Whether you jump in and celebrate, or avoid the internet for the remainder of it, I hope you’re all safe and happy.

February has been a really difficult month for a LOT of different reasons. The health challenge that was supposed to take place, was no candy, pop, or chips – as well as getting out twice a week with the family.

I managed to stay away from pop and candy, but failed once with the chips. We also failed to get out twice a week as a family, and there’s no real good excuse except that it was between -40C and -50C for most of the month. I’m reluctant to bring the children out in anything colder than -30C, especially the newborn. Then we all got really sick, and that has been the last week or so here at home. Not. Fun.

So this month I actually gained 7 lbs. I burst into tears when I saw that. It turned out that making simple challenges wasn’t going to work for me this time. I am absolutely determined to get back down below 200 pounds this year. Basically I decided enough was enough.

I’ve started a 90 day challenge with friends who want to participate. What each person does is completely up to them, but we weigh in on Fridays and motivate one another. My goal is to get from 227 to 215 in 90 days. That’s a pound a week. I’ve started calorie counting again over on myfitnesspal just because I needed reminders as to what proper portions of food look like.

Binge eating and stress eating are huge issues I deal with but again, I’ve hit that magical place where enough is enough and I’m tired of being this weight. 7 months postpartum or not, I need to feel better about myself.

Lets see how it goes.

January is over, and the 31 days of no fast food completed! As I mentioned in previous posts there were days I wanted to dive into a big mac, and others where it didn’t even bother me.

Now it’s on to the challenge for February, which includes no chips, no pop, and no candy – plus whatever naturally transitions over from January. Fast food is no longer automatically off the menu, but I’m hoping by abstaining all of January and breaking that habit I’ll choose to make healthier choices.

The hardest part of the challenge for February is going to be no pop. I typically drink one 350ml can a day, sometimes two. I’m hoping to replace that with tea or water, though I already drink an enormous amount of water daily so I’m not too concerned if it doesn’t get replaced at all.

The rest of the goal for February includes getting out twice a week as a family. The temperatures have been -30 to -50 Celsius lately, so this is not an easy task. It’s also made all the more difficult by our location. This challenge is just as important as the main one and I hope we can accomplish it, but even if we don’t I’m hoping for at least a tiny bit of improvement.

Last month I managed to lose 5lbs from 225 to 220 – the overall year goal is to get below 200lbs. I am not sure how much weight I’ll lose this month on the new goal, but hopefully it continues downwards or at least I don’t gain any more.

The goal my husband and I set for January was no take out for the whole month, and we’re almost there. I’m down 5lbs, from 225 to 220 just from that single change. I didn’t change groceries or eating habits or exercise. Those are challenges coming up. February’s goal is no pop no chips no candy – and fast food is allowed, but I’m hoping by abstaining all of January the healthier habit will carry over. Another part of that goal is out 2x a week with the family which is hard to do where we live because it’s -50c some days, but I’m sure we can find things to do.

There are days I REALLY wanted fast food. Rough days when cooking was absolutely unappealing and I wanted something easy – but I reminded myself about the challenge, and I knew we could do it.

I’m confident we can handle the rest of the challenges, too. Here’s hoping I make it below 200lbs this year and to just being healthier overall.

I was expecting to do a weigh in this week, but then lady stuff happened and as all ladies know this causes massive bloating and water retention so I decided instead of getting depressed at the scale, I’d check another time. There’s just no use in beating myself up.

The challenge for January has been no fast food (no take out). I’m on day 16 (doing this with my husband) and so far we haven’t had any. On bad days it’s especially difficult because we both crave the comfort and ease that fast food brings. I don’t exactly have a lot of spare energy and meal planing isn’t high up on my list of must-do’s. Last I checked I was down 4lbs, and that’s a good start (all water weight I’m sure). Next month the challenge is no pop/chips/candy and hopefully also carrying over the no take out food habits that I learned from this month. It just won’t be a steady rule.

I also started wearing my fitbit again. I have a Charge HR (though I’d like to save up for one of the newer models) and I’ll admit that I’m less curious about my daily steps and more curious about my heart rate and sleep habits. I get on average 5-6 hours of sleep a night, problem is none of those hours is more than 1h long because I’m constantly waking up to nurse, deal with kids, or just insomnia. Not fun. My heart rate is pretty good, resting at 72 (spikes at 74 on some stressful days) which is above average for my age group. It used to be much higher when I weighed more.

My steps average 2500 a day, some days are over and some are under. I don’t really care about how many steps I take because fitbit can’t see that 90% of those steps are with me carrying my 6 month old, or hauling the 2 year old around or playing with both of them, cleaning, carrying laundry, doing dishes, that sort of stuff. It’s just a good approximation. Sure, I’d love to get in the 10,000 steps a day that is recommended – but it’s -35C outside and I’m not keen on taking my children out in that, so we do what we can.

Do I feel healthier? Not yet. Not especially. I feel pretty tired and worn out, but that seems to be my new norm. I guess we’ll just have to see the scale next week.

Time is precious to everyone, but when a majority of it is eaten up by kids, some things change. For me, that things is I simply don’t have the hours free any more to try to fix stuff that doesn’t work.

My computer was a major issue. Trying to find the time to solve why it wouldn’t start up ended up being a week long endevour. I can’t just ignore my family to work on it.

This week, it was my old fitbit charge HR. It should have been simple. Plug it in and charge it, put the receiver into my PC, link the device to my profile and ta da. Instead my PC refuses to acknowledge the device, though it works well enough on my laptop (an issue with bluetooth and windows 10 I’m told). Now it doesn’t want to hold a charge, and I’ve been troubleshooting what I can but there’s just no way for me to spend hours trying to diagnose the problem.

At this stage of my life I just want things to work. I want them to work as they should, out of the box, without having to spend hours and hours figuring it out. That’s one of the main reasons I contemplated going to a pre-built gaming laptop rather than futz around with my PC (again).

It feels like for a lot of things, that’s just too much to ask.

One of my 2019 goals is to get back to my pre-baby weight. I gained an enormous 70lbs with my second child, and I’ve lost 35lbs of it, which leaves me with roughly 40lbs to lose this year. My husband also wants to get more fit, his job requires him to be in the best shape he can be. I decided that we should have monthly mini challenges we do together to motivate and inspire each other, along with one major challenge for the year. Unique to each of our goals, they’ll reward us with non-food rewards for a job well done.

My year-long goal is of course to lose the 40lbs. The reward? A peloton, something I’ve wanted for a few years now. The monthly goal for January is to go the entire month without eating any fast food. With two young kids we have a habit of grabbing whatever is fast and easy for ourselves, spending far more money than we have to and eating food that doesn’t exactly give us the most nutritious of starts.

If I acomplish this goal for the month of January, I get to buy some yarn – which I am very excited about. Initially I had decided on just a single skein, but my husband decided it should have a monetary value of $100. Each month the goal changes but hopefully leaves us with better eating habits. February I might be able to eat fast food but I’m hoping that because I’ve abstained through all of January the urge to eat poorly will be reduced. By December I’m hoping to be 40lbs lighter with much healthier food choices.

Will it work? No idea. In 2016-2017 I lost 70lbs (after the birth of our first) so I know it’s not an impossible task, but things are so much more hectic with 2 children instead of 1 and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up. At least I’m trying.

We’re into August now, and my posts for the month including Blaugust posts have been pretty sparse. Turns out I was too ambitious in my desires for this month, and I have to admit defeat. First of all, as much as I LOVE the idea of 365 days of creativity, I just can’t do it. I’m healing from my c-section, nursing every 2h, and raising my 22 month old which leaves maybe 1h a day of “mommy time” when I’m not trying to get some sleep/a shower/food. I don’t expect this to change for the next few weeks (months?). Then there was Blaugust, which I signed up for as a mentor. I feel so remote and distant from everyone else who is happily chattering away on discord, sharing their posts and motivating each other to get the blog stuff done (and podcasts, and all sorts of neat other stuff). I just can’t do it.

Add to it the postpartum depression I’ve been trying to deal with, and I simply can’t. My plate is full, I’m out of spoons, and life is just too hard right now.

I’ll try to keep posting here and there when I can because it’s therapeutic to get my thoughts out, but I’m officially admitting defeat to taking on tasks for the rest of the year, and if you don’t see me around twitter/discord/etc much, well, you know why.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.