Fortunately, (depending how you look at it,) I did end up losing most of my baby weight after the first few months of giving birth. I continued to eat my small pre-portioned meals, while trying to resist my husband’s home cooking, and running 2 – 3 miles per day on our home treadmill. And believe me, it is not fun running, (or doing any physical activity for that matter,) when your breasts are producing milk! It was agony, but I was finally able to squeeze into my size 6 pants again, which felt worth it at the time.
Around this time, I began feeling plagued with the baby blues BIG time. I had been laid off from my cushy job in the big city, and my husband and I decided to move back to his small home town to be closer to family. While I tried my hardest to see the silver lining, I was definitely depressed and grew very bitter towards my husband and even my infant son, (although I did my best to hide it from him.)
Like many women do, I masked my feelings of depression and anxiety as best I could by focusing even more on food and exercise. Secretly though, I resented and blamed my husband for my food and body issues. There was a constant loop of blame and negativity playing through my head saying: If he would just support me by not keeping junk food in the house, it wouldn’t be so hard for me to lose weight! If he hadn’t gotten me pregnant, I wouldn’t even have to lose this stupid weight in the first place! If he hadn’t moved our family to this rinky-dink little town with NO healthy eating options and NO decent place to exercise, I would have lost this weight months ago! And on and on it went.
Looking back, I know I didn’t really believe any of these absurd thoughts. My husband was my biggest supporter and worked extremely hard to make me happy and feel better about myself – probably to a fault. But it was just easier to blame him for my unhappiness and issues with food than to think there was something wrong with me, as I had in college. I was following every single healthy eating tip imaginable, but still always felt hungry. I was eating 5 – 6 small meals a day consisting of low-fat yogurt, Fiber One cereal, plain oatmeal with cinnamon, baked fish and chicken breasts, tons of salads and veggies, omega-3 capsules, protein shakes, green tea, etc. Yet, it seemed like no matter what volume of food I was eating, I was always hungry for more.
