As much as I want to pretend that I’m okay with the fact that it’s going to take a while to lose the extra weight, it’s impossible. I find the excess flab incredibly depressing. I’ve shrunken considerably, but there’s a huge roll around my belly that bugs the hell out of me. I can feel it when I bend. It hovers when I’m in down dog. It squishes over the top of my pants. I just want it to go away.
I wasn’t a fat kid by any stretch of the imagination, but I was tall and I wasn’t skinny. Around puberty, which unfortunately struck around my 11th birthday, I stopped growing and plumped up. I was heavy enough to be ridiculed by the shithead boys in my grade. They snapped my bra and chanted “THUMP, THUMP, THUMP,” as though I was an elephant when I walked down the hall. I was traumatized, stopped eating, and lost a ton of weight, which I regained and lost again several times until I turned 17 and lost my baby fat for good.
Back in 2002 I’d gained some weight. Boyfiend and I had been together for two years and I’d gotten comfortable and lazy. My pants stopped fitting. Utterly disturbed by the camel toe, I began a strict regimen of diet pills and exercise. That shit worked. After a few months I’d dropped 15 pounds, quit the diet pills and continued with the exercise. Except for when Boyfiend and I broke up for a while and my weight plummeted to 103, for the next several years I weighed about 112. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but it never fluctuated more than 2-3 pounds in either direction.
Then I got pregnant and gained almost 60 pounds. I’ve been hovering a few pounds below 140 since the Fiendling was 2 weeks old and I’m afraid it will stick. Intellectually I know it probably won’t. I know that I’m entirely too weight conscious and that I exercise and eat well and blah blah blah, but my body is holding on to this weight for now and it’s not budging.
I’m trying not to resent it, my body, since I’m still amazed by what it did. I had a baby. I actually pushed a baby out of my body and now my breasts are his sole source of nourishment. My breasts actually know how to produce enough milk on a daily basis to feed a baby. And he’s growing! And healthy! And beautiful! I don’t want to go on some bizarre diet or exercise plan and upset this delicate balance, but it’s depressing that 2 out of the 4 last items of clothing I’ve purchased in the past few weeks have been maternity. I cannot find a real, non-elastic-waistband pair of pants that doesn’t make my ass look I’m wearing mom jeans.
Doodlebug1012 | 15-May-06 at 12:32 pm | Permalink
I know exactly how you feel. My body has looked the same since baby Doodle was 2 weeks old, and I can’t seem to get my belly to look any thinner. I look at it and play with the fat and complain to Mr. Doodlebug that my gut looks disgusting. He says his usual “you look great, give yourself a break,” and “even if your belly looks like this forever who cares?” I do. And I would be very upset if it did look like this forever. It bothers me the most on the days when I squeeze into select non-maternity pants because my fat will inevitably ooze over the top of them by lunch time. I’ve reached that very delicate point where non-maternity clothes will just barely fit in the morning and not at all after dinner. Today I’m wearing maternity jeans.
Anonymous | 15-May-06 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
Well at least you have a gorgeous baby along with the stomach fat roll..Try being fat for years, lose the weight only to keep the same sort of fat roll you moms have, and all the while want babies so desperately but you can’t have one.
So I’ve got a leftover fat roll and no baby..Don’t complain so much all you moms out there..At least you have a baby!!!
Pigs | 15-May-06 at 5:52 pm | Permalink
Oooohhh, not the mom jeans. I know what you’re saying there. I just read the other day that though breastfeeding makes your uterus contract and uses lots of calories that your body actually still holds onto fat stores while your breastfeeding for caveman survival reasons. So think of it as something to look forward to?
karmajenn | 17-May-06 at 1:30 pm | Permalink
Sing it, sister. I’m at 4.5 months post and stuck at the last 15 lbs. Not that I’m trying that hard. And the sour cream donuts don’t help.
People keep telling me “those last 10 lbs will never go away.” Let me tell you, nothing is a better motivator than someone saying that shite to me. Sure, it’s not easy and it’s not quick. But it will happen. Once I actually get up off the couch.
For a cheap pants pick me up, I recommend the Ann Taylor Loft sale rack. Specifically the “Ann” style. Hangs a bit lower, fits wells and no mommy ass in sight.