Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Attachment Parenting: A Weight Loss Method?

I have officially lost 55 pounds since being pregnant with Willem. The last time I weighed what I weigh now was when I was 12. I didn't know that I could weigh what I do. One time my grandpa told me that my grandma liked to diet and stay thin, but he often felt like she was too thin. He said that he liked her most when she weighed 146 pounds. I made it a goal to never get below that because I always thought that my grandma looked great and if grandpa said that was the weight she looked best at, I believed him. Well, now I'm below that. I could lose a few more pounds and still be healthy, but I'm not pushing it and I don't want to lose more than another 10. Of course, there are differences between me and my grandma. She was about an inch taller than me, so she would need more weight to porportionally match her frame.

And really what matters most is that I am healthy and not how much I weigh. And to be honest, I am at the healthiest point of my life so far. I am regularly exercising and eating well. If you ask family and friends, I eat ALOT, but I try to have it be a healthful diet of lots of veggies and whole grains.

To be honest, I can contribute my weight loss to my parenting style. I breastfeed Willem so my body is producing the calories he needs and its using my excess fat stores to do it. I also wear him when we take walks so I'm get weight resistance training while getting a cardio workout. Its like I'm wearing 20 pounds of ankle and wrists weights on my torso. I also make a goal to walk to the majority of places that I go and in Seattle its easy to do that with the scarcity of free parking. If I can walk somewhere, I'll do it. If its too far to walk, I can take a bus and that requires walking too as I get to bus stops and my destination. Another thing is bed sharing. Willem sleeps in our bed with us (we've got the crib set up as a sidecar) and he nurses throughout the night. I barely need to wake up and he's helping my body burn through even more calories. And its been working for me. Obviously. I'm now 25 pounds below my prepregnancy weight.

So really, who knew that attachment parenting could be a way to lose weight?

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