Substitutes?

[Glamourcide]

Okay, so too much fruit = bad? But I really like apples!! More protein... will work on that, shouldn't be too hard when DH is forever banging his fork on the table demanding more red meat! Either way, Christmas is fast approaching and I have indeed planned a festive blow-out involving bucketloads of roasts and chocolate mousse for dessert... maybe even some margaritas mum's bringing over will add to the calories!

To be completely truthful though I don't know if it's the exercise that's excessive. Yeah, I never seem to have enough time to do it but in a day I'm lucky to find 45 mins, usually broken into two or three short bursts when the kids are napping/occupied/in bed. Although I suppose housework like vaccuming/mopping etc counts towards it, too, so maybe an hour, an hour and a quarter on a really good day? I try to do 20-30 mins on the training bike to get my heart rate up, then some light weight work/sit-ups/push-ups in sets to tone up my muscles. I read somewhere that if you want to just tone, instead of bulking up, you're supposed to do cardio first, then weights, if you want to bulk up it's weights first? I do give myself two days off in any seven-day period, sometimes two days in a row, other times I'll have a day off, then another day off later in the week, and I do tend to eat more/eat 'bad' foods on some days, maybe one day a week I let myself eat whatever I feel like in small portions so that I don't have a blow-out and totally binge for a week straight when the pressure gets on top of me.

Rouge I agree, I do have to watch myself at times because I find it all too easy to slip back into bad habits almost without realising... or more knowing, and that little voice is doing the happy dance again, so I try to fight it... I have been having a few other issues with myself in the months since DD2 was born, the major one being a very poor body image, so I have tried to stay as aware of that as possible and not let myself get out of control (hence the weigh-ins and tape measuring once a week only), and stick to just the one goal weight. The reason I've chosen 54kg (which may be a bit low going by BMIs but to be honest I don't place too much faith in BMI tables as they fail to take a lot of factors into account) is that that's the weight I was in the months before I fell pg with DD1, and it's probably the only period I can remember being honestly happy with my body and my weight, and being proud of myself - before that, I'd been miserable for a very long time (either dangerously underweight or shamefully overweight), and since then what with having kids, I've also been pretty upset with the way I look (oh, how I wish I had been able to enjoy my pregnant body like other women, I just felt awful!).

Oh, and water - 2.5-3L a day, sometimes a little more on really hot days/if I've been sweating a bit. Why so much? Because I've been prone to UTIs since childhood and there is NOTHING worse than peeing razorblades when you have two kids yelling for attention lol. I had a doctor advise me that a 'person of my size' (whatever that means) needed to be consuming 'at least 3.5L a day', but that sounded ridiculous. I do drink a bit more than what's recommended because I just hate, hate, hate having a UTI, but I don't think it's an excessive amount?

But, with all that being said, I'm quite close to my goal now so I have no aversion to trying out a few different eating options (ie eating more) and seeing how that goes. I might talk to my doctor about my metabolism issues and see if she thinks it's a problem... probably not really anything 'wrong' with me but I do tend to hang onto excess weight if I let it creep up and it takes a long, long time for my body to process food etc (TMI warning, eg I usually only 'go' twice a week whereas DH, who has a wonderfully speedy metabolism, goes at least twice a day so I compare to him and see it as a problem, kwim?). Maybe a bit of genetics at play there too because my mum's always been very heavyset and the women on dad's side of the family tend to carry a bit 'extra', too, so since puberty it's been an uphill battle to not just slide into being overweight!

I just want to thank you girls for the support and advice It's really, really hard for me because not many people around me IRL understand much about where I've been, and I've had such bad habits in the past I don't really trust myself to make these decisions without the advice of others who have a better idea of what is good, kwim?
So I'm very, very grateful for the support and advice, it's wonderful. Thank-you