TODAY'S MOTIVATION

The other day my hubby and I were talking about the future, you know what we want to do when retire.  Stuff like that. You always picture yourself living forever, being able to do whatever you want, even when you are older. But the thing is, if you don't take care of yourself, you may not be able to do all that you thought you would be able to. For example, I look at some people who have a hard time going up and down stairs, or people who can't take their dog for a walk, and they are only just starting their golden years!

I want to enjoy my abled body while I still can, and hopefully if I take care of myself I will be able to still do these things when I retire and until I am REALLY old. That's what motivates me today. 

RANT OR RAVE

Can I just say that I am particularly liking my kickboxing classes these days, and not just for the activity, but for the mental boost that I get when I go. This week I didn't get to make it as much as I wanted, but it's nice to know when I do go people are glad to see me there - and I'm happy to see them. 

RANDOMS

Ok, so lately since Maya has been crawling, she has been finding herself in all kinds of new poses and postures. She tries to climb on everything and pull herself up, but sometimes she gets stuck. You know how when you climb a tree and then can't get back down? It's kind of like that. She will get stuck and then she starts making this high pitched noise to let me know she needs some help. Sometimes it looks like she is doing yoga poses and is struggling to keep it going. A few times I had the camera nearby and took some pictures. Isn't she the funniest? 

Here she was trying to climb up on the couch but ended up leaning on her one hand and her knees with nowhere to go. She was quite distressed about this one. She didn't know how to get up, and didn't know how to get down!

Here she climbed up on a little step stool and was able to stand on her legs but was frozen after that. Her arms started shaking a bit as if to say, "Mom, if you don't get me out of this soon I am going to completely collapse on my face!". 

Here she got herself up from the floor to look out the window but didn't anticipate that her legs would slowly begin sliding farther and farther apart until she was doing the splits. She was quickly losing momentum when I rescued her. 

On the up side I think all this physical activity is helping her sleep better at night cause she is not getting up nearly as much as she used to!

Pictures

TODAY'S MOTIVATION

Ok so yesterday I googled myself. Come on, you have all done it. Don't say you haven't! I wanted to see what kinds of pictures of me were floating around in cyberspace. I do this once in while because I work in a profession where I don't want clients looking me up and seeing really personal things about where I live, etc. So basically I try to keep my facebook stuff private, avoid anything connecting me to my blog on the search engines - you know, stuff like that. I have no problem sharing my life online, but I try to make it impossible for people to track me down in real life. Anyway, I digress. When I googled myself a few pages came up - a wedding web site I was on, a photography blog, a place I volunteered once. When I was looking at the pictures it showed some of me when I was thinner than I am now, and some when I was a lot bigger than I am now. Then I realized that not only could clients try to find me, but people I went to high school with, or old university room mates, etc. 

It's crazy just how vulnerable you can become as soon as someone takes a pictures of you because you never know where that picture is going to end up. They could post it anywhere and if your name is attached to it, people will find it.  This whole thing is nothing new, but for someone who is trying hard to get back to a healthy weight it can be a real drag knowing that fat pictures of you are always going to be circulating around. It's not just in cyberspace....they exist in people's wedding photos, yearbooks, vacation scrapbooks - all the things that document your time with these people here on earth. Once a picture is taken of you it is imprinted forever. Why do I bring this up? Because it can be painful to look back on pictures of you when you were real fat because it reminds you that although you had some pretty good memories, they were tainted somewhat by the fact that you didn't look your best (and that you were not a hundred percent happy with yourself in the said photo).  But I'm still young. One day hopefully I will look back at this time and feel like I have lived so much since this time, and that this was only a small part of my journey. It would be nice when I'm 50 years old to look back at pictures of me now and not cringe. Pictures play a big role in things that motivate me because they keep me accountable. Know what I mean?

RANT OR RAVE

This time of year always kind of sucks for me food-wise because there starts to be slim pickins' in the produce section and there isn't really much local produce available. This is when I tend to gravitate to comfort foods like bread, pasta, and the like. I cannot stress enough how much I HATE winter. And where I live, it isn't really even that cold compared to other places. But we still get snow and freezing temperatures and bare trees and all that. I can't wait to hit up Florida for vacay in less than two weeks! On that note, I will be shopping for my new bathing suit this week!

RANDOMS

So we decided to invest in solar panels which we are in the process of installing in our yard. What we thought would only take a few days is stretching out to take a lot longer, but isn't that always the way? I took some pictures of the beginning stages. I'd have to say, although I am excited about getting involved in a green project, I am very sad that the view out my back window is going to be tainted by this structure. It's gonna be over 30 ft long!  I'll post pics when it is finished!

My Kid

TODAY'S MOTIVATION

I don't want to pass on bad habits to my daughter. I don't want her to grow up being confused about what healthy living is. I don't want her to have to worry about how to be healthy when she is older because I am going to teach her good habits from day one.  I also want her to know what real food looks and tastes like. I don't want her to go over to a friend's house for dinner and wonder what they are eating because she is only used to processed cheese slices and chicken fingers, like some kids these days. But most importantly, I want her to feel good and always do her best and that starts with eating healthy. I am going to try my best to instil this into my daughter and it starts with me living this example every day. 

RANT OR RAVE

Someone sent me the link to this blog post the other day.  I liked it and thought I would share 'cause when it comes down to it, I have my beliefs of how to raise my child (as mentioned above) - but I'm not gonna give you grief for how you raise yours. My only rule is don't abuse your child. Other than that, do whatever you want - I'll try not to hate!

RANDOMS

Guess who finally learned to crawl? I'm in trouble now. Watch out Gunther!

Progress

TODAY'S MOTIVATION

Ok I promise pretty soon I will start doing some more meaningful posts, but in the mean time this is what has motivated me today. I was going through my closet to see if there are any clothes that still fit me for my trip to Florida coming up in a few weeks. You remember when I went through my closet and got rid of old clothes? Well there are some more I have to give away, cause I found a bunch of stuff that used to be real tight on me and now is falling off of me. Sometimes you don't realize how far you have come until things like that happen. So that is my motivation today... being able to recognize that things do change - when you put it into action, it will happen.

Also I'm going to be making some changes on this blog soon, mostly just updating it and changing some of the pages so stay tuned for that!

RANT OR RAVE

Well the past week everyone at my house has been sick and honestly I just haven't had any motivation to really do anything. I was also not getting any sleep between Maya teething again and me not feeling well, so during the day I have been a bit of a zombie. But that all changed last night. I went to bed at 8pm while Chris put Maya down. She only got up once at 12am in which Chris offered to get up with her but I needed to get rid of some milk (still breastfeeding) and quickly fed her and went back down until 7:30am this morning! I got over ten hours of sleep in total! Holy cow I am a new woman this morning! You have heard me complain about sleep on here many times before, but it's always nice to brag about the times I do get to sleep. Also, this reminded me of a video that someone recently posted on facebook. So many things on it I could directly relate to, especially the one about millions of people enduring sleep deprivation. Anyway, take a look for yourself:

I seriously want to share this video with anyone about to have their first child or anyone who has just had their first child. While I was watching, it seemed like each one was a direct quote from friends and coworkers who had shared their experiences with me about what to expect with motherhood.  It was like, "Hey that is just like what so and so told me!". Anyway, I thought it had a lot of universal messages and I know all the Mom's out there will relate to this one.  

RANDOMS

So Maya has finally figured out that if she drops food on the floor Gunther will automatically eat it. She has been watching him sit underneath her chair since she started solids, eating her discards - but it wasn't until recently that she realized that she was the sole person responsible for feeding him in this manner. So yesterday she just started taking all of her food and just throwing in on the floor to watch Gunther eat it. This new revelation was funny so I took a few pictures.