My milkshake brings all the fat to my thighs ...

Darn right. Makes me wanna cry ...

If you have no idea what the heck I'm sing/typing about, you are SOOOO lucky. Also, don't Google that song unless you want a lot of pics of full frontal nudity ... O.o

I have nine million half-finished projects to share with you, but nothing actually completed. So, let's talk about weight. Hooray. Our favorite subject, right? Here's my personal inflation/deflation story (for reference, I am five foot three).



And be forewarned, I am NOT the most photogenic human being on the planet. Apes throwing their own feces photograph better than I do. Gisele Bundchen in a fat suit photographs better than I do. Heck, a bowl of rotting fruit photographs better than I do.

It's why I prefer to be BEHIND the camera :-)

2006 - I was 118 pounds when I met Grover in December. I can't find a picture of this skinny time ...

2007 - I realized Grover was ridiculously obnoxious, occasionally annoying, and my soul mate.

We look SOOOO young!

2008 - We got engaged in July. I had been eating like my three younger teenage brothers when BAM! Suddenly I could no longer shovel in mountains of mashed potatoes with no consequences.  I think I was around 127 here.

2009 - I started exercising. When I got married in July, I was 125 pounds.

2010 - After a ridiculously stressful first year of marriage living in a tumbledown shack (okay, it wasn't a shack. But it WAS tumbling down), a miscarriage, and miscellaneous other yuckiness, I weighed myself one day and realized I had gained 20 pounds. I was all, WHAT?!? What do you mean it wasn't just my old dryer shrinking all my jeans?!? NOOOOOO. Seriously, peeps. I had no idea. I don't know where I thought all that chocolate cake was going, but I definitely didn't think it would end up attached to me in various unflattering places (i.e. not the boobs. WHY DOES IT NEVER GO TO THE BOOBS?!?). This is the only picture I can find from that year:

Thank God you can't see the bottom half : P

Late 2010 - I was officially a human incubator! Yay! And 145 pounds at my first doctor's appointment ... not so yay.

14 weeks preggers and feelin' sassy

2011 - I gained 26 pounds while pregnant with T and was 171 right before delivery (groooannn). Here I am about a month before T was born.

Soooo done being pregnant.

And here we are in late July of 2011.

You thought I was kidding about not being photogenic, didn't you?
Just focus on the cute baby and attractive husband ...

Through a combination of nursing, starving myself and exercising every.single.day, I was back to 124 when T was about 8 months old. It was fabulous. All my old clothes fit. I felt great. People were even telling me I was skinny again. I decided I was happy and quit "dieting".

October 2011

2012 - Karma happened. The day after posting my last accountability update, I took a pregnancy test. We all know how that turned out. :-)

7-ish months pregnant

We also moved to a new town. Due to the stress of moving/changing jobs/losing insurance (never a fun thing when you're pregnant) and taking care of a barely one-year-old T, I used food as medicine. I subsequently gained 46 pounds and ended up at exactly 171 pounds before delivery AGAIN. Crazy, right? My midwife informed me part of it was having babies so close together. And maybe that's just how my body rolls when I'm pregnant. You know how people say, "You're not fat. You're pregnant." Yeah, well, my response is always, "I'm fat AND pregnant!" And then I burst into hormone-fueled tears. And then I eat nine cookies. It's a vicious cycle.

Here I am the day G was born. I was in labor, in
case you couldn't tell by my
stupefied grimace.

Anyway, I had baby G and ended up at 153 pounds four weeks after delivery and immediately started Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30 (NOT recommended). It did nothing. I couldn't cut calories because I found that if I went under 1500 for more than 2 days, my milk supply bottomed out. So I had to eat and I had to exercise. The weight was just gonna have to come off on it's own.

About a month after having G.
Also, T's face = priceless. 

Over the past five months, I've been sorta counting my calories (using MyFitnessPal) and doing a variety of exercises. It's working! I'm currently sitting at 129 pounds (with all my clothes off first thing in the morning before eating anything after I've gone to the restroom and nursed ... ).

Look! Collar bones!

My pants still won't button. I'm trying not to worry. Trying not to obsess. Trying not to be crazy about something that doesn't really matter. It's just a number on a very finicky possibly demon-possessed scale. I'm  proud of my accomplishments and I'm going to celebrate them. Maybe I'm just one of those people who needs to gain 50 pounds during pregnancy (prooooobably not, but it is a GREAT excuse to pound eleven consecutive milkshakes).

If you're at some point on a weight loss (or weight maintenance) journey, I'd love to chat with you, offer encouragement, and/or yell at you in a nice and totally non-confrontational way :)

Nine pounds to go, peeps! Yay!