Welcome to Part 6 of my post-pregnancy weight loss journey! If you haven’t read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, or Part 5 yet, I encourage you to do so before continuing on with this post.
All caught up? Great! Let’s keep going.
The photos and measurements I’m going to be showing in this week’s post were taken 4 months post-delivery.
Here’s a reminder of where I was 1-week post-partum:
Starting weight 152.4 lbs.
Here’s where I am at 4 months post-partum. These photos and measurements were taken on July 28, 2019.
- Weight: 130.9 lbs. (I had lost an additional 4.5 lbs. in one month!)
- Body fat percentage: 30.6%
- Chest measurement (biggest part): 36.5 inches
- Waist measurement (smallest part): 30 inches
- Hip measurement (biggest part): 38 ¼ inches
- Right thigh measurement (biggest part): 23 inches
Total weight loss since starting – 21.5 lbs. Still moving in the right direction!
Even though I continued to lose weight this month, I had a challenging time breaking through some barriers to keep the scale moving downwards.
So what happened to make this month so challenging? I had to completely revamp my mindset!
And what in the world do I mean by that?
My weight loss so far has been pretty transformational….and along with that weight loss has come a closet full of clothes that are now too big and either don’t fit well or don’t fit at all!
When I was growing up, my parents didn’t prioritize new clothes for my sister and I. We got a lot of hand-me-downs from our older cousins, so by the time the clothes got to me, they had been through 3 other people, were stretched out, and were at least 5-7 years outdated. It was this way even through high school, and I never had much confidence in my appearance growing up. This was partially because of the clothes I was wearing and partially because of my constant battle with weight.
So even though now I’m an adult and can get new clothes as I want or need, I find that I have a hard time letting go of the clothes that I worked to get, because the styles are finally me and I actually had a say over what I got. I also have a hard time letting go of things if they are not “used up”. I have no problems throwing away things that are broken, or consumables that are gone. I have no issues getting rid of empty containers or packaging. But if something is still usable, there is a pull to hold onto it, “just in case!”. And it can take a lot of uses and washes for clothes to become unwearable!
However, I also know that I wasn’t feeling my best while wearing the clothes that were becoming too big – my confidence started to slip as things became more ill-fitting. And as I lost more weight, I found that I was excited to try new styles and to update my clothing personality as well. This weight loss is revealing a whole new Lesley – in more ways than one!
So that means I now have to go through my closet and figure out what to keep and what needs to go. And since my weight loss has affected every part of my body, every piece of clothing has to be evaluated to see if it’s going to earn the right to stay. With two small kids, working outside the home, and limited time to keep the house running, this is a project that will likely take me a few months.
But initially, as those clothes started to get too big, I almost let myself slip back into old habits. Even though I was excited to find new things, I really didn’t want to spend the money to do an entire brand-new wardrobe (which is what it’s looking like since my weight loss has been so dramatic in such a short period of time). It also stressed me out that I had so many clothes in good condition, that I still liked, but just didn’t fit well. I figured I had lost a lot of weight already, so why not just stop here and keep the clothes that were now fitting well?
But after I gave it some thought, I realized that even though I was at a “good” weight, I still didn’t think it was right for me. I still didn’t have as much energy as I wanted, and I still had “excess baggage” to get rid of (physically & mentally!). And after reflecting some more, perhaps all these old clothes were part of that excess baggage and it was time to let them go in order to reach my new, full potential in life – both physically and mentally.
It took a few weeks to sort this out in my head, but I finally overcame that hurdle. And let me tell you – now I get excited every time I get dressed in the morning and come across an item that I think I’ll be getting rid of at the days end. Most clothes stretch a bit as you wear them during the day, and I find that things which seemed “ok” in the morning are just too big by the end of an active day with my kids. It’s a huge emotional win to place that item into my donation bag at the end of the day. I feel like I’ve truly turned a corner forever with my weight loss battle, and getting rid of the clothes that are too big is a mindset shift I’ve never done before. Normally I would hold onto them – “just in case” I was to gain all the weight back.
And that negative mindset always turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy!
“Change your thoughts to change your life!”
-ME
So now I know there’s no turning back. There’s no way that I’m going to spend the money on a larger-sized wardrobe down the road. I now have a health and financial reason to keep myself on track!
For the next post in this series, I’ll be covering what happened when I stopped nursing/breastfeeding. After all, they say that breastfeeding can burn up to 500 calories per day. So what happens to my weight loss when that calorie burn stops? Stay tuned to find out!
All the best,
Lesley
P.S. Just a reminder that you can download the free guide I created which details how adding more protein to my daily breakfast dramatically accelerated my weight loss! (You can read more about that in Part 5 of this series). Simply click here to get immediate access!
P.P.S. If you have questions, you can check out my health disclaimer.
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