In the 6 months since I had my little girl, I had been losing the baby weight slow and steadily....had been.
I'm pretty much stuck right now and it's becoming quite disheartening. I know that a lot has to do with the fact that my 2 year old is getting up multiple times during the night and I have had only one night in the past 2 1/2 months that could be considered a restful, full nights sleep. I'm a person who needs 8-9 hours of undisturbed sleep per night. The lack of sleep wreaks havoc on my body, my personality and the state of cleanliness of my house! It's a slippery slope because if I'm feeling poorly, I don't have the energy or attitude to get my kids organized for the day, get the stuff done I need to and get to the gym. The whole bloody cycle just repeats itself day after day. So, if anyone has any advice for getting a 2 year old in the "fraidy cat" stage to start sleeping through the night again, I'm all ears.
Despite my sleep troubles, I decided to start a new 12 week program and began yesterday. I started Strong Lifts (stronglifts.com) which is a barbell centric, heavy weight lifting routine. I can do the 5x5 reps at the gym and one of the trainers has agreed to check my form regularly. Yesterday I started with weighted squats, benchpress and rows. Needless to say, I can barely move today. And the kicker is, I didn't even use any weight on the bar (the bar does weigh 45 lbs however) except for the rows. I looked fairly ridiculous next to the 2 huge ex-OSU football players pressing about 300lbs but they were very supportive of my endeavor. I took an ice bath (holy mother of f-ing god!!) in the hopes that it makes my recovery a little easier. If it did anything, I would hate to even think about what I would be like today if I didn't do it, I can barely walk down the stairs. I'm going to take another tonight. Getting my legs numb last night gave me some much needed ibuprofen-free pain relief - regardless of what it actually does for my muscles in the ensuing days.
My goal is to get a lot stronger and to lose body fat. Long, long gone are the days when I sported 12% body fat as a competitive figure skater. Long gone, also, is the thought of having the body I had when I was 16. I really just need more strength to keep up with my kids and everything else life throws at me. I eat a clean diet and I'm med-free so getting stronger and perhaps a little sleep here and there should make me that much more able to keep up with a family of 5.
