My daughter is now 10 weeks old – and despite my 3 year old very kindly telling me “you don’t have a fat tummy anymore” – I still feel rather bloated and overweight. Before anyone reminds me, I know its only been two months, I am familiar with the concept of 9 months on 9 months off, and yes I have been in hospital unable to walk for 3 weeks of the 10, but my confidence is pretty low and I have a plan to do something about it! My hair is dull, my skin is a dubious shade of grey, and my eye bags and holding their own bags. I look exhausted.

I am not a dieter, and never will be. I like food to much, and am impartial to a chocolate bar or two (ok, three!). I am also realistic. I don’t see the point in doing something short term that I can revert back from once the weight is gone, so need to have something more long term.

For now, I am somewhat limited as to what I can do on the exercise front. Although I am walking again now and my mobility is improving every day, I cant swim breast stroke yet (as too much strain on the pelvis) and I definitely cannot jog or run – both of which would have been my exercise of choice. Instead, I have planned the following small steps to try and get my fitness and energy levels back up.

1) Lots of green vegetables – My iron count post section is pretty low, having lost quite a lot of blood during surgery. I took the iron tablets for a while, but they come with some undesirable side effects (I won’t go into detail!!). For now I need to  get the iron up via my food intake. On a positive note, I actually love green veg-  particularly broccoli, green beans, cabbage and kale – so I am aiming to plan at least 3 ‘meat and two veg’ style dinners during the week. My Dad does us a mean roast every Sunday where I have more like 5 or 6 different veg, so that’s a definite help. I also need to try and increase my vitamin C intake, as that helps iron get absorbed more easily into the blood stream, so orange juice with breakfast every day may help.

2) WALK – Now that I can finally do it, I need to walk more and more. The physio has recommended that I try and walk for 30 minutes each day, which to be honest, I didn’t do even before I was pregnant, let alone after have a major muscle rehabilitation! I have a step counter and movement tracker, so will aim to increase my steps each day. I cant see myself doing 10,000 a day as recommended anytime soon, but if I can do at least 5000 a day I will be happy. This exercise will not only get me out in the fresh (sometimes VERY fresh!) air, but is also a great way of working my weak muscles in my leg whilst toning and burning calories in the process. This one is going to be harder in Winter, as I will need to resist the temptation to hibernate. If all else fails, there is always Just Dance on the wii!!

3) Drink more water – I could easily sit and drink Lemonade and squash all day if given the chance, but I want to try and get back to drinking water. When I was at university, I always noticed that the girls who had the shiniest hair had a big bottle of water on their desks in lectures. Coincidence maybe, but hopefully improving my water intake will not only help my skin and hair, but can’t do any harm for my milk production either!!!

When, and only when I am feeling a little less tense on the muscle front, I will start swimming again, as I found this really relaxing and a great stress release. I am lucky that my mother in law would happily come along and watch Neve whilst I do 20 lenngths or so. Somehow I cant see myself in the lido any time soon though! 🙂 I will also aim to revisit my friends at Parkrun – a non competitive yet tracked 5k walk/run in my local park. I will aim to walk it to start with, and then hopefully as my strength improves, I can start a gentle jog. Oh to get back to my sub 25 minute 5k days!!!

Finally, I will aim to breast feed for as long as possible. They say breast feeding burns around 500 calories a day, however at the moment with the rate Neve’s feeding, it feels like it should be about 1000!!!

I am currently about 1.5 stone more than I should be, so will weigh myself again in the new year. Lets face it with Christmas in the middle, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge!! 🙂

Wish me luck, and I’ll let you know how I am getting on!!

Lucy xxx