The Journey Back, the next installment

I've been working my hiney off.  Literally.
Last update wasn't too long after I had Emily, but I have been better at taking pictures unlike last time.  And yes, I'm including those here.

How goes the attempt to get my body back after baby 9?

Not too bad.
Actually, I'm going to toot my horn a little ("toot!"), it's going pretty darn well.

I picked running back up at 3 weeks postpartum, and at 6 weeks after the official clearance from the doc, I jumped back in with P90x.  Ah, Tony Horton, the Michael Scott of the workout world.  Love it!

I p90x-ed faithfully for the first five weeks of the schedule, along with running, but then when the opportunity to do that half marathon popped up I pushed Tony Horton aside so my legs weren't quite so spent and I wasn't quite as tired.
That worked out pretty well, and after being lazy nice to my body to recover from the race (and the stomach flu that hit me the night after...hello?!  we did the stomach flu last month!  not fair!), I'm ready to be back to hanging with Tony 6 days a week.  That means two-a-days on my running days again, but as long as the body holds up I'm ok with that.
Uh, starting next week of course.

I am within a few pounds of my official pre-pregnancy weight, and only one pound from my "I'm ok with weighing this because it's what I weighed back in the day" weight.  I gained 35 during this pregnancy (yes, even with all the running.  dang.).  My hope was to hit that "back in the day" weight by my birthday at the end of October, so I'm thrilled with the progress I've made!  I've NEVER been able to do that so quickly!  Of course I've never worked this hard on getting back in shape so soon after having a baby.  Last time around I didn't see the weight I'm currently at until Sam was almost 6 months old, and then I rebounded back up another 5 pounds and held on to that till he was 9 months old.  I'm hoping to not do that whole rebound back up thing again this time.  I'm working to find the right balance of eating enough to fuel workouts appropriately, but not eating too much.  It's tricky sometimes.  I realized two weeks ago that I wasn't eating quite enough-I was dragging a little through workouts and feeling more tired in general, so I've been trying to up my intake a bit more and focus on good foods instead of just getting enough calories from whatever I might grab when I'm hungry.  I've maintained the same number on the scale for two weeks and been feeling better during and after my workouts so I think I'm finding a good balance, and now that my energy is back up I can bump up the intensity of the workouts a little more I hope.  We'll see.

It will be interesting to see if my body will hold on to these last few pounds until I finish nursing (as it usually does), or if I really will be able to get them off in the near future.  Making sure that I am able to exclusively breastfeed Emily is priority number one for me, so if the pounds stick around for a while I can deal with that.  Most of my clothes fit again (even if it isn't quite the way I prefer them to), so if I stay here for the next 9ish (or more) months I'll be ok.   And even if I do put a couple back on-and with fall baking and the holidays coming up, that is probably the most likely scenario-well, so be it.  I'd rather not get too strung out about that number on the scale.  My preferred route is to keep up on workouts and make sure that treats get shared with all the kids so I don't eat too many by myself.

And now (....drumroll....) all that blabbing from above in picture form.
No, I didn't bother to edit these except for the merging.  Sorry, I'm photoshop illiterate so I used some online thing.  Close enough.

 

Nice to see a big change over the past little while.  These pictures are good for me to see when I feel like I'm not making much progress.   And can you tell when I'm due to see my chiropractor?  yikes!
Yes, the pictures are getting further apart.  There isn't so much change going on over a week anymore so the pictures are now out to four weeks.  Emily is 16 weeks old now (where the heck did that time go?!), so I'll take another pic in two weeks, and keep up in four week increments for a roughly once a month picture till I hit the one year mark.  I'm interested to see how it compares to last time around.  And I'm anxious to get my abs back.  I feel like they held up pretty well and that I've got a decent start, but on nights like tonight where I'm all bloated and just....blah, I have to remind myself to be patient, that I'll be back there soon enough.  Time to tighten and tone!