[Note: For the 12 Week vegan challenge, I want to make it clear that this is for ANYONE who wants to lose weight and/OR transition to becoming vegan, so if either of those applies to you, please join the challenge! I’ve revised the criteria a bit so that this is clear.]
I have my body back, in more than one way. First, I’m no longer nursing (my “baby” is now 18 months). Second, I’m back to were I should be weight wise, which is a GREAT feeling.
After 5+ years of being in a constant state of pregnancy or lactation (or sometimes both!), I now have no one dependent on me for their growth and nutrition. It’s liberating, a bit sad (I so enjoyed nursing my last, maybe because it gave me a chance to sit down and relax for a few moments with my baby), and my appetite has finally adjusted to that of a normal person. I would have liked to nurse until two years because I think that is ideal, but my body and spirit were telling me that it was time to wean.
About the weight gain. The weight gain wasn’t actually over the holidays. At least Christmas. I think it was just a very slow, gradual weight gain (I hadn’t weighed myself in almost a year!). About a week before Christmas, I realized I had gained that abominable ten pounds. One day I happened to step on a friends scale and that, in combination with the fact that my jeans had been hugging my hips a little more tightly…I put two and two together. The scale was not lying. As soon as I came to that realization, I committed to losing it, starting in that moment. I did not wait until after New Years (which for most people, unless you are really determined, I don’t recommend doing). So that meant I didn’t participate in the usual holiday treat devouring (although I still made the usual Christmas fare for family and friends). And I was just fine with that. Because nothing is more uncomfortable for me than wearing tight clothes and feeling not quite myself. The trade off for me was whole foods and no treats, but in return, I felt great and didn’t have to worry about gaining any more weight and was at the same time losing the weight that my body did not need.
So how long did it take and what did I do?
I mean what do you do when you’re already on a whole foods vegan diet (no oils?). It took about three weeks to lose the ten pounds. The first week, kinda slow (in fact, I think the scale didn’t budge at all for the first six days). The second week, a little more. And the third week I lost the most. I did not exercise more. In fact I exercised less than usual. I find that too much exercise just makes me want to eat more, and makes me tired (which is easy to do when you’re a mom of two toddlers and preschooler!).
As far as what I ate, I focused on green and yellow veggies and low calorie unprocessed starches such as millet, potatoes, squash, and sweet potatoes. For one of the weeks I ate potatoes or sweet potatoes at every meal with a variety of green leafies and other veggies (but where’s your protein!!? I averaged 70-90 grams a day, which is MORE than enough!). I limited fruit to just what I put in my daily shake. No breads or other calorie dense foods. No sugar (even from things like agave, dates, ect.). I drank a lot of Rooibos tea (with green leaf stevia as a sweetener). I used the CRON-O-METER to make sure I was meeting my nutritional needs. I averaged about 7% calories from fat, 12-15% from protein, and 75-80% from carbohydrate and was always above and beyond meeting my micro nutrient needs. This is the very strict version (I know what you are thinking, I could NOT do that!) of the Wellness Forum’s AWL (accelerated weight loss) program and you can certainly lose weight on a more lax version of this, but for me, I’d rather just pay my dues, and get it over with. Not that it was torture. I never went hungry and did really enjoy all the food I was eating. But I do like breads, and treats, and other things I wasn’t eating while trying to lose weight.
So I’m back to “normal” weight, and it is sooo nice to be in this place right now.
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