There’s a common saying that says that since it takes 9 months to grow a baby, you should expect it to take at least 9 months to lose the baby weight.
Or something like that.
Well, today I am 9 months postpartum, and ***SPOILER ALERT*** I haven’t lost all the baby weight.
BUT!
I’m a heck of a lot closer than I thought I’d be if you’d have asked me 3 months ago, when I was doing everything just to desperately maintain my weight while on Prednisone.
Long story short: I was steadily losing about a pound a week after the initial “miracle weight loss” that happened the week after childbirth (when I shed 25 pounds that had been made up of the baby and the placenta and the excess fluids and who knows what else in the span of about six days). In other words, I was right on track to being down to my pre-pregnancy weight by about six months postpartum.
Enter my autoimmune disease diagnosis, the prescription of steroids, blah blah blah.
Quick summary: I lost no weight, but I also (miraculously) managed to not gain anything either.
Progress on getting any semblance of my pre-baby figure back seemed stalled indefinitely . . . until about a month ago, that is, when I decided to try an elimination diet to see if that would help with my AI disease.
While most people probably would have lost at least 10 pounds on the diet (which I’m still working through, thanksforasking), I have lost five. But man, does it feel good to have lost those five after months and months of seeing no change on the scale!
So as of today, I am only five pounds away from what I weighed just before getting pregnant and only about 10-12 pounds away from what I weighed while training for the half marathon a few months before all that.
In other words, THIS FINALLY SEEMS DO-ABLE.
But on to the stats!
Quick Stats
Weight right before delivery: 191 lbs.
Pre-pregnancy weight: 140 lbs.
Current weight: 145 lbs.
Goal weight: 135 lbs.
Measurements at One Month Postpartum:
Weight: 163 lbs.
Bust: 40″
Waist: 33″
Hips: 41″
Thighs: 24″
Arms: 12″
Measurements at Four Months Postpartum (before everything stalled):
Weight: 150 lbs.
Bust: 38″
Waist: 31″
Hips: 37″
Thighs: 22.5″
Arms: 11.25″
Pants Size: 8
Measurements at Nine Months Postpartum (aka, NOW):
Weight: 145 lbs.
Bust: 37″
Waist: 30.5″
Hips: 36.5″
Thighs: 22″
Arms: 11″
Pants Size: 6
Going forward, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that now that I’m finally off of the Prednisone (YIPPEE!!), I’ll be able to see some real progress over the next few months. I plan to figure out more definitively what foods my body is sensitive to, keep gradually increasing my running distance (I currently run between 3 and 3.5 miles each Saturday), continue going to my hip hop aerobics class once a week, and start weight lifting with a little more regularity.
Be assured that when I finally reach my pre-pregnancy weight (even though it wasn’t within the 9-month time frame), I will post about it.
For you mamas out there—had you lost all your baby weight by 9 months?