Fitness Friday

This year Tim and I's lives changed again with the birth of our second baby girl Kaylee.

Forgiveness points for not posting to my blog in over a year??

Between working, still learning how to be a mom to a now super energetic toddler, transitioning into a new home and being pregnant,  you can say I fell off of the diet wagon… it was more like face planting into a swimming pool of Little Debbie cakes. Being healthy and feeling happy is very important to me. Its something I want to pass down to my girls. After I had Layla, I was pretty sedentary for a little while. I was afraid to get up and leave her for more than a couple minutes. I would sit for hours just rocking her or playing with her or watching her as she slept. After a while, she got older, I became less afraid, and reality struck… So you mean I can wear my maternity sweatpants for the rest of my life?!?! I will still working my way down to pre-pregnancy weight when the news of baby number 2 was delivered. The day before Kaylee way born, I was almost 200 lbs. Yes, you read that correctly, Dos Zero Zero. I gained about 60 lbs, almost double what I gained with my 1st pregnancy. Needless to say, I started working out walking it out the moment the epidural wore off and I could feel my legs again. Now I am not a doctor and I would never recommend anyone put themselves in harms way to hurry up and burn the baby fat but I did start with slow walks, usually holding the baby, and I increased the speed or distance when I felt like my body was ready. 

For mothers day, Tim purchased me a Fitbit Flex to help me on my baby weight journey. After reading the reviews I initially thought that I wasn't going to like it. People commented a lot on the motivation aspect of it and how it helped them to keep moving. I thought "my mirror is motivation and I am walking around all day. How easy is that?" After I started using it, I became obsessed. I could not sleep until I reached my 10,000 steps. I was not content unless I saw all green lines on my app screen for the day. I started using phrases like "Fitbit says…" in normal conversation. 

 A brief explanation of how it works: You wear the band all day and it tells you how many steps you've taken based on the synchronization of your arm movements with your steps. There is an app on your phone and on the computer that keeps you updated on how many steps you have taken that day (which is color coded based on how close you are to your goal for the day), how many miles you have walked, a guestimation of how many calories you have burned and how many minutes you were "active" aka swung your arm consistently which indicates you were exercising. It also has a record of your food and calories and can add additional calories lost for exercise (for example if you used a stationary bike, your Fitbit would not record you as exercising because your arms were not moving. You could manually enter in that exercise for the day in order to have a more accurate measure of your calories expended). It really gives you a better idea of what you are doing all day rather than just during your workout.

I really like the Fitbit and think it has helped me to get on track and lose weight. In just a couple days my baby girl will be 2 months (I can't wait to post her 2 month update) and I am happy to say that I have lost 41 lbs without breast feeding. I still have a bit more to lose but I am motivated and hope to have good news to share in the future.