Skinny Jeans are the New Mom Jeans

So, the big dilemma – how fast can you lose your baby weight and get back into your skinny jeans after having that baby? I don’t know about you, but I was regaled with stories of easy weight loss right after giving birth – one friend said she lost 20 pounds within the first week – and during the months of breastfeeding – I’ve been assured I will thinner than I was before, and that all I have to do is walk every day and breastfeed. 

Uh-huh. That’s working.

Let’s start by giving you a few basic stats on me:

Height: 5’9”

Pre-Pregnancy Weight: 162

Pre-Pregnancy BMI: 23.9, well within the normal range

Pre-pregnancy Jeans Size: 10

Picks from my pre-pregnancy burlesque-dancing days:

Post-Pregnancy Weight: 216 – this is the last weight I clocked at the doctor’s office before going into labor.

After Baby Weight: 209  -- went home with this

Current Weight: 205

Recent pic of me and the little girl:

So, if you’re keeping score, I gained 54 pounds while I was pregnant, actually lost 15 of them altogether, but then put another 5 back on because I was still eating like I was pregnant. Before getting knocked up, I had been working on those eternal last 10 pounds, because my goal weight was 145. Which now gives me a grand total of 50lbs to lose to get me to that goal weight now, by my goal date of Christmas 2011.

It’s ambitious.

Oh, did I mention I’m also getting married next summer? So the added pressure of soon needed to try on wedding dresses is also looming.

Back to all that false advice – breastfeeding did not make me lose miracle amounts of weight. In fact, because I am burning that extra 500 calories or so a day, I am freakin’ starving all the time, and I already have a tendency to snack mindlessly, so this is a bad thing. Nor, in the beginning, did I want to or have time to go for regular walks or get any kind of regular exercise, especially during the three months of my maternity leave when the baby was awake and asleep whenever she pleased, my sleeping was erratic at best, and I was sore in all my lower regions and just wanted to relax. I think I made it to the gym once or twice, when she had a long nap. That was it.

So I went back to work feeling like a ginormous fat cow still having to schlep around in maternity clothes and wistfully eyeballing the bag of ridiculously cute dark wash skinny jeans and cute tees that had fit me once upon a time. I am very close to having nothing to wear to work. I have plenty of forgiving sundresses and nursing tank tops that I can wear around the house on weekends, but none of my old, more work-appropriate pencil skirts and trousers will fit over my fabulous thighs (might as well call them fabulous, right?) It’s a good thing I work in an office with a casual dress code, because all I’ve got are one pair of maternity jeans and lots of cute maternity tops. It’s a bitch that I was at my most house-like during the winter months, because black corduroys and dark, long-sleeved dresses are not summer attire.

Of course, friends assure me that I look wonderful, and if I’m honest and pull myself out of my guilty-pleasure of a pity party, I suppose I don’t look as bad as my melodrama would have me think. But the point is, I don’t look the way I know I could, nor do I feel the way I was used to feeling – powerful, confident, stylish, in control. I am back in my old insecure skin, before I became a gym rat and lost all the weight in the first place. I want to hide inside and not have to go out because I hate the way I look. I don’t feel like myself, I feel like some other person with an extra 50lbs on her frame. I’m tired of it. I want to be me again.

So, enough is enough. This blog is about a lot of things, and skinny jeans is one of them. So, you are all my accountability partners. And I will be yours, if you’re willing. What better way to get moving on the weight loss than having a horde of strangers judging me on it? Judgment is such a good motivator!

My goals are to get down to a size 8, and to a weight of 145lbs. What are your goals? Come along with me! Let’s do this together! Let’s make skinny jeans the new mom jeans!