Baby Weight Hell

I'm not off to a great start with this parenting blog if my first post is about losing baby weight, am I? How cliche! I guess you can file this one under the "parental venting" bullet point of Little BoogieDowner's mission statement.

Here's the deal: I had Pearl 11 months ago, so by Jessica Alba standards I shouldn't even be harping on this subject of baby weight. It should be a long lost memory that I shudder thinking about as I strut around trying on cute, tight dresses for some fabulous New Year's Eve event. Instead, I'm sitting here in my one and only pair of jeans that actually fit (size 10 'Curvy' GAP jeans, thank you very much... long gone are the pre-baby days of the GAP's 'Long and Lean' stylings) and lamenting the fact that I finally gave in and ate the entire Toblerone chocolate bar that I've been avoiding in my refrigerator for a week now. I guess that means I'm not dieting today?

See, that's the problem. Against the advice of every celebrity trainer interviewed in US Weekly, I seem to be unable to approach weigh loss as a "get healthy" initiative. For me, it's much more of a "get back into my GAP 'Long and Lean' size 4 jeans" initiative. Prior to having Pearl, this was actually not that hard of a feat. If I needed to lose a few pounds (or, to be more specific, 15 pounds after waaaaaay too many Coors Lights in college), I'd get my ass to Weight Watchers, start logging what I was eating, and hit the gym.

That was before Pearl... After Pearl, weight loss is a much more difficult task, and I've finally figured out WHY: because it's not about me anymore. It's about the damn kid. So I can't just trot off to Planet Fitness for a session on the elliptical, or go out for a mani/pedi to congratulate myself for losing a few pounds. Nope, no sirree. If I want to lose weight now, I have to just not eat as much. No distractions, no real rewards, not even too many compliments of "You look great!" I spend most of my time with Pearl, who cannot talk yet and certainly doesn't care about whether I manage to whittle away the jiggly belly she saddled me with. So I guess that explains why we're approaching Pearl's first birthday and I'm still working on shedding 15 more miserable pounds...

As we get ready to ring in the New Year and everybody starts talking about resolutions and plans for weight loss, here's hoping that I'll be buying some size 8 GAP jeans soon...

And oh yeah... screw you Jessica Alba. My kid's cuter than yours.

~Erin