I don’t hold to the tradition that there is only one start of the year, and that start is January. You can pretty much reboot the year – and life – whenever you feel like it, or want to, or want to feel like it. My New Yearses are January, June and September. I figure having multiple chances to review and renew makes resolutions stick a little stronger than having one shot every 365 days.
So, this year, I’m trying some new stuff. New for me, anyway. No one likes being a pessimist, least of all me, but over this past year I have been more frustrated and disappointed in myself being frustrated and disappointed that something very much needed to change.
Problem 1: Lingering Baby Weight and Feeling Blah
I don’t know who lied to me and said that breastfeeding would “melt off the pounds” (I’ve heard those exact words: melt – with all the ease of butter in a pan over medium heat, an image that now makes me want butter, which is probably why I’m not “melting off the pounds”) but FALSE ADVERTISING. I had a few pre-conceived notions of weight loss following the birth of my babe loosely loosely on my ickle wee mother chirping, “I gained exactly 25 pounds with each of my babies and lost it right after!”, a bigorgeous friend of mine dropping not only her baby weight but like ALL THE REST OF THE WEIGHT SHE EVER HAD in what seemed like six weeks after her son’s birthday, and having never before struggled with weight issues due to a mixture of good genes, crazy metabolism, and, oh! being in my 20s.
It was a kindly and woman I met at a mall once, a few months after Hugo was born:
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t get your stomach back after a C-section, because you can!
who first caused me to think, Erm, that’s weird. Like, “Keep driving! Don’t let anyone warn you that your breaks are out!” and I’m all, Wait – the breaks are out? Fast forward to 13 months postpartum (aside: when does it stop being “postpartum” or appropriate to stop counting in months? is my mom 391 months postpartum?) and I have a nagging 10 pounds that likes to nestle itself in my bum and (fie, kindly woman at the mall!) stomach areas, not to mention a general feeling of malaise and weakness. Like melted butter.
Solutions:
- Yoga at the Swansea Community Recreation Centre once a week.
- BeFit-Mom program, both the book, Exercise After Pregnancy, and DVD, “Bounce Back Fast! Post Natal Core Conditioning”.
- Jogging.
Problem 2: Sucky, Sucky Attitude
I mean, we all have bad days. But bad weeks? months? A YEAR OF BAD? That’s just not right. And although I first thought knew it was the lack-of-sleep-waterboarding-torture-hell-breastfeeding-every-four-hours-but-not-melting-off-the-pounds but my little champ has been sleeping through the night since, like, three months old so I can’t use that as my crutch anymore.
There’s the adaptation to being at home instead of out in the crazyfun world (another post for another time), using baby talk as my prime method of communication, and aforementioned state of melted butter, but none of those excuses (or combination of excuses) are enough to warrant a permanently dismal outlook on life. If this guy can be happy, I can be happy.
It just takes little steps.
Solutions:
- Reading The Happiness Project, recommended to and purchased for me by my sister-in-law.
- Signing up for The Abundant Mama e-course.
- Signing up for The January Cure from Apartment Therapy. Yes, it’s partway through January already and you could have all benefited from this link approximately 16 days ago but I just signed up yesterday and am making a mad dash to catch up and SO CAN YOU.
gazaneo 