Baby fat

taken on holiday last month

I have started writing this post a hundred times but have never had the balls to press publish. Let's try again...
For as long as I can remember I have been heavier than a lot of my friends. In primary school I was really tall and at the age of 11 and a half I was 5'4", exactly the height I am now. I was about 10st when I was 12 but very sporty and not chubby. Then when I started secondary (high) school I started a lot of unhealthy eating habits and was about eleven and a half stone at my heaviest (that's 161lbs for all the US heads reading!).

Through college a couple of pretty weird things helped me loose weight. After my trip to Peru I was pretty sick (I picked up some sort of weird bug. No, not tape worm, you're disgusting hehe) and lost a lot of weight. I also got braces around the same time which helped me eat less because it was so painful! At my lowest I was about nine and a half stone (133lbs). The following year when I got married I was just under 10stone (140lbs).

It's so true what they say about the first year of marriage and putting on weight because by the time I got pregnant, nine months after our wedding, I was up to 11stone (154lbs) again. I was really healthy throughout my pregnancy, eating well, working two jobs and walking at least forty minutes every day. Everything was going very well until I hit Christmas and went FIFTEEN days overdue (I am currently writing Elliott's birth story so stay tuned). At that stage I thought, "screw it, I look like a whale anyway and they ways thing are going, I'm never going to give birth so I might as well eat myself to death."As you can imagine this led to a big fat weight gain. In the end I gave up keeping a record of how much I weighed and in Ireland you're not routinely weighed unless you're overweight, so I really don't know how heavy I got.

What I do know is Elliott is now seven and a half months old and I finally decided to do something about my weight and more particularly, my terrible eating habits. I bit the bullet and joined a weightwatchers class last week. I was so nervous about going on my own but so proud that I did it! I weighed in at 12stone 6.5lbs (175lbs) eeeeek!! So this week I stuck pretty rigidly to the programme while still going out once and enjoying a couple of glasses of wine spread out over the week and guess what...Im down 4.5lbs!!! WOO HOO!

It feels so good not to be in the cycle of comfort eating when Elliott is fussing or when I'm stressed/bored/nervous/happy/sad..you get the idea. This is the first week in a long time when I do not feel guilty and that feels great!!! I need to loose almost two stone (24lbs) to be at my goal weight of 10st 6lbs but I have lots of little goals in between that I am aiming for.

So that's my weight gain and now loss story! Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and even the comments coming in. Special shout out to Jess from IROCKSOWHAT who is an amazing blogger and has also started weightwatchers and lost 4.5lbs this week! Thanks to Deanna from Delirious Rhapsody who has lost a TONNE (not literally hahaha) of weight too and commented on my lovely little blog just to encourage me. Thanks girlies!

Have a lovely, healthy, yummy, fun day!

PS. I haven't yet worked up the courage to talk about this on fbook so if you're coming from there please comment below and not on my fbook page just yet, thanks :)