P90x and Baby Wise Update

Two of the biggest things in my life now are obviously my new little girl Savannah who is growing like a weed and quickly approaching the 4 month mark. The second thing is my baby bulge battle. One of my most handy mothering weapons is Baby Wise. One of my weapons of choice for battling the baby bulge has been the P90x program. I'd like to provide and update on both:

P90X - I'm just going to put it out there and admit that I've officially failed the p90x program. I'm really embarrassed to admit this because I was all gung ho about it. My facebook statuses frequently referred to Tony. I probably got through 6 weeks of the program successfully. It gets on my nerves when people are all talk, starting big campaigns whether it be a new diet, career, or hobby, and now I feel like I've become one of those people. However, I will do my best not to make excuses and explain why it did not work for me.

Don't get me wrong - I think P90x works. I definitely feel a positive change strength-wise in my body. However, I think for it to have the intended effect, you really have to do it in conjunction with a diet, which I did not want to do. The other big thing is that it is a major time committment. The workouts are at least an hour long 6 days a week, and the yoga is actually and hour and a half. It was a lot for me to try and balance that, a full time job, and a new baby. Tim, on the other hand was doing quite well with it. He was eating the food I cooked, but just taking fewer liberties than me (aka Muddy's Bakeshop) and the weight was just falling off of him and he was looking great. While I was happy for him, it was discouraging for me. After I stopped breastfeeding I gained 5 pounds. I don't know for sure if that was why, but that's about when it happened. Also, I got to where the whole this was totally stressing me out and I came to loathe it. I liked it at first...I kind of learned to like the pain, but it honestly got stressful and I felt like I was being set up to fail. Tim is still going strong, but I guess it's ok to admit defeat.

On to plan B - Though I've given up on completing the program, I've GOT to get rid of this extra weight. The number on the scale is relative to everyone so for that reason, I'm not going to say it. I've gotten to where I can admit it though, but I will say, that believe it or not, I've got 20 pounds to lose. I was about 8 pounds over my ideal weight before getting pregnant, and I'm still 12 pounds over my pre baby weight. I can still fit into most all my pre pregnancy clothes, but I still have all this extra weight somehow. I'm not quite sure where it's camping out. I don't feel like I look 20 pounds overweight, but maybe I'm just dillusional. However, the scales don't lie, and I've got to get myself together. So after doing some research, I signed up for Weight Watchers. I also ordered Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred which seems much more managable at 30 minutes a workout. I still plan on doing some of the P90x videos that focus on some of my areas of needed improvements (like arms) but I just don't want to committ to an hour a day 6 days a week and feel horrible if I miss a day. Weight Watchers seems like a great fit for me because its basically like Microsoft Money except for food. It's not brain surgery and I can still have the foods I normally fix, I just have to track it all. So far it's really opened my eyes to some of the bad things I have been putting into my body without even realizing it. Let's face it, losing weight it hard, there's just no way around it. I'm probably going to be hungry sometimes, and I'm going to have to exercise. However, I just LOVE food too much to give up the occasional splurge. I don't want to give up some of life's simple pleasures, like a Muddy's cupcake! And Weight Watchers allows me to do that. Hopefully I can stick with it. I have to.

Baby Wise - This is one of the "weapons" in my life that's actually not gone too far off course. I would highly reccomend this book to any new mom. The Baby Whisperer is a lot like it, just has a different tone, but they basically say the same thing; get your baby in a routine - Eat - Play - Sleep in 2 and 1/2 to 3 hour intervals stretching out as they grow older. It's important that you do it in that order, especially eating upon waking instead of the other way around making sure your baby doen't get dependent on that bottle to get himself/herself to sleep. Like my (wonderful) pediatrician said, there is no way you can follow a routine to the T all day every day. And that's ok. I think some mom's beat themselves up about it, and I've had to learn to be flexible, espcially having Savannah in childcare, but it's actually worked out quite well, and they've been very accomodating and they try to incorporate a lot of those principles anyway because it just makes for happy, content babies.

Contrary to I'm sure tons of people's beliefs, the ealier you start something like this, the better, in my humble, limited experience (within reason of course...I like to say I gently implemented the routine) I just imagine, it would be more difficult to implement good habits to a baby who has already inadvertantly developed some bad ones. But like I said, I've come to some kinks in the road and am slowly working it out. For example, she's started doing is testing out her vocal cords BIG TIME. It's both cute and annoying and it's been waking her up from naps and cutting them short so I'm not able to feed her immediately after she wakes up. No big deal...as long as I'm not feeding her to put her to sleep I'm not worried about it. Another thing that she's been doing as she is growing is developing the ability to go longer between feedings. However, it's not always consistent. So I still try to feed her every three hours, but sometimes she will only want a couple of ounces in the late afternoon. Well it makes sense that she might be starving right before bed...of course it's ok to have a little bottle before bed in that case. Life happens. But this book has some great principles to live by when it comes to teaching your baby good sleep habits, and just an overal routine. She's not perfect all the time, but I will say one of the best parts about it is that it teaches them how to be independent and soothe themselves to sleep. On a normal night she is asleep within about 5 minutes. Bliss. It's made a believer out of me.