While our Y was here I hit another small goal!  40 pounds gone since July.  If you want to get technical, I’ve actually lost 60 pounds since Emmie was born (okay more around 70).  Here’s some pictures to give you a visual!

So, I wanted to address a couple of myths that I’ve heard over the years.

1.  It’s easy to lose weight when you are chasing after small children all day.
Um, yeah.  Ya’ll saw that before picture right?!  Just because I have small children does not mean I am burning off the excess amount of calories and fat my body has stored.  Proper nutrition is so key in losing weight.  When I first started Weight Watchers, I had lots of points left over at the end of the day and would have to force myself to eat appropriate foods to get enough points (and calories) to end the day well.  I gradually learned that skipping a meal on a regular basis because I was tending to a baby was actually detrimental to losing weight (especially since I would fill up those hunger pains with junk food or sugar).  Losing weight and eating well takes planning and forethought and won’t just “happen” because I have a lot of kids.  I’ve also learned recently that as you age your metabolism slows down.  Another reason for the mummy tummy that has stuck around and expanded over the course of my toddler years.

2.  I would just wait until I was done having kids.  It’ll be easier then.
Nope.  Since we aren’t sure if we are done having kids and I waited until then…well, I would have been grotesquely obese.  Not a place I want to be or go to.  I have been carrying around the extra weight from seven pregnancies (I had gall bladder surgery a month after Zoe was born…that and no foods for three days got me down to my pre-pregnancy size really quickly).  Let’s just all think about that picture.  My ob gives a nine month grace period…he says, “It takes nine months to put that weight on.  Give yourself nine months to get it off.”  Unfortunately, for six post-babies, I believed the lie that I should just wait until I was done having kids.  So, I fully expected it to take me a year to get off all the excess weight that I have been carrying from each pregnancy.  I’m so ecstatic that it has only taken me six months to get down to the pre-pregnancy weight I was at with Josiah and Liam.  I need to be healthy to have healthy pregnancies and adding extra weight with each pregnancy is not the way to do that.

Now to lose the next fifteen to be at a wonderful healthy weight!