Restarting the journey.. yet again.

Well, I knew it was going to be a long road.  I knew I was going to have a lifetime of working out and watching what I eat in order to "maintain" a healthy body.  Unfortunately, I am the Queen of excuses and found myself no longer going to the gym or eating right when I became overwhelmed with work yet again.  Last summer my job required me to work 46 hours a week.  Now that might not seem like a huge ordeal since so many others out there work just as many, if not more, hours.  However, I was working with two separate groups of kids - 4th - 8th grade six hours a week doing an enrichment program and 40 hours working with pre-k children - going on trips and to the pool every week.  Some days I didn't even get a decent lunch break (if I got one at all).  I did a lot of ordering out with my coworkers, and I completely stopped all physical activity.  As summer started approaching, I had been gaining some of the weight back.  But by the end of the summer, I was so drained that I had given up completely.

By the time I found out I was pregnant on August 19th, I had discovered that I had worked myself all the way back up to 205 lbs.  At that point, my hopes of "eating right" during the pregnancy vanished.  I was so thankful that I was hungry at all during the pregnancy that I used it as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted.  And believe me when I tell you, I ate WHATEVER I wanted. 

In just a few short months I had gone from 174 lbs to 205 lbs.  I went from a size 10 jeans back to a size 18 jeans.  I felt myself gaining weight, but was still in complete denial.  In my eyes, I had still lost over 50 lbs.  It took me getting pregnant and really weighing myself to see that I had strayed so far from where I wanted to be that I allowed myself to gain back 41 pounds in just a matter of months.

During the pregnancy, I gained 23 lbs over the course of four months.  Like I said, I ate EVERYTHING and ANYTHING.  Thankfully, somewhere around the fifth month, my body decided to stop gaining weight.  I still ate whatever I wanted, but I was fortunate enough that I didn't gain anything no matter how much or how little I ate.

So here I am again, 13 days after having the baby (she is beautiful by the way), I rejoined Weight Watchers yesterday - online only (ironically enough, I found that once I started meetings - I stopped doing weight watchers all together).  I am currently weighing in at 208 lbs - only 3 lbs heavier than when I got pregnant.  Thankfully, I don't have a ton of pregnancy weight to lose - those 3 lbs *should* come off pretty fast (like this week) as long as I do what I'm supposed to do.

Why am I blogging about it again?  I honestly felt that if I am going to find success in this again, that I needed to go back to what I did last year - keeping track of everything I eat/drink by joining weight watchers online, and blogging about my journey (as much as I can) along the way.  Hopefully the determination I have been feeling these last several days will be a lasting feeling. 

Here's hoping!