Starting My Postpartum Weight Loss Journey
For as long as I can remember, excessive weight gain and subsequent weight loss have been dominant themes in my life. As far back as 7 years old, I was chubby enough for my parents to want to restrict my food intake, and I could never run quite as fast as the other little kids. I wouldn’t say that I was bullied - I don’t remember kids being mean to me and I always had plenty of friends but I sensed that I was slightly different from them. While I weighed about 80 lbs, some of my friends were only around 60-70 lbs. A few years later, I weighed in at 120 lbs at age 10 while most of the other kids were nowhere near 100.
It was another two years later, at age 12 (at that point, I was 160 lbs) that I decided to make a change. Over the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I lost roughly 20-30 lbs just by eating less. As a pre-teen, I did not yet have the wherewithal to count calories, so I just had to eyeball everything and it worked for me. Once a shy, chubby girl, I had blossomed into a much more friendly and outgoing teenager after I had lost that weight. So began my life as a yo-yo dieter.
The weight fluctuations would continue into adulthood. At 18 years old, I was 150 lbs (height 5’4), and I considered myself to be reasonably slender. I accepted that I would probably never get to 120-130 lbs like I should be for my height, so I didn’t bother trying. Over time, I stopped restricting my food intake and ate whatever I felt like at the moment. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my caloric intake must have been tremendous because I gradually gained weight over the next 8 years and was a whopping 250 lbs by the time I was 26 years old (my highest weight to date). I am not a person who associates my self-worth with my weight, so I was still confident in who I was as a person but at the same time, I felt ashamed that I had let myself get big enough to start having some physical limitations. No 26-year-old should get winded after walking up 1 flight of stairs.
In October/November 2018, I decided to take control of my health and started the ketogenic diet, which was (and still is) a very popular diet. For those who are not familiar, the premise of the ketogenic diet is that you have to follow a high-fat, moderate-protein, and low-carb diet. I wasn’t a huge fan of vegetables at the time, most of my diet consisted of meat, cheese, and eggs. It wasn’t the healthiest but it worked! I lost about 10-12 lbs within 2 months and then got bored with the diet.
Instead of giving up, however, I moved on to other fad diets - Weight Watchers, Whole30, etc. and all of them caused me to lose a little more weight. About a year into my weight loss journey, I settled on just counting calories and allowing any type of food. I continued counting calories religiously for about 2 years and got back down to 170 lbs. I was much happier and healthier - for the first time in my time, I felt like I had “normal” eating habits and I was taking long walks outside every single day.
According to my BMI, I was still borderline obese but I ignored that. In hindsight, I suspect that my eating habits at the time, while significantly better, still resembled disordered eating. I never got to the point where eating less came naturally to me. I would set daily/weekly calorie goals for myself and I would fill up those calories regardless of whether I was hungry or not. Although my weight had gone down significantly, I didn’t feel fully in control. It just felt like I was fighting with myself every day to eat less.
I maintained 170-180 lbs for a little bit over a year until I found out I was pregnant in April 2022. On a positive note, that allowed me to let go of my regimented eating habits. However, many poor eating habits that I had unlearned began to resurface - like eating McDonald’s almost every day, often multiple times a day. My mentality was that if I was going to have to gain weight during pregnancy anyway, why should I even try to keep it under control? I rejoiced in uninhibited eating and I gained about 60 lbs back by the time my daughter was born. By then, I was only 10 lbs under my highest weight and I felt huge. My pre-pregnancy jeans were a long way away from fitting me again and I was now having to buy size 18 jeans - the same size I had worn when I was 250 lbs.
However, since I had a newborn and was nursing, I didn’t do anything about it. I was afraid that if I restricted calories, then my milk production would go down. And I suspect that since I was still taking in so many calories during that time, that probably contributed to my high milk production. There was no way I was going to do anything to change that. So, my weight has remained high for over a year.
As my weight remained stagnant, my body gradually started to deteriorate in some ways. It became increasingly difficult to perform daily activities, such as cleaning, walking upstairs, giving Bebe a bath, etc. I also had (and still have) bothersome neck, back, shoulder, and knee pain. For someone in their early 30s, these symptoms are not normal and I knew I had to start losing again soon. It’s taken me over a year, but I recently revived my weight loss journey for the first time since giving birth. I am now done with nursing so I have absolutely no excuse anymore.
An avid fan of the TV show, My 600-Lb. Life, I decided to start following Dr. Younan Nowzaradan’s diet. He tells his bariatric patients to follow a strict 1,200-calorie-a-day diet, which needs to be high-protein and low-carb. He also dictates that only 2-3 meals should be eaten per day and no snacks. For most of the time that I’ve been watching the show, I felt that this diet was too restrictive for me and that I shouldn’t try it because it was tailored for super morbidly obese patients. However, I decided to try it for at least 1 month to see what happens.
As I’m writing this, I am on day 11 of my new diet and have lost about 9 lbs. I have not exceeded 1,200 calories once and I feel mentally strong. I feel very confident that I’m going to meet my goal of 140 lbs by 2025. Surprisingly, I do not feel excessively hungry and my cravings have been minimal. This is something I did not experience when I dropped down from 250 lbs to 170 lbs. Back then, I was constantly fighting with myself to stay within my calorie limits but lately, I haven’t been thinking about food very much at all. I am also working hard to eliminate little habits that signal disordered eating even if they don’t directly contribute to weight gain, such as eating every crumb on my plate, and feeling like I have to max out my daily calorie goal when I no longer feel hungry.
I have a long way to go so I will likely write subsequent articles about how I’m doing. Hopefully, I can encourage some struggling moms out there who might be in a similar situation.
XOXO, Alexis