Honest- Pregnancy Means Gaining Weight

Time for another honest post around here. I've been thinking about how or whether to share my feelings about this for a while now, but I think it is time. So here it is. I'm pregnant. Being pregnant means you gain weight. Honestly, I'm not loving it.

First- I want to acknowledge that there are so many women who struggle just to get pregnant. I don't want to belittle that in any way. I am so grateful that my body is able to carry and grow a new little one for our family. I LOVE babies and I love my kids. While that is all true, I also know most women have or are struggling their body image, including pregnant and postpartum mommas. It doesn't matter what your actual size or numbers are- confidence issues abound for women.

I wish I were sharing how much I don't mind at all that I have gained weight and how grateful I am for the extra pounds. I wish I were mature enough to be talking about the negative voice of the media and all the ways that I have conquered it's influence, but that just wouldn't be the truth today. Someday I hope that I will be unaffected by what size my jeans are and will have moved on to higher issues like ending world hunger - but today I'm still frequently bummed out about where I fall on my pregnancy weight gain chart.

Engaged and in college. 19 years old. Eating a very restricted diet and exercising like crazy.

I have a history of body image struggles and I feel like it is only fair to be real about them. I dealt with an eating disorder in high school and in college- bouncing between anorexia and bulimia. I am pretty sure my obsession with food even picked my major for me- Nutritional Science. I have been in counseling over several different periods of life.

During my second bout of counseling. The dietitian recommended I let myself start eating whatever sounded good. Throw the rules away. Obviously you can see what I was craving.

Near the end of counseling less than two months later. I gained at least 15 pounds on that rule-free kick while trying to adjust my attitudes about food.

I gained a lot of weight with my first pregnancy and less with the next as I worked on developing a healthy relationship with food and myself. Here I am a few days before I had Easton.

This is a few weeks before I had Kesler. (I was on a couponing kick at the time.)

And with a lot of hard work I can say that for the most part I have conquered my addiction (the eating disorder) over the last five years. The biggest turning point was probably about two years ago when food finally stopped mattering to me. I could eat or not eat and food was just food for the first time in my adult life memory. For the first time in my life my weight wasn't controlling my life.

A few days after Easton was born. Highest non-pregnant weight ever.

I got down to my thinnest weight ever after Kesler was born and felt like that was a result of me conquering my inner bully. Because of that life change, I didn’t think pregnancy and gaining again would be an issue this time. This is pregnancy number three for me- I have kind-of been down this road before. Unfortunately I think that bully will always be hiding away somewhere ready to talk if I'm willing to listen.

Kesler and I on his second birthday. Mentally the healthiest I have ever been in terms of me and food and what matters.

The truth is though, that sitting here at 28 weeks pregnant, I struggle everyday with how my clothes fit or how my outfit photos make me look or when or if I'll ever be back in my skinny clothes again.  It takes a lot of energy to worry about those things and I just don't want to be frustrated or stressed or miserable about that anymore. I have had a lot of unhappy years spent that way.

See that worried face checking out how the clothes are fitting in the glass door? We take like 100 of each outfit. My three year old gets really tired of the quest for a good photo!

So, what to do? First I try to focus on what I am grateful for- like a new baby, like my awesome kids and husband who love me, and all of the other successes I have in my life right now. I know that the best thing I can do is not give the negative thoughts any space. Speaking from past experience the more I stress about it, the worse I will feel and the more that bully with talk. Dieting, pregnant or not, doesn't work for me because I have had an eating disorder. The only thing that works is to get busy with things that are fulfilling and to not worry about weight or size or numbers.

So that is the plan. Practice self love no matter what happens. And remember that it will always be hard if I let it be.

I hope that sharing this offers encouragement in some way. Sometimes just hearing that someone else is going through a struggle too can lift us up in what we are dealing with. This isn’t easy for me to write or to share, but it is true and I know that the more we are true to ourselves, the more we will love ourselves. And that is the goal right?