My Butt

Now that's an attention grabbing title, amiright?

Yes, well, it's been eventful around here and much of my attention has been focused on shrinking my booty.  After the twins started eating real food in real amounts and breastfeeding, oh, 2 years ago, I put on some serious Ell Bees.  (Think about that for a second and it will make sense)  Apparently, I could eat everything I want and weigh a normal amount while bfing twins, but when they stopped, I just kept eating.  Not a good idea to keep one's weight under control.

I ended up putting on 15 lbs in about 3 months.  And it aged me about 10 years.

I tried losing some of the weight with weight watchers and exercising sporadically, but it did not work.  What did work was Bridget sleeping through the night (and no longer wailing for me anytime I left the bed).  This allowed me to start regularly exercising in the early morning.  YAY!  And I also started tracking my calorie consumption through LiveStrong.Com.  Yay.  I actually LOVE LiveStrong because it has a great database of foods and so far, everything I've entered has been on it.  But, you know, yay.  I'm eating less food and drinking little wine.  Woo. Hoo.  But I'm losing weight, so Yay!!

NONETHELESS, (and it's not a blog story until there is a "nonetheless"), I have been surprised during the last three months about some folks' reaction.

First, there were quite a few  "Well, good for you!!!!!" reactions when I shared I was starting to run again.  And yes, they did use all those exclamation points.  For the folks who knew me BC (Before Conor), I was a very athletic, very thin woman.  Very athletic in that I ran lots of marathons and even placed or won my age group in 5K races.  Very thin in that at one point, my friends staged an intervention because they were concerned that I had an eating disorder.  I did not, but I was too thin at that point.  And even for years and years and years after that, I was still reasonably on the thin side.  

But most of these folks have only known me after I'd become a mom and many of them after I'd had the twins, and, well, when my pants fit better when I put them on backwards.  It was just surprising to me how surprised they were that I could possibly even consider running and losing weight. (Especially since when I was in shape, I would have been able to run their sorry asses down and smack them in the head)  More politely, I kept wondering how they could not see the skinny girl trapped inside this overly jiggly body. 

And the skinny girl is still not free.  I have 15 more Ell Bees to go until she can shake free of these bonds.  And I really don't have any plans to lose the 25 or the 35 more Ell Bees to get to my VERY skinny state.  It's too much work, and I'm pretty sure I'd still be dealing a great deal of twin skin that's flapping around my midsection and I don't have the money to have that removed.  

But I'm running.  And I love it.  I was athletic for all of my life BC.  So I'm back to doing what makes me very happy.  My pace is pathetic, but I don't really care.  I'm able to get an hour run in at 5:30 in the morning.  I'm having a hard time getting in long runs; based on Dave and I dividing morning responsibilities, I'm doing my long runs on Friday mornings.  And even starting at 5:00, I can only get 1.5 hours in before I need to be back helping the kids get ready for school.  And while, BC, 1.5 hours would have been close to 10 miles, let's just say it's not now. And I don't really want to get up at 4:00 in the morning to get a 10 mile run in on a Friday.  So, maybe I'll do two 1.5 hour runs during the week?  THINK OF ALL THE FOOD I COULD EAT!!!

Ahem.  Anyhoo....

I've still got a ways to go, but I am glad to be back to where I was and I hope to be back to where I was before in a couple of more months.  And I'm definitely glad to see less of my butt.