As someone who has always been on the chubbier side I squirm every time I hear the words weight loss. As long as I can remember I have never had the tight and toned body as my genetics tend towards wobbly bits.
I remember always thinking whenever I had a baby it would be the end of me hahahaha. As a child and teenager I became quite sensitive to the fact that I was on the chubbier side and never really liked by body as a result. Luckily for me as I got older I became friends with some fab women who slowly helped me learn to love and be grateful for my body just as it was through them doing exactly that.
I have been on quite the journey over my adult years learning to love myself just as I am. Having 2 daughters I promised myself I would do everything in my power to be a great role model to them in loving and accepting myself.
In my twenties I learnt what my healthy body range / weight was for me and my health goal was to stay within that range.
At the start of this year, two years after having my 3rd baby, I wasn’t feeling great about my weight or my day to day mood. Three kids and working from home (full time most weeks) was quite the stretch for me and I had found my eating and exercising and general niceness was not great.
I work really hard to try and show my daughters how we should love and honour the body we were given but at the same time I knew that I really wanted to fit into all of the clothes I loved and refused to throw out from before I had baby number 3.
I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about how I could best lose 5kg (which is how much I was above my personal normal weight range) in the most normal, healthy and possible way for my girls. I never made it about weight loss with my girls I just told them that mummy isn’t feeling so great because I have not been exercising and eating food that makes you feel good so I am going to change that to see if it makes me feel better.
My first plan was to get moving again so I hooked up with my local Fernwood Fitness with the goal of getting along 3 times a week. One of my FAVOURITE things about Fernwood is it is women only and they have 30 minute classes … ok that was two haha. I am a fan of group classes (total extrovert here) and half an hour was so much more achievable to fit in for this insanely busy mum. I saw a personal trainer (who has now become a good friend) twice a week at the gym for half an hour and did one group fitness class.
The one major impact doing 30 minutes of exercise 3 times a week had on me was an improvement in my mood and energy levels. It was very interesting how much more energy I had with my 2 year old for things as simple as jumping on the trampoline. Historically I would have said no because I was too tired but I found myself saying yes to play with the kids a whole lot more which also helped boost my mood due to feeling like a good mum lol.
Within the first 6 weeks of going to the gym my husband mentioned on a number of occasions how my mood seemed to be much happier in general and … he was right.
After nearly 3 months going to the gym 3 times a week I was feeling great however I had not managed to shift much of the extra 5kg baby weight I was carrying. This made me realise that one of my issues must be what I was putting in my mouth.
I swore to myself I would never do the weight loss shake thing because it didn’t seem like a normal way to lose weight plus it would be strange to explain to my daughters so I knew I needed help with my food. There seemed to be quite a few healthy eating programs around with recipes and shopping lists but the reality for me was I barely had enough time in my day to cook my family meals which meant there was no chance I was going to be able to cook myself PLUS my family separate meals. My kids like what they like so it was also not realistic for my whole family to eat the same food I was going to eat as that would result in constant battles I did not want to have.
Then one day when I was dropping my son off to day care and his kindy teacher was telling me about this great company called Youfoodz who deliver fresh (not frozen) and healthy meals to your door. She had been getting them for weeks and said they were fantastic and it never felt like she was eating pre packaged food.
This got me thinking ….
What if I could get my food delivered, ready to eat just for a specific period of time with the sole intention to lose 5kg. When I jumped on the Youfoodz website I saw that their meals had all of the nutritional information so I could choose meals that would work for me.
I then contacted Youfoodz to see if they were interested in working with me on my quest to lose 5kg to test out whether their food plus exercise would do the job! It suddenly became super achievable for me in the crazy busyness of my life to eat healthy and do my exercise without it causing a whole heap more pressure and stress on everyone. I also loved that I was eating with my family every night as I would heat my meal up on the same plates my family were eating their dinner off and we would all eat together. Most of the meals were meat and lots of vegetables so when my daughters asked why I was eating something different I just told them mummy was eating super healthy as the moment as she was trying to make her body feel a bit better as it hadn’t been feeling great for a little while.
For the past 6 weeks I have pretty much eaten Uncle Tobys Oats for breakfast every morning … a Youfoodz meal for lunch and dinner with Youfoodz snacks in between. From the moment I started this regime I lost 1kg a week …. every single week. I was very disciplined and focused but these two things combined was what worked for me on my quest to lost 5kg. I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app and tracked everything I was putting in my mouth everyday and tried to stay under 1400 calories a day.
I do want to flag that this kind of quest is not the cheapest, most affordable weight loss quest you can do however I was eating real food and doing real exercise and learning really helpful things I can implement once I adjust my plan for maintenance. Portion sizes for meals was a really valuable thing I learnt from eating Youfoodz and that I didn’t need as much food as I thought in a day.
I feel like as mums we have to take control of our health and make it happen because no one is going to do this for us. I tried to do this in a way that was achievable and didn’t add more stress to my day but actually took some stress off. Yes it would cost more than some other ways but only for a period of time and you know what … you are worth it!!!
My wobbly bits aren’t 100% gone as that was never the plan … I just wanted to get back to a place where I was comfortable in my own body 🙂
