Losing weight, Gaining weight. Eating wrong, eating right.

I’m writing this munching on a pear & sipping on a bottle of water having just completed a 30min pregnancy workout I found on youtube. Oh yes, I’m feeling proud of myself for attempting to be a fit mama, but unfortunately, 22 weeks in, I’m only just beginning my little fitness regime. *hides face in shame*. A few years ago, I fell in love with fitness, eating right, gyming & one thing I loved most about it was being able to see results, seriously. When I look back over my progress, I’m still so proud of what I achieved and how much I learnt too! So upon finding out I was pregnant, I made a bit of a silly mistake in thinking, “well, I’m going to get a big belly anyway so I don’t really need to be as strict as before” (I didn’t really eat pasta, rice, bread etc). I don’t want this to turn into too much of a pregnancy post, but what I will say was that I quickly gained weight. I’d love to blame this on the baby ha, and lots of people have tried to put me as ease saying, “oh but you’re pregnant its fine”, but trust me, all those takeaways, cakes, chocolates, sweets, etc are definitely the cause for my quick weight gain, not the tiny baby forming in my belly! 

It made me think a lot, how was it so easy to be healthy before? And I guess it was a lot to do with my motives, yes, partly I wanted to be at a healthier weight, but mostly I just wanted to look banging on my honeymoon. Who doesn’t? Now I’m faced with a challenge knowing any effort I put into working out and eating healthy is going to remain under the surface, literally. It’s almost iroinc that at a time when a healthy lifestyle is more crucial than ever before, the results won’t pysically be seen before, well, my belly is huge and my hips are expanding like there’s no tomorrow! So I’ve decided to seriously fix up (also I have a test for gestational diabetes, and I’m scared I may have a horrific wake up call!) & get strict on myself for the remaining 18 weeks, that’s really not long at all! Hopefully it’ll help me bounce back into shape once baby is out, who knows?!

Here’s the things I’m going to change, I’m not going t-total on anything (everything in moderation and all that!) but here’s some pointers for anyone who’d like to begin to make healthier choices:

– No added sugar. In tea, or on cereal, or in anything which I feel needs sugar.

–No sweets, chocolates, cakes. I don’t mean none, I just mean I’m going to try and stop treating them like my 5 a day. Believe me, I could chomp through a whole triple chocolate cake for breakfast. So trying to stick to one chocolate, or one reasonable sized cake slice for now.

-Vegetables with everything. Its weird not having vegetables instead of rice/pasta etc, I was so used to doing that I totally abandoned them when I reintroduced these starch filled goodies! Now I ensure there’s a side of veg with every meal, not because I’m calorie counting, but because well, they’re good for you, vitamin filled etc.

-Exercise 5 times a week. This sounds intense but its really not. For example today’s exercise was a 30 min youtube video (for pregnant ladies so it wasn’t too intense) & it’s beautiful outside so I’m going to take a stroll to meet my hubs from work. I might even wear trainers and slip in a cheeky jog here and there, but it will most likely be a walk. I’ll even play a game or two of Just Dance on the ps4, that tires me out and doesn’t even feel like exercise!

– Takeaway on special occasions only. That is, birthdays, celebrations, the occasional date night, but rare. It’s so easy to fall into the Dominos trap when you’re tired and can’t be bothered to cook, but I’m taking a stand against it.

-Drink more. That is, water. I’ve somehow managed to cut juice & fizzy drinks from my life for now, I never even used to drink either before getting married, I blame my husband seriously! But now I’m back on the good stuff, with a bottle permanently at my side & making sure I sip away at all times.

That’s it for now really, just trying to make these little lifestyle changes rather than going crazy on myself, and to be honest it feels really good to be doing it to simply be healthy rather than to lose weight or look a certain way. My mums told me to throw my scales out because the numbers are terrifying me, lets hope my change in diet slows down my weight gain and I continue throughout pregnant fit and healthy.

J x