Wednesday, August 6, 2014

8 weeks postpartum!


So I was photo bombed by David Hasselhoff.

Seriously though -  Who hasselhoffed me?! I went to upload photos to this blog, and it gave me the option to upload from my phone. I thought to myself, "How does this thing know my phone? Lets see what pops up." And THIS was the picture - the only picture- that showed up. Um, what? 




Ok! Let's move on from the creepy Hasselhoff photo bombing. 
Its been 8 weeks since I gave birth to my beautiful Camilita. It has been the most awesome, exhilarating, emotional and amazing 8 weeks of our lives! 

At 6 weeks postpartum we started working out again, and even though I was active my entire pregnancy, 6 weeks of doing NOTHING really takes its toll! For two weeks now we have been doing Insanity, which was harder to do than the first time we did it! Its hard to have worked so hard on your strength and fitness level only to have it virtually deteriorate. Below are reverse before and after pictures, haha. On the left is my before, my goal essentially (and then some), on the right is where I am now. 

While I was very active and ate healthy during my entire pregnancy, my diet was definitely not as clean as normal. While my planned meals were on point, I pretty much allowed myself to eat what I wanted almost whenever I wanted (and so did my husband!). This led me to gain a considerable about of body fat, which my body was already trying to do (pregnancy hormones - your body holds on to fat even more to prepare for breastfeeding). 

BUT…its all ok because its a learning process, and this process gave us the most beautiful and special gift anyone could ask for.  :)




SO, my goal right now is to lose the body fat I've gained, while also gaining a muscle base (usually these two do not go hand in hand - however I am relying on "newbie gains" - the ability to gain a bit of muscle while also losing fat when you are new to lifting. While I am not new to lifting, I might as well be at this point. Ha.) However, I have heard lately that those last 5-15 lbs are often hard to lose for breastfeeding moms because your body wants to hold on to fat. This is because your body obviously needs energy to produce milk, and in case of an emergency where you aren't eating and drinking enough, your body has fat stores to make milk. So I need to eat enough calories to support my milk production (otherwise my body will continue to hold on to fat instead of let it go) as well as enough to gain some muscle - again, something that is difficult for the postpartum body to do! So this will be a bit of an experiment.

These past 2 weeks we have been doing Insanity, but now that I'm feeling better I am ready to incorporate lifting back in. We have equipment in our basement for this, as our gym's child care won't take Camila until she is 3 months old. Our routine is Insanity 3 days a week, and a full body lifting routine 3 days a week. 
I'll post later this week about exactly what we do, and HOW we do it with an 8 week old.  :)