Mary Jane is 22 months old. This morning I stepped on the scale and saw the same number I saw the day that I learned I was pregnant with her.
It's about time, hm.
About eight of the 21 extra pounds I still had after I gave birth to MJ (counting from eight weeks postpartum, by which time the extra water weight ought to have been shed) came off "on their own" over the first year, and then for a long time I was steady. I think upping the swimming to twice a week made a pretty big difference. Doing that made me a little more motivated to practice some portion control, which I've been meaning to do, since MJ's recently cut her nursing back to only 2-3 times a day. Some combination of the extra exercise and fewer calories is doing something; over the last six weeks or so I dropped 13 pounds.
(Nobody is allowed to make any comments about how it must be time to have another baby.)
Feels pretty good, but I think I need to go buy myself some new pants. I kind of want to wait a little bit, though, and see if any more weight comes off. I'm still 10 pounds shy of moving from BMI-overweight to BMI-normal.
Speaking of physical fitness. My husband Mark was a track and field guy in high school, has always been more or less pretty fit and never overweight, periodically would run or lift weights for exercise in college, tries to keep in shape so he can ski as much as he can in the winter, runs a 5k now and then, recently took up rock climbing and weight training for that too.
We were talking the other night about getting older -- he can feel it now some. He's 35 (I'm turning 34 this fall), and for him the muscle soreness takes longer to go away, the joints are a little stiffer, etc.
In a way, I have a sort of advantage over him. I was, erm, not a track and field person in high school. I was about as dumpy and sedentary as I could be. I was incompetent and frequently humiliated in gym class. My family made fun of me for being clumsy and awkward. At seventeen, I never rode a bike, I couldn't swim, I was much heavier than I am now, I couldn't really climb more than a couple flights of stairs without getting out of breath. All that lasted until well after I finished college. Since then, and especially since I went home to raise my kids, I've found plenty of physical activities I enjoy. And so as the years have gone by, I've pretty much gotten fitter and fitter, healthier and healthier. (Discounting fluctuations from my three pregnancies.) I feel better now than I did when I was seventeen. Every year I am setting new records. Getting older, for me, at least from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties, has been getting better.
Not that I want to endorse being dumpy and sedentary in high school. But it has been wonderful to discover I didn't have to stay that way.
Hey, sounds like it's about time to . . . oh, nevermind. ;)
Posted by: Kelly | 20 June 2008 at 08:42 PM
Good for you, I bet it is nice to see that number on the scale again. Good luck on that next ten pounds too - it sounds like you've got a good strategy for it.
I have a similar sort of hidden advantage - I was quite in shape in high school and all because I did a lot of long distance cycling, but I tailed off in college and gradually grew sedentary. Once I stopped riding my bike to class after I graduated, I got heavier and heavier, and when I got married I was at my heaviest yet. I managed to lose it all and got back to my high school shape after my first was born and I was able to do it again (and even better, really) after my second was born. Now I have the advantage of stepping on the scale at 1 week postpartum and finding that I already weigh less than I did when I got married! However, it does make for some wedding pictures I have no real interest in displaying... Ah, vanity.
Posted by: Amber | 21 June 2008 at 12:29 AM
Congrats! FWIW, I can sympathize with Mark - I don't exercise, except daily walks to the subway, but I do feel older.
On a humorous note, it's not always great being thin. For example, there's this line from an MSNBC story about how thin people can get diabetes (which I don't have) - the writer is describing visiting a friend after several years:
"Once 6'3'' and 215 pounds, he's now a cadaverous-looking 145."
Cadaverous looking? Hey, that hurts...
Posted by: Derek | 21 June 2008 at 05:10 AM
Congratulations!
Posted by: Margaret in Minnesota | 21 June 2008 at 09:02 AM
Commenting on a comment - Derek, remember when we went to the GAP Outlet in KY and you got those 30x36 pants? I still have and wear one of the shirts I got that day, but the jeans have long worn out.
Posted by: Christy P | 21 June 2008 at 05:01 PM
How could I forget that? Although I've starting wearing pants more loosely - 32x34 (unless I've gotten fatter and shorter). Happily, these aren't quite as hard to find or as greeted with derision.
Posted by: Derek | 23 June 2008 at 08:22 PM