A Pound of Flesh ...

When I was pregnant with the boys, I was told I needed to consume 4000 calories a day.

Yes, you read that correctly -- 4000 calories.

IT. WAS. AWESOME!

Here was a typical day of eating for me:

Liquids: 64oz Gatorade, 64oz whole milk, 64oz water, and 64oz iced tea/lemonade

Shakes: 3 Boosts/Ensures a day (one with breakfast, lunch, and dinner) + homemade fruit smoothie protein shake (one right when I woke up)

Breakfast: 2 Whole Wheat English Muffins with butter and peanut butter and wheat germ sprikled on top + 4 eggs with spinach scrambled in + 4 strips bacon or sausage links + 2 Yoplait whips + 2 pieces of fresh fruit

Lunch: 2 cans Dinty Moore Beef Stew or Chef Boyardee Raviloi + bag of carrots/peppers/celery with hummus + 4 string cheese + 2 Pillsbury Biscuits + 2 pieces of fresh fruit

Dinner: 2 chicken breast (or fish or steak or pork) + bag of Uncle Ben's Ready Rice + bag of Freshlike frozen veggies + 4 Pillsbury crescent rolls

Snacks: Some of my favorite were peanut butter crackers, jell-o puddings, frozen and canned fruit (loved frozen cherries and canned mandarin oranges), yogurts, granola bars, bowl of cereal, can of soup, can of chunk chicken, ice cream bars, and 100% juice popsicles

Extra Protein (between meals and snacks): 2 Snickers protein bars (one right when I woke up and one right before I went to bed) + one whole bag of beef Jerky mid-morning (sounds strange, but it has 60 grams of protein per bag and takes up very little tummy room) + whole package of Stouffer's Mac and Cheese mid-afternoon + one pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream mid-evening

The doctors wanted me to gain 45 pounds by 24 weeks -- I made it with a pound to spare. Yea, me!

All told, I gained 62 pounds and passed the dreaded "200 pound" mark in my 28th week. I can't imagine how much I would have gained if I had made it the whole 35 weeks!

After I had the boys, I became a milk COW for over 6 months. In order to make enough milk to feed three babies, the doctors told me to keep up my eating and drinking consumptions. So ... I did.

Amazingly enough, even though I was eating ... and eating ... and eating, I still managed to not only lose all 62 pounds, but I also lost an additional 5 pounds within 3 months of delivery.

Many of you are now throwing things at your computer screen and saying bad words because pregnancy weight is not easy to lose -- I just got lucky. (Thank you Mom and Dad for the wonderful genes!)

Let me make you feel better now. After I stopped breastfeeding for the sake of keeping my sanity (pumping every three hours will cause anyone to lose their mind after awhile), I kept eating the same way I had for the past year.

And it caught up with me.

On the boy's second birthday, I realized I needed to drop some weight. So, I embarked on a sensible weight loss plan. My goal was to lose 17 pounds to get back to my college weight, but I really wanted to lose 22 pounds to get back to my high school weight (and where I was after I had the boys).

In order to motivate myself, I enlisted my entire office to do a weight loss challenge. Twenty of us chipped in a dollar a week for the next 20 weeks -- whoever has lost the most percentage of body weight gets the whole $400 prize.

That's what I call motivation!

I'm happy to say that after seven weeks, I have lost 10 pounds. So only 1.5 pounds a week -- not the 2 pounds a weeks I would have liked to have lost, but considering that I'm only eating better and not exercising, I'll take it.

Note: I'd love to start exercising, but I don't know when I could fit it into my day. I've been trying to get Dan to join the YMCA for over a month since they have free child care while you work out, but no such luck motivating him yet.

Believe it or not, I'm NOT winning the office pool. I'm currently in third. Yet, this is not all bad news in my mind. Yeah ... I'd love to win all that cash, but there are people in my office that needed to lose weight not just for body image issues, but for health issues. The fact that they are losing more than me is not a defeat in my mind.