I have never been this pregnant before

Ever.

Even when I have in fact been more pregnant than I am now (gestationally speaking). I have suddenly turned into every pregnancy cliche that you have ever seen on tv or in movies or read about in books.

I feel HUGE, in fact I feel much bigger than I ever did at my heaviest weight combined with being 39 weeks pregnant. I struggle to shave my legs, I struggle to reach my feet. I can bend down easily enough but I require a crane and crew of sturdy workmen to help me get back up again. I'm puffy, heartburny and terrified to stray more than 5 minutes away from the nearest loo.

I feel done, like a turkey on Christmas day.

I'm only 33/well almost 34 weeks (speaking of which I must update the ticker at the top of this blog as it's out by a few days). I still have 8 to 10 weeks to go before this is over.

God lord that's like 2 months.

None of my clothes fit and I can't even begin to contemplate what sort of size I will be by the time the baby is actually ready to arrive. It's possible you will know it because when I stand up I will blot out the sun.

I want my body back. I want my exercise routine back. I want my weight watchers meetings back. I want to spend hours again salivating over the dresses on Asos.com, modcloth or Joe Browns, it's just too depressing to look at them now. I want to be working on getting back to goal instead of accepting the depressing upwards creep of the scale as I prefer to give birth to what I fear is an 18 stone baby (if the size of my bump is anything to judge it by).

I had a bit of bad week foodwise. The hubby was off work and we were doing a bit of redecorating. This meant we had buns in the morning for breakfast and proper regular meals went out the window a bit in between as we spent the day shifting around furniture and painting. Yesterday I decided to reign it back in and drop the crash. I couldn't believe how my body reacted to the sugar withdrawal. By lunch time I literally had the shakes. But this week the husband is back at the grindstone and I'm back to the sensible food and the calorie counting again.

I can't wait to start updating this blog properly again and tracking my way back to goal.

I never thought I'd miss Weight Watchers so much!

Feeling Good

Today I am feeling pretty good. At the weekend I wasn't. At the weekend I was feeling pretty terrible. I spent Friday night and all of Saturday holed up in bed with a basin and a draining will to live. I had a particularly nasty stomach bug you see but I am pleased to report that it has receded and, aside from having ruptured most of the capillaries in my face, I'm none the worse for it.

But that's not why I'm feeling good, well not entirely. I have completed my first full week, in a very long time, of eating well. I tracked every day, I stayed within my limits and I am finally, FINALLY, starting to feel in control again.

I'm starting to feel like I can do this. I don't have to be a slave to every crappy eating urge I ever get. I'm not saying I have this cracked, but putting one good week behind me has given me a real sense of achievement.

Let's hope I can replicate it this week (minus the weekend long boking interlude).

Thought for the day

Just thought I'd do a little check in. There is a part of me that is very much looking forward to the end of this pregnancy and being able to really focus again. I know that on the one hand I should be ploughing my energy into being super healthy at the moment, but then on the other hand I have everyone around me telling me to worry about it after the baby is born and enjoy being pregnant and here have some cake.

Some days I am very successful at eating well, other days I'm..... well I'm not.

One thing that is working for me at the moment is tracking again, okay it's not strictly weight watchers tracking. I have signed up for www.myfitnesspal.com and I'm keeping a calorie counting food diary there. It's helping me to stay focussed, and it's helping me to think about whether or not I really need to eat something before I stick it in my cake hole. I turned down some Dominos pizza with that in mind last night, yeah me, given the way I've been of late that is QUITE the achievement.

I am now in my third trimester and can expect to gain around a 1lb a week from now until the baby arrives and then I hope the breastfeeding works the weight loss miracles that it did after my Darcy was born.

Back to Basics

I have slipped. I have gone back in time and crashed into the bad eating habits of old. I've started getting buns occasionally from the shop (okay, not every day like I used to, but more often than I should), I've been ordering take-out a bit more again (sharing a medium pizza instead of scarfing a whole large one to myself, but still it's happening more than it should), that little afternoon bar of chocolate is happening again and I couldn't tell you the last time I bought Nimble bread or Crusts Away, it's been medium cut Tasty Wholemeal all the way at an eye watering 7 propoints for 2 slices, and it's showing, and as much as people tell me "you're pregnant, it's baby weight!" I'm positive I am not gestating an elephant. What really scares me isn't so much piling the pregnancy weight on but it's the thought that when the baby does arrive... well what if I can't get back in the game? What if I can't get my head back to that place where eating well felt healthy and natural and normal?

So the millionth time this pregnancy I'm saying this far and no further. I'm not making promises to lose weight now, I'm just making promises to ditch the shitty habits that have been creeping back in. It's making me unhappy, which is making me bake, which is making me eat. I can see my arms expanding, I can see my collar bones receding under a sea of flub. No buns, no sneaky "this doesn't count" chocolate and NO take aways. I have to remind myself that not only are they bad for me, they are TERRIBLE for the children, and I'm setting a bad example as I turn into an inactive slug.

Please let this start to feel easy again.

The long haul

Gosh I haven't posted in such a long time.

Well I got through the last week without baking, no not once, not even a pie. I made up for it thought by eating a load of other crap.

It's like I've hit the eating switch and I can't seem to turn it off. Weight is flying on me and my only response to it is to eat more. EEEK!

I'm putting together another blog, a specifically pregnancy related food blog as I'm hoping that will help me to reign things in again and I don't want to bore the pants off you lovely people with photos of foods or endless lists of "I ate this."

I'm 23 weeks now so I have 17 weeks left to go until the baby is born. I'm supposed to gain roughly a pound a week between now. If I stick to that I will have gained roughly 40lbs, which is more weight than I should gain, but if I continue at the rate at which I seem to be piling the weight on at the moment it'd be more like 60lbs, and that is bad. That is VERY VERY bad.

It doesn't matter how often people tell me to relax and worry about losing it after the baby is born, I don't want to deliver the baby and be back to where I started.

Ah balls.

Weight loss/maintenance is SO easy when your head is in the game.

CAKE!!!!

I've been baking recently, a LOT. I think it's making me unpopular because rather than actually eat the stuff I'm baking I'm passing most of it off to family members who enjoy the cakes but not the calories (okay I keep some back for myself to "sample"). Lucky for us the husband's best friend has bought the house across the street from us and he's one of those disgusting people with the permanent metabolism of a 15 year old boy. We've Christened him Stevebin for his ability to put left overs away.

I stopped going to Slimming World. It was making me a little crazy. I am trying something radical instead. I'm trying to eat three meals a day and one snack. I'm trying to ensure those meals are reasonably well balanced. I've stopped weighing myself and for the most part I've stopped obsessing. I'm almost 20 weeks now (well I will be on Saturday) and yes I've gained a bit more than I would have liked to, but I know I can lose it again after the baby is born, and I'll get all those awesome extra breastfeeding points. I've found since I've relaxed it's gotten a bit easier. I don't feel the same compulsion to eat the bad stuff, though I admit cutting out the baking would probably help a bit more with that, or at least passing more of it to Stevebin.

Liars? Exaggerators? Or am I the only one?

The internet can really skew your perceptions of things. Just the other week I saw some study reported in the media that said the more time you spend on Facebook the more likely you are to think that everyone else is happier than you and has a much better life. How true, I only post the pictures of my children looking adorable. I don't film the Boy's two hour tantrum over not wanting to get dressed this morning.

I suppose online you can be whoever you want to be and present your life in the best possible light, whether this means massaging the truth every so slightly with a few hours of posing and an equal amount of photoshop or just down-right lying.

I've been following threads on pregnancy weight gain across a number of forums; Babycentre, 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet, MiniMins, Weight Watchers etc. It seems to me like every single person on there has either lost weight or only gained "like 3lbs"

You know it's one thing for me to be a bit neurotic about the old pregnancy weight gain, but it's another thing entirely for whole communities of women out there to be turning it into a competitive thing.

I'm stuck between two worlds, in one of them I have EVERYONE around me lecturing me about my weight concerns and giving me a hard fricking time because I'm worried, and then there is the virtual world where I appear to be the only fatty preggo in existence, because everyone else out there is a size 8 and gets through their entire pregnancy without stepping into maternity clothes but just buying a size 10 instead, seemingly.

And take a deep breath.

I feeling a little sensitive today because I stepped on the scales and have put more weight on. It seems that one little tiny (okay 4 slices of pizza and a bit of cake) slip up is enough to make me pile on the pounds. This is not helped by the fact that I'm supposed to go out tonight and be with the 3 dimensional people and I have nothing to wear.

Are these women just lying? Are people actually dieting and just not letting on? It would be fantastic to have a real open dialogue about pregnancy weight gain, our feelings about it, our need to make sure the baby is getting enough nutrition while dealing with the crippling anxiety from societal and media pressure to be 9 months pregnant and still thin, and then have the body of Angelina Jolie approximately 5 minutes after the birth.

I suspect that someone isn't being honest here, and it's not me.