Stuck in the Suck

I feel like I’m stuck in the suck. Two steps forward, one step back.

I wrote about the importance of the separation of food and fitness back in January of 2014. TWO years ago. Two years ago. Guyz – I’ve been battling this demon for way longer than two years, but I publicly acknowledged it two years ago.

I’m a little rambly today. Bare with me if this is more stream of conscious then well thought out.

There are multiple factors to being stuck in the suck; sleep deprivation being the main one. It’s hard to make good life choices when you’re running on little to no sleep. Another factor: breastfeeding. It’s really effing hard. “You’ll lose all the weight while you breastfeed” they said. That is bullshit. Total bullshit. I can’t lose a damn pound.

Now, let’s move to the elephant in the room: exercise. I really like how I feel about myself when I exercise. I just feel better emotionally and to be perfectly honest, my body doesn’t feel good at this weight and neither does my self confidence. My mom took a family picture of us on Easter and lawd jesus – I about cried. Okay, I might have cried in the bathroom. I’m only sharing it because I know some day I will look back and wish I had kept it. My fatpack is massive again and I refuse to wear Spanx. No worries, though – I totally cropped it so I didn’t hate it. HA!

Spin. It was great. I loved every single effing minute of it. It was a fantastic hour to focus on myself and think about something other than Monster. BUT – then at about 4pm I crashed. And I crashed hard. Like I was a zombie for the rest of the day and could barely keep my eyes open, especially when nursing (hello danger). You know why? We’re in the middle of the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. This means I’m up every 2 hours with a baby that isn’t necessarily hungry, or fussy, or dirty, or anything other than AWAKE. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s fine. I’m shockingly okay with it. Tired, yes, but I’ve always had sleep issues. I function well for as little, or as interrupted sleep, as I am currently getting.

Anyhow, this is creating a cycle of being stuck in the suck for me. I go to bed every night with the intention of getting up bright eyed and bushy tailed and Brooke and I going for a run around the block before Kevin and Huck are up for the day. But – then Monster awakens for the day and I’m deliriously exhausted so the run doesn’t happen. Instead, I nurse Monster on the couch and doze with her so I can function for the rest of the day. Or – if it’s a day I work I am up at 6am and working while Kevin has baby duty (he takes her to school, etc.).

I started viewing my body as a machine in Jan 2015 and that worked really well. I was exercising for fitness and not for weight loss. I am trying to get back into that groove – taking a walk just to take a walk and not weighing myself 6,012 times after.

Then there’s the clean eating. I cleaned my diet way up and in turn my supply took a massive hit. I mean capital M, Massive. I’m already on the low end of a supply so I really don’t have much wiggle room. I’m now doing multiple power hours a week (remember when that was related to booze and not pumping? My how the times have changed.) I’m trying desperately to get it back up. This in turn means I HAVE to eat more. I’m still eating as clean as possible, but my calorie intake has to be substantially higher. I think I’d dropped to about 1800/day when my supply tanked, and not intentionally, but it’s really difficult for me to eat much more than that when I’m being a super freak about what I’m consuming. I’m eating lots of avocados and nuts, and I even boiled some eggs the other day. I’ve added some gatorade to my diet, as well. I’ve heard it does good things for increasing your milk supply. Now I’m back up to about 2400-2600 and I’m gradually increasing my supply. I think. I hope. I have come to the point where I’ve realized I need to eat to breastfeed, because that’s so much more important to me than the weight loss. So, instead of abs being made in the kitchen, I’m going with Boobie Juice being made in the kitchen.

I won’t lie, this is an extremely difficult mentality for me. We all know how much I struggle with moderation and finding my grey. I’ve eaten clean for 3 weeks now and haven’t lost any weight. That is a tough pill to swallow. I need to ditch my scale, maybe not completely destroy it with a hammer, but maybe take a break and just focus on good lifestyle choices. Back to basics: one meal at a time, one workout at a time, one day at a time.