Deflabbify

Weighty matters

Somebody made a comment on a pregnancy/motherhood message board that I read today that really resonated with me:

I don’t so much trust my body, though. It’s hard to be fat and pregnant and not feel that the other shoe is bound to drop at some point.

The mother in question was talking about the prospect of experiencing complications, and the possibility of having to be induced before her due date. To be honest, it’s an attitude that I’ve been wrestling with since I found out I was pregnant back in November.

Over the last year, I’ve been working intermittently (when not too blown off course by school) on trying to change my eating and moving habits to get into better health. Unfortunately, I happened to get pregnant more towards the beginning of that process than the end, and the fact that I wasn’t feeling great at the beginning of my pregnancy really took a toll on my efforts to exercise. I mean, who feels like going to the gym when you’re gagging at everything and feeling so tired you want to die? Not this guy!

I remember going to my first appointment back in December with my midwife, and agonizing over the possibility that I was simply too heavy to be able to give birth “naturally”, that I’d be classified as high-risk and would have to transfer my care to an obstetrician. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when she told me that I was under the cutoff! But she did warn me of the risks of going through a pregnancy at a higher weight, like being predisposed to pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, possibly having a “harder labor” or a bigger baby, and other things like that. She let me know that they’d want me to steer towards the lower end of the weight gain spectrum throughout the pregnancy, trying not to gain much over 15lbs. Fifteen pounds! I always hear about women who gained ridiculous amounts like 60lbs or more, and I was going to have to do my best to barely gain any at all!

Honestly, if these were ideal circumstances, I would have worked my ass off and gotten down to a more healthy weight before ever becoming pregnant. Hindsight is 20/20, though, and I can only do what I can do.

33w3d

Me, at thirty-three weeks and three days

So, what am I doing to work through this?

  1. I’m (we’re) eating healthier. We’re already vegetarian, so that makes it a little easier, although we’re working on being more careful about the amount of carbs and empty caloried crap we’ve been putting in our mouths.
  2. We’re trying to take walks as often as possible. Walking is really good endurance prep for labor, so this is especially important. I’ve had some hip/pelvis pain that I’ve talked about before that’s limited my mobility a bit, but we at least take the time to walk to the Farmer’s Market downtown every Wednesday night, and try to do more when we can.
  3. Taking vitamins (hippie prenatals from our co-op, along with omega-3 fatty acid supplements, which are important for neurological health of the mom and baby, since we don’t get a lot in our diet without fish), listening to my body, and trying to get enough rest

So far, I’d say I’ve been pretty successful! Despite my doctors having concerns even within the last few years about me having borderline high blood pressure, I’ve been at normal and lower-than-normal BP levels throughout the pregnancy so far. I’ve stayed within a healthy range for weight gain, and in fact LOST a little bit of weight between my last two midwife appointments. Although I failed my 1-hour gestational diabetes screening test, I passed the 3-hour test with flying colors. I’ve stayed active, even through the hip pain. I just told Kevin the other day that we’ve walked downtown more in the time that I’ve been pregnant than during the entire three years we’d been in the house beforehand combined. That’s pretty great!

I’m keeping it posi, people. We’re on the homestretch.

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Detox: Day 3

I might as well update with the end of my detox, since I’ve finished it! Here’s what I ate:

  • Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, hash brown patty, coffee with almond milk, 1/2 banana (other half fell on the floor, sad face)
  • Lunch: NOTHING, too busy working, grar
  • Dinner: Over easy eggs, hash brown patty (I’m obsessed with these currently), sauteed onions, 1/2 avocado, glass of cranberry juice
  • Snack: Coconut milk ice cream

I even cheated a little at dinner, since I cooked my eggs and onions with a little bit of butter. Oh well. After this day, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to end my detox at 3 days, or go on for 5. I ended it at 3, and have eased back onto grains and dairy slowly. Happily, it’s taking less food to fill me up, even after only eating smaller amounts for such a small time period. I’m also trying to take the focus away from carby, cheesy crap when planning my meals, and I’m satisfied with less. I’d say the experiment was a success!

Today’s calorie count came in at 1,315 with a nice carb deficit of 44. Much better, even with the skipped lunch.

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Detox: Day 2

Detox Day 2: Lunch

Day 2 went a little something like this:
Breakfast: EGGS! And coffee with almond milk.
Lunch: Salad from home, as seen above, with romaine and spinach, salt, pepper, sunflower seeds, and craisins. This was actually a delicious combination, and I treated the craisins as I do the marshmallows when I’m eating a bowl of Lucky Charms (or, at least, how I used to, gelatin blah blah blah): I spaced them out so that I’d have a little bit of sweet/tart craisin with each bite of salty, savory salad. Yum.
Snack: More coconut milk ice cream from yesterday, as a nice treat after work
Dinner: Masala! I went to dish with my friend Heather about nursing (school+work), and I got pakora and vegan coconut curry. I cut up the pakora into smaller pieces, and then drizzled the curry over the top, using it as a sub for the rice that I usually use as a filler.

I did a little bit of research before going to Masala, and found that pakora are breaded in gram flour, which is actually made from ground chickpeas. Not a grain! WOO! So, that’ll be good for future reference, when I’m trying to take it easy on grains, especially if I end up hitting Masala more than once in a week (not so unlikely).

I was still feeling irrationally angry at everything today, which isn’t a nice feeling, especially when I can rationally look at myself and wonder WTF is wrong with me that I’m feeling that way. I hope it gets better tomorrow.

The calorie count for today came in at approximately 1,171, which is still too low, but getting better.

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Detox: Day 1

Dreamy Coconut

I needed this at the end of the day

So yeah, I started my detox today, after not planning for it WHATSOEVER, OMG. Guess what! There’s dairy/eggs/grains in everything! Here’s what I ate, figuring it out on the fly:

  • Breakfast: Mixed fresh fruit cup, banana, coffee with soymilk
  • Lunch: Big-assed salad, with romaine lettuce and spinach, fresh mushrooms, peas, carrots, sunflower seeds
  • Snack: Scoop of peanut butter
  • Dinner: Grilled squash and onions
  • Snack: A few spoonfuls of this guy over here to the left, nrom

Today was a bad day. Thankfully, I didn’t try to go without my coffee, too. Last week, I ate Cheerios and organic 2% milk every day for breakfast, and it held me over nicely until around 1pm every day (I’m one of those crazy people who likes eating a very late lunch). Today, I was really starting to get hungry at around 11:30, although I was able to make it until 12:30 to eat. I’m guessing a part of it was the lack of fat/protein at breakfast, which is making me rethink the vegan part, since I really love eating eggs in the morning. Maybe I’ll just cut dairy? Ugh. Don’t want to fail at this thing after one day, but don’t know if it’s sustainable.

Do you see this disorganized, scattered thinking? Yeah, this was basically me all day. It’s hard to tell if it’s withdrawal from grains and dairy, or if it’s just low blood sugar. I’d better get on planning for tomorrow.

Edit: After tallying it up, my calorie count for the day was only 1,015. Yeahhhh, that’s not enough. My protein was at about half of what it should have been, which is not good, either. No wonder I feel like crap.

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Cleanse Me

So, I’m thinking of doing a cleanse. I know. I KNOW. I know what you’re going to say, just hear me out.

Basically, I need a mile-marker. I’ve stop-started this whole “change my eating habits” thing so many times, the lines between healthy eating and disordered overeating have blurred. I need some delineation. I need to get out of the “okay, starting tomorrow! okay, maybe not. starting tomorrow! oops, ruined it. starting tomorrow!” rut. I need to flip the script on this shit.

At first, I was honestly considering doing a juice fast/cleanse. I felt like, even though it isn’t the healthiest method, it would give my metabolism a goose and just get me in the mindset of making big changes. I’ve gotten suggestions for Clean Program (21 days, whoa!) and the Blueprint Cleanse, which is customizable to however many days you want to run it. Two things I noticed about these:

  1. These companies had 8923748932 different reasons why you should do their cleanses, to detox your body and get rid of impurities, but didn’t have a lot of scientific explanations for their claims, and
  2. HOLY BUCKETS, DID YOU SEE THE PRICES? Oh mah gah, prepackaged cleanses are expensive!

Then I peeked at the “Master Cleanse“, that one where you drink juice with cayenne pepper in it. No prepackaged crap, but honestly? I don’t like how they’re pandering to the “I wanna lose 20lbs in 3 days!” crowd. Also, I really just don’t like lemonade that much. Or at all. Blech.

So what’s a poor little vegetarian girl supposed to do to detox from a terrible diet? Why, GO VEGAN OF COURSE! Actually, I’m going to come at the detox from two angles: vegan and grain-free. I’m one of those terrible vegetarians who, instead of replacing the meat in their diets with wholesome vegetables and fruits, instead started loading up on carbs. I already know that I’ve got an unhealthy relationship with white flour and simple sugars, so I think we need some time apart, to think things over. Veganism will just be a little bonus.

I’ve already got pretty good practice at label-reading because of my vegetarianism, so this’ll just take it a little step further. And I couldn’t choose a better time to fill my diet with fresh veggies and fruits. I’ll do it for a week, and see where I want to go from there. I’m probably going to be pretty angry for the first few days. WHEEE!

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32 Before Thirty-Two

So far in my life, I’ve made two attempts at broad “life lists”: the 101 things in 1001 days list, and the 30 Before 30 list that I put here. Both had pretty sad, pathetic results. So I should obviously try again, RIGHT? Right. I’m even going to recycle some from the last list. Here we go:

  1. Become licensed as a Registered Nurse.
  2. Watch Arrested Development, starting back at the beginning, all the way through.
  3. Pay off my credit card
  4. Create monthly music mixes without missing a month.
  5. Mail goodies to 5 friends that live far away.
  6. Scan all of our photos and put them up online.
  7. Open a Roth IRA.
  8. Take a yoga class.
  9. Learn how to put makeup on my face.
  10. Run in a 5k.
  11. Participate in NO PANTS NOVEMBER.
  12. Make or create at least 50% of the gifts I give for the holidays.
  13. Get my first pedicure
  14. Go to a Nursing Conference, preferably about midwifery.
  15. Get rid of our Expedit bookshelf and build a FAUXDENZA!
  16. Complete the 100 Pushups Challenge
  17. Go to the Madison (Wisconsin) Farmer’s Market.
  18. Bake a rainbow cake.
  19. Learn a song on my ukulele
  20. Cull my collection of books to those I actually love and want to own.
  21. Make some infused booze.
  22. Watch the Godfather trilogy.
  23. Design our wedding invitations.
  24. Knit myself some slippers. I keep making them for others, and never for myself!
  25. Hang all of the art/photography I’ve been hoarding away in storage.
  26. Complete a juice or smoothie fast.
  27. Read 10 Banned Books.
  28. Make a braided rug.
  29. Ride in RAGBRAI (I’ll give myself a special allowance for this one, since it comes after my birthday)
  30. Make a batch of soap.
  31. Scooter camping at Palisades

I’m starting this now, with less than a year to go. That gives me 301 days, to be exact, which is plenty of time. I only have to accomplish 0.103 items on my list per day in order to be done in time. Totally doable.

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Food Angst

I had a mini angst-fest on Twitter yesterday about my relationship with food, which I think is something I really need to work out for myself. Here are some of the things I wrote:

I should be able to drop weight simply by controlling my diet/eating habits, right? It should be easy. It seems logically easy. It never is.

I make these pie-in-the-sky plans to sit down and plan out a balanced diet, menu-plan, food pyramid, etc. It’s too complicated.

I know I need to go simpler. I feel like school is maybe draining my willpower? Like, I only have so much, and the well is dry.

Then I balk and say to myself, “I enjoy tasty food! Why do I need to deprive myself of that?!” So there’s some sulking, too.

Maybe I’m tainted by my need for instant-gratification? Scale doesn’t move the next day after “being good”, so I say fuck it.

Using school as an excuse is really convenient, but let’s face it: I haven’t been in school forever. In fact, there have been long periods of my life in between school stints where I have still been heavy. So, what’s the deal? Maybe I need to read some self-help books on overeating? I don’t want to sit through an encyclopedia of schmaltz. Do I need to try attending some Overeater’s Anonymous meetings? I don’t think I can deal with the religious aspect and giving up my will to a higher power that goes along with that.

What is it that I need?

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Revampify Me

(wait, can I be revamped if I was never a vamp in the first place?)

So, I think that I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m tired of being a schlub.

When I was a kid and my mother was in control of my wardrobe, I was a fashion plate. I always wore the cutest outfits, had new clothes and shoes, the whole nine yards. Once I hit high school, I don’t know if it was teenaged rebellion or simply my internal (lazy) sense of self shining through, but my interest in being a presentable human specimen kind of fell by the wayside. I wore plain clothes, lots of band t-shirts, skate shoes, and concentrated my time and efforts on things that mattered to me, like reading, or listening to music, or watching movies, or frittering my time away on the burgeoning internet. I thought it was cool, that I cared so little about being a “girly girl” and instead focused my time and energy on shit that mattered. I didn’t wear makeup, I didn’t care about what clothes I was wearing, I didn’t do more than comb my hair at least once every few days. That was ME.

Well, guess what! Now I’m 31, and I still don’t know how to wear makeup. I wear the same (comfortable) shoes everyday. I cycle through the same (ill-fitting) pairs of pants and about 10 alternating (sack-like) tops for work. I take a shower every morning, comb my bangs to the side, get dressed, and leave the house. I am a schlub. I think I would like to stop being a schlub.

What does this mean?

  • I’d like to learn how to apply makeup to my face in a flattering way
  • I’d like to figure out clothing styles that are flattering to my body shape, and BUY SOME
  • Learn what to do with my hair (hopefully not too time-consuming)
  • Keep up a workout routine and make good food choices so that I can get to a more comfortable body weight

These changes are really going to come at a good time, when I’m moving into a career that involves wearing a uniform (scrubs) to work, so I’ll have even more motivation to look cute in my off-hours.

VIVA LA REVAMP!

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Tandem ride

MHM_1110906103101

We went on a 2-hour bike ride yesterday, with our vintage Schwinn tandem bike. My, what a difference some endurance and increased strength makes! We got the bike a few months ago, and had only really taken it for a swing around the neighborhood once, and I was grossly sweaty, fatigued, and overworked when we were done. After a few months of increasing my stamina on stationary bikes, I was able to make an incredible loop that probably logged at least 5 miles on the thing. Five miles doesn’t seem like a lot, but on a tandem, and with hills thrown in there? That’s pretty great. It gave me a good chance to feel the lovely autumn air and see some nice scenery, as well.

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Running?

I went to the gym last night at 10pm, spent 30 minutes on a recumbent stationary bike and rode about 5.3 miles, and then jumped on a treadmill and walked @3.0mph for 20 minutes, with five intermittent intervals of jogging @4.5mph. This was my second time jogging on the treadmill this week (or, uh, ever I guess), and I could already tell that my refractory period between jogs was shrinking. My body is adapting! It’s kind of amazeballs the way that works.

Also, my first time jogging, when I was done, my head felt full and tight, as though my brain wanted to burst out of my skull. This feeling continued for the rest of the night, and I’m pretty sure it meant that my intracranial pressure was high. This is also the feeling I get when my blood pressure is high, although not in such a sustained pattern as that night. So, I think my BP was probably high for the rest of the night following that first run. Not so last night! The body, and its ability to adapt, are miraculous.

Don’t ask me why I waited until so late to work out. I need to cut that shit out. I feel great today, though! Not really any soreness, not too tired, not too hungry.

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