(2 1/2 months pregnant, relaxing on vacation with my girlfriend in CA, and thinking about how my pregnancy was going to go)You can have the pregnant body you want. It is that simple. If you don’t want to gain 40, 60, 80 pounds and be all soft, bloated and miserable, you do not have to. Pregnancy does not have to be an excuse to let everything go if you don’t want to. You don’t have feel ugly, fat, awkward or unlike yourself. Pregnancy is the perfect opportunity to turn your body into a fine tuned machine that will undertake the most amazing and difficult challenge of your life, labor and birth. You must think of the delivery of your baby as a marathon you are preparing to run. You have to train, you have to focus and you have to be driven.
For me, it was quite simple. Getting fat, seeing cellulite, accumulating stretch marks was not an option. I’m not saying I’m invincible to such things, but I simply told myself from the moment I found out I was pregnant (okay, after the shock wore off) that I was not going to let myself go. This attitude may have begun as vanity, I’m not going to lie, but in a matter of days turned into something so much more. I began to realize the challenge that lay before me, and what I was being called to do. Create life. Be responsible for the construction of a tiny human being who helplessly depended on every decision I made for his/her life. I was called to prepare my body for an unfamiliar and seemingly daunting task of pregnancy, labor and finally delivery.
The first thing I decided was that I was not going to give up on my workout regimen. Obviously as my pregnancy progressed there would be modifications made, but I was not going to just stop, or begin substituting slow, pointless, ineffective “pregnancy yoga” or long walks around my neighborhood for my ass-kicking routine of running, weight lifting and Bikram (hath) yoga. This simply would not do.
Secondly, I chose then and there that I would not allow my pregnancy to an excuse to give in to irrational cravings for junk food or deserts or endless empty calories. Not only did I not want to gain excessive weight, but what good would junk food do for my baby? And how much harder would the weight be to lose after I gave birth, if the pounds consisted of Jack in the Box drive thru fare or half gallons of Ben and Jerry’s, vs. raw fruits and vegetables and other such choices? Certainly much harder, even though it doesn’t seem like it at the time of temptation.
Third, it was suddenly very clear to me that I needed to stay as busy as ever, because sitting around reading baby books and contemplating 10,000 baby names would just not keep me in gear or feeling accomplished at the end of the day. As it turns out, it wasn’t too difficult for me to stay busy, seeing as I was a full time student until about two weeks ago when I finally got to break for the holidays. That’s when I decided to start this blog, because there is SO much information out there, a girl needs to sometimes be able to just hear from another pregnant woman how she is doing things to get ideas, or hear something that’s not in a baby book. Enjoy!
For me, it was quite simple. Getting fat, seeing cellulite, accumulating stretch marks was not an option. I’m not saying I’m invincible to such things, but I simply told myself from the moment I found out I was pregnant (okay, after the shock wore off) that I was not going to let myself go. This attitude may have begun as vanity, I’m not going to lie, but in a matter of days turned into something so much more. I began to realize the challenge that lay before me, and what I was being called to do. Create life. Be responsible for the construction of a tiny human being who helplessly depended on every decision I made for his/her life. I was called to prepare my body for an unfamiliar and seemingly daunting task of pregnancy, labor and finally delivery.
The first thing I decided was that I was not going to give up on my workout regimen. Obviously as my pregnancy progressed there would be modifications made, but I was not going to just stop, or begin substituting slow, pointless, ineffective “pregnancy yoga” or long walks around my neighborhood for my ass-kicking routine of running, weight lifting and Bikram (hath) yoga. This simply would not do.
Secondly, I chose then and there that I would not allow my pregnancy to an excuse to give in to irrational cravings for junk food or deserts or endless empty calories. Not only did I not want to gain excessive weight, but what good would junk food do for my baby? And how much harder would the weight be to lose after I gave birth, if the pounds consisted of Jack in the Box drive thru fare or half gallons of Ben and Jerry’s, vs. raw fruits and vegetables and other such choices? Certainly much harder, even though it doesn’t seem like it at the time of temptation.
Third, it was suddenly very clear to me that I needed to stay as busy as ever, because sitting around reading baby books and contemplating 10,000 baby names would just not keep me in gear or feeling accomplished at the end of the day. As it turns out, it wasn’t too difficult for me to stay busy, seeing as I was a full time student until about two weeks ago when I finally got to break for the holidays. That’s when I decided to start this blog, because there is SO much information out there, a girl needs to sometimes be able to just hear from another pregnant woman how she is doing things to get ideas, or hear something that’s not in a baby book. Enjoy!
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