Back on the Wagon...

To sum up the last year and a half: I ran the St George Marathon October 2, 2010 and weighed 155 lbs at that point. A few weeks later we got pregnant with our 6th baby...

I continued running and exercising regularly but when I started contracting at 15 weeks I decided to ease up on the exercise a bit to see if I could stop the contractions. They stopped for a few days and then came back slowly until by 18 weeks pregnant I was contracting every 2-3 minutes. I have a condition that is referred to as an "irritable uterus" which means that your uterus will contract without causing change or "progression" to the cervix (basically meaning that I contract all day but am not in danger or preterm labor). My irritable uterus contractions are not like most and they come at regular intervals and last a full minute with the most pain at the height of the contraction. Basically, they feel exactly like labor contractions except that they don't get closer together or more painful with every one. This pregnancy my contractions stayed 2-3 minutes apart and got increasingly more painful as my uterus grew. Usually these contractions don't start for me until the end of my pregnancy. The earliest they have started was around 30 weeks, so starting at 15 weeks was kind of crazy even for me. I spent the last 4 months of my pregnancy in so much pain and so exhausted from having constant contractions for several months already that I spent most of my day in bed or on the couch unable to walk from one room to the next without breaking into a sweat from the pain of the contractions. 

I only mention all of this to try to justify the 70 (yes, that's SEVENTY) pounds that I gained during that pregnancy. I usually gain a lot of weight when I'm pregnant but that is just disturbing! I delivered my baby at about 225 lbs.

Those of you who have read this blog may have read that my body likes to hang onto it's weight during the first year of my babies lives! Regardless of diet and exercise I cannot loose weight until my babies are 9-11 months old. I've tried everything! I've been really good at keeping track of what I eat and balancing the right number of carbs and protein as well as eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and drinking enough water to drown a whale! I've tried fad diets, weight watchers, even diet pills. After 6 babies I've finally started to get the hint, my body wants that weight for some reason (I haven't been able to nurse my last 5 babies so it's not nursing that is keeping it on either). The best I can figure is that my hormones must still be all out of whack from having a baby and hormones have a lot to do with loosing weight, right?

Anyway, our 6th baby was born at the end of June 2011 and a few weeks later I started walking on the treadmill every morning. Mid July I decided that I wanted to set a goal to walk or jog 100 miles before Labor Day. I started out walking for the first few days but felt so good that I wanted to run, so I started running 2-3 miles 4-5 days a week and I met my goal. 100 miles later I still weighed 200 pounds. I could tell that I was getting stronger and in better shape though because I could run faster and farther without having to stop to walk, but the pounds still weren't coming off. Somehow I'd hoped that by some miracle this post pregnancy body would be different and would let me loose weight. I kept treating it like it would. I ate super healthy and drank tons of water and never stopped exercising. 


In November, my baby was 5 months old and I was feeling stronger and more in shape but still hadn't lost a pound. I was really discouraged and actually pretty depressed about how I looked. I decided to take a picture of myself at my biggest ever (right then) so I could see the progress when the weight finally started coming off. Here is that sad picture:

Finally in mid February (8 months after I had my baby) I lost 5 pounds and was down to 195. It took me until April to loose another 5 pounds and get down to 190. Here's a picture of me on April 13th at 189.7 lbs:

Now it's May and my baby is 10 1/2 months old and I'm down to 185. I've lost 15 pounds in the last 2 1/2 months and I'm hoping to loose another 30 pounds by the end of September (5 months away) when we go back to Hawaii again. I've signed up for a half marathon at the end of July and am just about to start a "Biggest Loser" challenge (http://bigloser6.blogspot.com/) at the end of this week. 

I think that 30 pounds in 5 months is a totally realistic goal. That's only 6 pounds a month and only about 1.5 pounds a week. I'm going to be training for my half marathon during this time, as well as competing in this Biggest Loser Challenge. So follow me on here to see my progress and please feel free to comment and encourage me along this journey to a skinny me... again! Lol!

*I just read back on this blog and noticed that I posted the whole story of my weight gain and loss on my family blog and not on here so here it is:

"I started a weight loss blog about a month ago to keep track of what I'm eating how much I weigh and what exercise I'm doing each day. I thought it would be a good way to keep me on track and keep me accountable for what I'm eating and what I'm doing (or not doing) to get in shape. I also started a weight class around the same time and so I'm keeping track of all of the things that I am learning there too.

Anyway, I didn't really want to tell people about the blog yet because I post my weight and I wasn't sure I wanted to share that with the whole world wide web! But here goes nothing! Just to put things into perspective, in High School I weighed about 130 and I was super skinny and had no muscles! I weighed 138 lbs when I got married, and still had zero muscles! I put on roughly 85 lbs when I was pregnant with Tyler (yes, my friends if you do the math you will see that I weighed about 223 lbs at my very heaviest). After I had Tyler I got down to about 165 lbs and then gained 19 lbs when I was pregnant with Maddie (184 lbs), got back down to 165, gained 18 lbs when I was pregnant with Emily (183 lbs), and then got down to 152 lbs right before we went to Italy in 2006. Brought home a little souvenir and gained 65 lbs when I was pregnant with Nathan despite my exercise and good eating habits before and during my pregnancy (back up to 217 lbs). After I had Nathan I got down to 165 again and then got pregnant with Logan and gained 25 lbs (190 lbs). I got back down to 165 fairly quickly after he was born but then put back on about 10 lbs or so and then lost about 5 and ended the year at around 172 lbs. I'd been exercising on and off and had been eating really well and even went on a "sweets fast" with my mother in law and sister in law for awhile! But no more weight was coming off. Well, since I'm feeling more and more sure that we are done having kids, I'm feeling more and more motivated to get rid all of my baby fat!

So January of course brought the usual New Years Resolution to exercise consistently and eat healthy and loose weight. Mine also included Run a Marathon and achieve my ultimate goal weight of 145 lbs (maybe 140 if I'm feeling SUPER ambitious for my height and build 130 looked somewhat anorexic and 138 was better but I still had no muscle at that weight, so I'm thinking 140 to 145 is about right for me). I started doing P90X and Turbo Jam and weights and running on the treadmill and Tae Bo and a gazillion other exercises and often 2 or 3 workouts a day and drinking about 80 ounces of water a day and eating super healthy and kept that up for 3 full months without noticing ANY difference! Not an ounce of weight lost, not an inch of waist lost. That's when I remembered that my body tends to hang onto some extra weight until my babies are about 10 months old. It's been that way with each of my kids and I guess I thought this time would be different since I'd been working SO hard to loose weight, but no such luck! I had been sitting around 172 to 174 lbs since Christmas and Logan would be 10 months old on May 1st. About mid April the weight finally started to come off. Now I weigh 162.8 lbs and have lost MANY inches! I'm also on track in my training for the marathon. I registered for the St. George Marathon and in 2 days we'll see if I made the lottery and will be able to run it! If you are interested in following my progress feel free to stop by my blog at skinnyjanelley.blogspot.com. I've added a tracker so I can see when people come to the site just to keep me on my toes. I didn't tell anyone about my site but had a few people stumble across it and even got a comment from a friend of mine from BYU which caught me by surprise. I realized since I saw that people were coming that I started feeling more accountable and like people were actually reading what I eat every day and seeing how much I weigh! That's when I decided that it was time to let my regular "bloggy" friends know about my other blog, so that more people might stop by, keeping me more motivated to eat well and exercise a lot! So thanks for the motivation everyone!"