A Healer’s Geste

Six Week Honeymoon is Over

I waited until 3 months before getting serious with myself after the boys, and this time I know better. Nothing magical is going to happen.

This pregnancy I did gain less overall and I did, somehow, lose more right off the bat. So I only have about as much to lose as stubbornly stayed on until after I weaned. So I don’t know if it’s even going to be possible to lose much weight at this point, but if I don’t get my act together I’ll end up gaining weight instead.

About a year ago I discovered the book French Women Don’t Get Fat, and I felt like finally the common-sense notions I had lurking under the surface in my mind coalesced into an understandable whole. It’s all kind of an intuitive mesh in my head, and I can’t really sum it up well, so if you are curious, you’ll have to check out the book from the library. It reads like a real book, not a diet book, not a how-to, and if you can get past the snobby Frenchness and recognize that some snobbishness about your food can be a healthy thing, it’s an interesting read. She might come across at points as a snob, but I think her goal is to give you insight into a French woman’s relationship with food (ecstasy being a frequent emotion), which is vastly different than an American woman’s relationship with food (guilt being a primary emotion). I like to think of it as Old World versus Modernism, myself, and then I find it easier to relate and “go there.”

I believe it was consciously moving in that direction and gaining better food habits and tastes that was behind my lower weight gain this pregnancy. I didn’t purposefully change anything; I thought I was doing the exact same thing as I had the other times. But I only ate what I wanted to satisfy hunger and I didn’t use my pregnancy as an excuse to gorge myself and I actually ate about the same portion size pregnant as not. I took the same portion as I was accustomed to, I ate it, I was full, so I didn’t take more. Imagine that! Anyway, if that’s what caused me to not gain as much this time around, I’m hoping it will also help me lose what I couldn’t before. Because I have more than Ilse-weight hanging around this time.

Without explaining the philosophy, then, here are simply my resolutions:

Food

• Think about my food, savor it, taste it, enjoy it (hence excluding fake food, which has little to taste and savor, from my diet)
• Watch portion size and eat no more than necessary for hunger (use her first half, then think if you need more, then half, then think before proceeding, etc.)
• Only go for desserts that are “worth it,” and then savor it and make a little go a long way
• No eating on autopilot, no eating for boredom
• Drink water, water, water! I always get off my water bandwagon in the newborn stage as I revel in coffee and wine again. So: one large glass first thing in the morning, one between meals, one with each meal, one or two after dinner, and one large glass before bed. This is my minimum. Any other liquid refreshment must be in addition to my water.

Movement

• Stretch in the morning (this isn’t “French”; I think it helps me wake up in the morning and I think it increases my metabolism for the day)
• Don’t avoid the stairs. Don’t minimize the trips. Just skip up those stairs!
• Carry the baby in the Bjorn for at least a couple hours everyday until she gets too big (Hans got too long at about 5 months and Jaeger got too heavy at about 3 months)
• Walk to playgroup (1 mile one-way) as often as weather permits (the weather is already pretty close to permitting)
• Walk somewhere else at least once a week (I can walk to the post office, Bookworm, Farmer’s Market in season, Uptown shopping plaza, Safeway/Office Depot/Big Lots shopping plaza, our bank, but the library has moved to a temporary location that’s too far for a walk now). I finally got smart at the end of walking season last fall and bought a bike chain-lock for the double-jogging stroller so we can lock it on a bike rack if we walk to a place we want to enter. My walking plan is to keep the boys in the stroller and Ilse in the Bjorn. I hope she stays on the petite end of things!
• Start a garden
• Unfortunately, I had better add stomach crunches to the mix as well.