Weigh In Wednesday

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A post shared by Abigail Macouzet (@abigaildeanna)

Happy Hump Day! I love Wednesdays for a few reasons but one of the main ones is because that means it a new Weight Watchers week! It’s a fresh start right smack dab in the middle of the week, it helps clear my mind and helps me finish out the week strong.

I had a great first half of the week last week and then Friday came. Oh weekends, I hate you. I had a semi healthy dinner planned out but then The Mr. brought home cookies (all I asked him to pick up was salad) and we had friends over for a few drinks. The drinks led to more cookies, which led to more pizza and the rest is history.

On Saturday we went to a soft opening of Buffalo Wild Wings and then went to the county fair in my hometown. Let’s just say….I enjoyed myself.

Sunday morning, I woke up and my fingers were so bloated from all the sodium that I couldn’t get my rings off! I knew I had to drink lots of fluid and get my body moving, so I did! I did some cleaning, laundry and stayed busy with Baby Mac.

The rest of the week has been good, I was VERY surprised when I got on the scale this morning and had actually lost weight. I was not expecting that at all but I’m not complaining.

I’ve been contemplating on changing my weigh in day to Saturday’s in hopes to maybe attend Weight Watchers meetings again, we’ll see, I’m kind of obsessed with weighing in on Wednesdays though. I’m pretty sure they are tired of seeing me coming and going and I’m sure if I switch to meetings ONE MORE TIME, The Mr. may give me that “look.”

It feels really good to be in check with my eating again. I feel like through all these ups and downs I’ve been able to keep up with the exercise but it’s my eating that always suffers. Even though it’s just been a few days, I’ve been very mindful of what I’m putting in my body and very aware of my hunger cues and what’s really trigging them.

My goal for this week is to stay on track and within my points during the weekend. We have two birthday parties to go to, so it will be tricky but I know I can do it!

This ish is hard!

It’s been over a year since I’ve written here so I figured I should update. It’s almost been a year since I had Baby Mac and….I’m still trying to figure things out. I’m not talking motherhood stuff, I know I’ll be figuring that out the rest of my life, I’m talking this weight loss journey after pregnancy thing.

I really thought watching the scale go up while pregnant was a mind game, especially since I had lost so much weight. I remember some weeks I was okay with the gain and then other weeks I was freaking out about it. I was pregnant though so everything was a roller coaster.

After giving birth, I gave myself some time to let my hormones level out (HA!), figure out how to be a wife and mom and get into the groove again. I tried to start Weight Watchers again about 4 months postpartum and then again at 6 months and then again at 9 months…..you get the point.

Here I am, almost 12 months postpartum (seriously, she’s almost a year already?) and I’m still trying to figure this crap out. I gained 40 pounds and I’ve only lost about 20 of those. 20 pounds in a year is great but I know I could of done better than that. I keep finding reasons to not eat healthy or not work out. I’ll do great during the week and then the weekend comes and I blow it. Really, I just sabotage myself and blow all my hard work. “I’m tired, I’m a mom, I ate a great breakfast, I know how to lose weight, I’ll just be mindful of what I eat, I’m okay  with how I am….” ALL EXCUSES!….and they’ve worked for the last year!

So, here we go again….putting my big girl pants on, making this shit public and letting everyone know that I’m starting over….again. This time, for real, I’m going back to basics, I’m tracking my points like a crazy woman, I’m drinking water like a fool and I’m getting serious about this, because Baby Mac deserves it, The Mr. deserves it and I’m worth it!

Whoever said weight loss after having a baby is easy lied. This ish is freakin’ hard!

Weekly To-dos

I’m back with another week of weekly to-dos. I’m pretty satisfied with what I got done last week and really kept going back and thinking about my list and staying focused on my goals.

The Mr. and I had a pretty laid back weekend which helped check off some of my to-dos, but we also got started on Baby Mac’s nursery! I’m super excited about that and can’t wait until it’s done!

So here’s a recap from last week and my new to-do list! Enjoy!

Marriage & Home:
– Go on a movie date with The Mr. – We were going to on Friday but The Mr. worked late and then we had a funeral to go to on Saturday and we were suppose to go on Sunday but we both forgot until about 8 o’clock at night. We did go out to dinner, which was nice.
– Try a new recipe – I tried a few new recipes, thanks eMeals!
– Stay current on weekly cleaning calendar – Eh, I strayed a little bit from this, but followed it for the most part. My house did not get dusted on Friday, oops.

 Self:
– Continue to track all food, even the bad – tracked it all, all of it!
– Get some sort of activity in, 3 times – I got two days in, dang it!
– Read each night before going to bed – I got this one down! I finished two books this past week!

Baby Mac:
– Buy hangers for her clothes
– Wash her clothing
– Work on her nursery and find wall decorations – Worked on the nursery but didn’t find wall decorations, however I know what I want, I just need to find it!

Here’s this weeks:

Marriage & Home:
– Clean washer
– Movie date
– Organize linen closets

Self:
– Get activity in, 3 times
– Drink 100 oz+ of water each day
– Try something new for lunch

Baby Mac:
– Find dress for self for pictures and baby babyshower
– Pick paint color and buy it
– Organize her dresser and closet

Have a wonderful week!

Weekly To-dos

One of my favorite bloggers does a weekly to-do list that I feel like it really centers around working on becoming a better persons as a whole. She hits it all; marriage, motherhood, home and herself.

They say goals and to-dos aren’t reachable unless you write them down so I figured I would start a weekly to-do list to work on.

Marriage & Home:
– Go on a movie date with The Mr.
– Try a new recipe
– Stay current on weekly cleaning calendar

 Self:
– Continue to track all food, even the bad
– Get some sort of activity in, 3 times
– Read each night before going to bed

Baby Mac:
– Buy hangers for her clothes
– Wash her clothing
– Work on her nursery and find wall decorations

My plan is update each week with what I’ve completed off my to-do list and make a new one.

Here’s to a new week and happy to-doing!

Becoming a Health Conscious Mother

Becoming a mother is probably one of the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. First, I get to grow a child inside of me and worry everyday that I’m not doing something that could harm the baby or myself. Then I get to give birth to the baby and then I get to take MY child home and care for her, feed her, clothe her and hope and pray I teach her right from wrong. (????) What in the world?!

After all those worries, I then get to make sure that I teach her to always love herself no matter what society may say and no matter how she feels about her body. The Mr. and I get to instill morals and traditions in her that will eventually make her who she will become.

Motherhood scares the shit out of me. However, at the same time I can not wait to be a mother. I do know that everything she learns, she will learn from me (and The Mr.) and she will always lead by example.

Weight Watchers taught me a lot about eating healthy, making smart choices when it comes to being active and learning to lose weight at a healthy pace. Over the year and half that I faithfully followed Weight Watchers, I became very health conscious and learned to trust my body in the process.

Pregnancy really threw me for a loop, I tried so hard to continue to eat healthy and follow Weight Watchers but for the first trimester, I could not stomach anything healthy. Yes, I’ve gained more weight then I wanted to and I haven’t eaten as healthy as I should, but the difference from before Weight Watchers to now, is that I know what I’m doing and what I’m putting into my body.

Just like before, I try to make a conscious effort everyday to continue to be healthy. The Mr. and I already decided and made a pact that as soon as I get cleared from my doctor, we will get back on Weight Watchers and continue to follow a healthy lifestyle. I want to be able to show our child how to eat healthy while still enjoying good food. I want her parents to be that example for her.

More then anything else, I hope that we can teach her that being healthy is far more important then what society says we should look like. I hope that she sees that healthy comes in all shapes and sizes and that sometimes it’s okay to work for healthiness.

One of my reasons for losing weight and learning to be healthy was so I could become pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy and I’ve been able to do that (so far). Now one of my main reasons for wanting to continue this lifestyle is so I can remain healthy and teach my children a healthy lifestyle. Life always has a funny way of working out and most of the time, making a 360º.

learning to love myself more…..

Everyday I continue to work on learning to love myself more and more. It wasn’t some idea that I woke up with and decided from that moment I was going to love every inch of my body. Learning to love myself for every part of me has taken some work, especially mentally. I really had to train my mind to get rid of the negative and focus on the positive things about my body.

I believe the process started when I started losing weight, I went from being completely nonactive to working out 5 days a week. My body hurt, all over. It hurt to move a lot of the time but slowly and surely, I realized it felt good to move in those ways. I went from barely being able to walk on the treadmill to running sometimes. How could I not love a body that could do that?

Once I got pregnant and my body really started to change and the scale started to creep up again and my pant size got a little bigger, I had to refocus my mindset and remind myself that it was okay to still love my changing body. I still look in the mirror daily and am amazed that I can harbor a growing fetus and eventually my body will go into labor and I’ll deliver that baby. How could I not love a body that can do that?

I am in no way perfect and it’s still a mental battle everyday to truly love myself. I still have faults and I still make mistakes that make me want to not fully love myself. There are some days where I really have to talk myself up and remind myself how far I’ve come (those days consist of lots of Pinterest quotes).

In a world where we are told to not love ourselves if we aren’t exactly what the BMI chart says we should be, or we don’t look exactly like society says we should look like, or we don’t dress in a certain way; loving ourselves can be so hard but everyday I try.

Self Love

Over the past couple of months I’ve been on this self love kick. I understand all the demands of the world and everyones need and want to get fit and healthy. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand why someone needs to get healthy and am no way ever going to stop trying to improve myself in that way. However, I do feel like people need to learn to love themselves, no matter what shape or size your body may be in.

I believe it truly is a mind game and something you have to believe in and fight for. I believe for one to be truly happy in friendships and relationships, you have to love yourself. Some may say that loving yourself includes getting healthy and I agree, but the self love I am talking about is deeper then that.

It took a long time but I went from completely hating my body, with or without clothes, to loving my body for what it looks like and what it can do. I used to hate my hair, it was so curly and sometimes frizzy to loving it because of its curls and fluffiness. There were so many things I hated about myself, inside and out, but I quickly realized that being so negative about myself made others be negative about me and I didn’t want that.

Learning to love myself for who I was in that moment helped me to love myself enough to focus on health and fitness. When I learned to love myself with all my faults, I really learned who I was and how to truly be happy.

….on being plus size and pregnant

Last time I posted I was faithfully following Weight Watchers and giving Simple Start a try. Fast forward 6 months, and I’m currently 22 weeks pregnant and enjoying everything that comes with pregnancy and expecting our first child.

Since becoming pregnant, I’ve learned a whole heck of a lot about what society says about plus size pregnant woman and what they think pregnancy should look like. It’s been very eye opening and it’s something I’ve become a little obsessed with.

I’ve been very lucky, I’ve had a very easy pregnancy so far. Absolutely no major morning sickness, I was just very tired and sometimes nauseated during the first trimester. I had to train myself to eat, which sounds kind of funny but for a year and a half, I taught myself to only eat when I was hungry and to really listen to my body. All of a sudden I was pregnant and I would go from content to starving in .5 seconds and if I didn’t eat soon enough, I would feel so sick. That was a learning curve but I quickly learned how to eat again because I hated feeling sick.

My second trimester has also been a breeze. I’ll have days where I’m more tired then normal and days where I’ll be a little nauseated and just feel icky but other then that, I can not complain. I started to be more active during the second trimester too, I joined a prenatal yoga class and just recently started in on a water aerobics class.

It wasn’t until the second trimester that I really started to dig deeper into being plus size and pregnant. It’s very sad to me that “the world” (aka: society) can see being plus size such a horrible thing but then you add pregnancy to the equation and you’re shit out of luck. Because I’m overweight and pregnant, I’ll automatically be classified as high risk, that I’ll have gestational diabetes, that I shouldn’t gain more then 15 pounds and that every other horrible thing that can happen during pregnancy, I’ll have.

All of that is far from the truth and it pisses me off that we have to put up with that stereotype just because of our weight.

I just wish that the world would see a plus size pregnant woman the same as a normal pregnant woman and that they would just remember that we too are growing life inside of us and that it’s just as an amazing experience for us as it is anyone else.

Simple Start Day 1 & 2

Day two of Simple Start is on it’s way out and I’m feeling pretty good about it and the choices I’ve been making.

I decided to make a few tweaks so that way it I can fit Simple Start into my life and make it work for me. A few months ago, I started to drink Shakeology and have found that I really like it and think it has helped me a lot. It has a ton nutrition in it and has been proven to be very healthy so I decided that I will not be counting that towards my weekly points. I figured that since the Weight Watcher smoothies are power foods then my smoothies can be too. I also decided that fat free ranch is a power food. I love ranch and always measure out my servings so even though it may not be listed as a power food, I’m going to count it as one. I told myself that if within the first week I gain or don’t notice a change, I’ll be taking out those tweaks and following Simple Start to a T.

So now, what have I been eating? I’ll show you! I decided to take pictures of my meals/snacks for the past two days so you can kind of see what Simple Start looks like. Mind you, I did still measure out my rice, dressing, milk, cottage cheese and so on because I want to keep going with that habit and don’t mind taking the time. My Weight Watchers week start on Wednesday’s so my weekly points are a little thrown off, but it will come together tomorrow. I went out on Saturday and used most of my weekly points and I started Simply Start on Monday so it’s out of whack.

Anyway, here we go….

I started Simply Start with having used all of my weekly points (49). From last Wednesday to Sunday, I had earned 25 activity points and used 7 of those during the weekend.

Day 1) Breakfast – I forgot to take a picture of it, but I had 1/2 cup egg beaters (equals 2 eggs), slice of Fiber One 100 cal Honey Wheat Bread, and a Dannon Light & Fit Greek yogurt

Lunch – salad with  chopped veggies, extra lean turkey breast, fat free cheddar cheese and fat free ranch dressing

Snack – fat free cottage cheese with pineapple

Dinner- brown rice, apricot chicken and a salad topped with fat free ranch. The apricot chicken was 2 points because of the glaze.

Snack- shredded wheat, strawberries and non fat milk

I ended the day using 2 weekly/ap points, everything else was 100% on the Simple Start plan!

On Monday, I earned another 7 activity points so I started today with using all 49 weekly points and have earned 32 activity points, which I’ve eaten 20 of.

Day 2) Breakfast- 2 scrambled eggs, a little bit of salsa, 1/4 cup spaghetti squash topped with fat free cheddar cheese and a Fiber One original english muffin. On my way to work, I stopped and picked up a sugar free/non fat latte, which is considered a power food.

Lunch- salad with chopped veggies and 1.5 oz tuna salad mixed in with fresh fruit on the side

Snack- Dannon Light & Fit Greek yogurt

Late afternoon snack- 1 slice of Fiber One 100 cal bread toasted, an apple cut up and put on top and then topped with fat free cheddar cheese

Dinner- quinoa, brussel sprouts and shrimp, tomato and zucchini skillet

I did sneak a piece of a Red Vine from the staff lounge this afternoon, but 1 piece is 0 points, so it didn’t come off of my weekly points, but I did track it!

For dessert, I ended up having a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich which is not a power food (boo) and is 4 points.

So far today, I’ve earned 4 activity points. That makes my weekly totals at having used all 49 of my weekly points and having used 24 of my 36 earned activity points.

I feel really good about Simple Start. I haven’t been extremely hungry since starting and I noticed today while eating my afternoon snack, that I was really just eating because that’s what I normally do before going to the gym. I ate out of habit and realized I should have really listened to my body instead. Yesterday and today, I didn’t eat my normal morning snack because I was still full until lunch time. In fact, I was full for 5 hours yesterday before needing lunch.

Weigh in day is tomorrow and we’ll see how it goes. I normally do not eat as many weekly or activity points as I do, but we went out on Saturday and I tracked everything that went into my mouth. I’m ready to start a new Weight Watchers week on the right foot and with new points!

To Simple Start or Not?

I sort of kind of hit on the topic of Simple Start/Simply Filling last time I wrote, and I was still on the fence about trying it. Simple Start was built off the same foundation of Simply Filling but was implemented for those who are just starting Weight Watchers or need a change from counting points. They came out with the awesome pamphlet that has 2 weeks worth of meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks), has a shopping list and gives you ideas on what to use as “indulgence” points.

Simple Start/Simply Filling is pretty simple; you don’t track what you eat, but really focus on portion sizes, listening to your body and fill up on power foods. You get 49 weekly points, that with Simple Start, they encourage you to use 7 points a day on indulgences or foods that are not power foods.

The tracking technique is exactly what it sounds like. You get so many points a day (based on height/weight) and everything you eat has a point value and you track it when you eat it. With tracking, you also get 49 weekly points that you can use how you want.

So here’s the big dilemma….I’ve been tracking for over a year now and I hate change. Simply Filling has been around since I started Weight Watchers, but I never tried it because I didn’t trust myself with portion sizes and didn’t like the idea of only having power foods.

I think Simple Start is great for newbies or people who need a change. I’ve gone back and forth about whether or not I wanted to try it since they introduced that program. I’ve seen people who have had great results with it, new members and even lifetime members. I know for a fact that Weight Watchers would NOT push something they did not believe in themselves and that they knew worked. I just know that I have a hard time with change and trying new things, so I kept pushing it back.

The other day I decided that I have nothing to lose. If I try it and I gain weight, well, I’ll just go back to what I know and lose the weight again. If I try it and I lose weight, well, then Weight Watchers just proves to be even more amazing. So what the heck, right?

So I’m diving in head first and today was my first day officially following Simple Start!!

I promised myself that I’d stick with it for 2 weeks and decide which technique I want to follow after that.

I’ll be back later tonight or tomorrow with a recap on day one and things that I’m twisting to make it work for me.

Wish me luck! I’m nervous!