{"id":618,"date":"2014-02-05T05:17:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T05:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eaumaison.wordpress.com\/2014\/02\/05\/a-fresh-start"},"modified":"2014-02-05T05:17:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T05:17:00","slug":"a-fresh-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/2014\/02\/05\/a-fresh-start\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fresh Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

January meant the start of a serious health turnabout.\u00a0 For various reasons (postpartum recovery, never-ending family sickness, and holidays) I put off losing the baby weight until the new year.\u00a0 I have a lot of work to do.\u00a0 Not only did I start the pregnancy 10 pounds heavier than my first one, I was 25 pounds heavier at Sam’s birth than I was at Jack’s.\u00a0 So, yeah.\u00a0 Need to lose the weight.<\/p>\n

I’m doing it!\u00a0 I lost 15 pounds last month.\u00a0 I have 12 pounds to go to meet my goal.\u00a0 (My goal is reasonable, and hopefully I can reach it and then lose more.)\u00a0 I expect it will take a lot longer to lose that last 12.\u00a0 There was a lot of holiday bloat and pregnancy fluff that comes off fast.<\/p>\n

My method is simple:
Eat whole foods.\u00a0 No processed.\u00a0 Exercise every day.<\/p>\n

Ok, I have more rules than that.\u00a0 But in general, I wanted to make an easy plan that I can follow long term.\u00a0 I’ve counted calories and carbs.\u00a0 It works for a while.\u00a0 Then I burn out and fall off the wagon.\u00a0 I also feel restricted and crave junk, often searching for fancy products that meet my limitations in weird ways (Atkins products, for example). <\/p>\n

My eating rules:
I can eat as many whole fruits and vegetables I want.
No processed foods.
No refined flour or sugar.
No soda, even diet.
If I eat starches they need to be whole grains (whole wheat, oats, quinoa, etc)
Stevia and xylitol are allowed.
I can eat two chocolate servings a day.
Weekends are rule relaxed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In practice what this means is I make most meals from scratch and I can eat as much as I want so long as I follow the rules.\u00a0 Potatoes in a slow cooker roast are fine.\u00a0 Cocoa, banana, greek yogurt smoothies with stevia are good.\u00a0 Steel cut oats for breakfast with cinnamon and maple syrup, or eggs and fruit:
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We can eat out, but the restaurant needs to be fairly wholesome.\u00a0 ModMarket Fresh, Panera Bread, Subway, Boston Market, Jimmy Johns, Chipotle.\u00a0 These are places where you can look up all the ingredients and judge whether they use too many processed foods, too much salt, and other junk.\u00a0 It’s nice to have this option on the weekend, so I don’t feel like I’m starving myself indefinitely.<\/p>\n

I also let myself have a diet soda, preferably caffeine free, on the weekend.\u00a0 I have a serious diet coke addiction.\u00a0 It’s something I really enjoy and I was probably drinking 2-4 cans\/fountain refills daily.\u00a0 I went cold turkey for three weeks and now have a couple on Saturdays.\u00a0 Much better.<\/p>\n

I also don’t eat the chocolate I’m allowed.\u00a0 But sometimes I do, and I eat more than I should.\u00a0 Tonight I made pumpkin oat cookies (low sugar, dark chocolate chunks, no fat) and I ate more than I should have.\u00a0 But I try not to let it ruin the day.\u00a0 There’s no calorie count, so I don’t feel like I failed my record and I need to make it up the next day.\u00a0 Flexible and low tracking effort – that was my goal and it seems to be working.\u00a0 The weekend cheat days sort of reinvigorate me to start afresh each Monday, sticking to the plan better.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I exercise every day but Sunday.\u00a0 At least 5 minutes, and I aim for 10-30.\u00a0 I do this right after Sam wakes up and I feed him.\u00a0 This is how I get it done:<\/p>\n

\"Untitled\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He’s gotten better at using his saucer.\u00a0 At first he didn’t like to hold himself up in it and he felt alone.\u00a0 Now he turns himself and plays with all the toys for the whole time I work-out.\u00a0 I do sit-ups, squats, lunges, planks, etc in my bedroom.\u00a0 Or I run on the elliptical that Amanda loaned me.\u00a0 Or if I have musical rehearsal, that counts for my daily exercise.\u00a0 I always spend a good amount of time stretching too.\u00a0 I also have very active boys.\u00a0 I rarely spend time sitting at home except during nap.\u00a0 I’m constantly going up and down the stairs, picking up after them, cleaning, cooking, and squatting and lifting Sam.\u00a0 All of that, plus breastfeeding, is burning off more calories too.<\/p>\n

I hope in a couple months I can report that I’m closer to my goal and still living the healthy, active life!<\/p>\n

Update: forgot to mention one of my motivators.\u00a0 For every 5 pounds I lose, verified by three consecutive days of weighing, I get to buy new clothes!\u00a0 My wardrobe is horribly out of date, too young for me, slubby, and almost nothing fits.\u00a0 So this is a great reward for myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January meant the start of a serious health turnabout.\u00a0 For various reasons (postpartum recovery, never-ending family sickness, and holidays) I put off losing the baby weight until the new year.\u00a0 I have a lot of work to do.\u00a0 Not only did I start the pregnancy 10 pounds heavier than my first one, I was 25 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}