Collateral Damage
The last couple of weeks have seen massive changes to my body--none of them good. Those of you who want to see pictures of me pregnant can just hang it up, because I have no desire to remember what I look like at this moment. I went from people not thinking I was pregnant to looking like the U.S.S Baby in the last few weeks. Now people look at me and can't believe I've got two more months to go because I'm so huge that I look like I could deliver at any moment.
It's not the baby lump that has me down: it's all the collateral damage that comes with it. The worst of it is that a lot of it seems permanent: the stretched skin on upper arms and thighs and the explosion of varicose and spider veins all over one leg. Oh, and the wider feet than may never fit into my expensive shoes again. I've been trying to think about how I can possibly get my body back into any kind of acceptable shape.
I'm afraid that after the baby is born I just won't be able to find the time or emotional energy to devote the kind of work necessary to get back on track. As some of you may remember, my metabolism is super slow and I require a lot of exercise to drop even the slightest amount of weight.
I'm already so exhausted from just trying to make it through the day with this massive load. I find it hard to believe that I actually used to carry this amount of weight around on my body all the time. However, this time it's not as evenly distributed and limits my ability to take deep breaths and get enough oxygen to my brain. Combine that with never sleeping more than 4-5 hours a night. If I try to do yoga, I get really light headed and just wind up collapsing into a panting heap. Useless.
I try to imagine how miserable I would be now if I HADN'T lost weight and exercised before my pregnancy. I just can't picture myself weighing, oh, 250 pounds right now. I probably would have had serious complications. I hear people say sometimes that there's no point in losing weight when they're just planning to get pregnant soon. Might as well wait until it's over and lose it all at once. I jump in immediately and tell them that is crazy talk. I really regret that I still had 20 pounds to lose when I got pregnant. That 20 pounds is really adding to my misery right now and is hanging oh-so unattractively around my lower belly, taking away any pregnancy "cute factor" I might have had.
On the food front, I'm trying to stay away from processed sweets and fast food. I'm managing it 80 percent of the time when there's a choice involved. At the very least I am sworn to not eat french fries again. I'm eating a yogurt a day with flaxseed mixed in for fiber, omega-3s, and good bacteria. It's like medicine. I'm also trying to eat at least two pieces of whole fruit every day to add more fiber and stave off the sweets cravings. It gets expensive though. I'm still having no luck with the vegetables. It's not that I wouldn't eat them if they were put in front of me, but I'm just not into any extensive food prep or cooking right now. I eat a lot of sandwiches.
Well, that's all the bitching I have to offer at the moment. Stay tuned . . .
