The Wardrobe Stylist

This is a series about my fitness journey, how I came to lose baby weight after 4 pregnancies and 3 kids, and look better now than I ever did before. It is ever-evolving, ever-changing, and ever-improving. The story is a series taking you from when my physique became top of mind until now, so you can apply what I did so you can get great results too!

I’m not your typical “I was overweight, I lost a ton of weight and now I look fab.” In fact, I was never overweight, I was never even considered fat, but I was never super slim, with a to-die-for bod. Many thought, in my what I consider “average days,” looked great because I managed to shed the pounds after every pregnancy at varying speeds. But I never felt like I looked the best I could….until recently, and it’s important how YOU feel not what OTHERS think. Even now, I am still a work in progress. We will get to that later in the series.

If you are looking for a tried and tested way to surefire your weight loss, especially after a pregnancy, then keep on reading. This first one is pretty lengthy, but if you are not in the mood to read my full story, skip to the end for the meaty part. This episode will focus on my pre-adulthood days until my post first pregnancy stages.

Losing Baby Weight After 4 Pregnancies & 3 Kids

This series will help me respond to the dozens of women who’ve questioned me on how I did it. 4 pregnancies, 3 kids, and how losing baby weight became possible (or body fat more precisely) that I’ve gained. But I didn’t just lose it, I built an armour. I toned up, muscled up, and cleaned up my eating habits…and I’m not done yet. You never really are because there are always things you can improve on. If you know anything about how bodies work, you know that doing the same thing over and over, won’t cut it. You have to keep changing, and that means as often as every 4 to 6 weeks!

Pre-teen Weight

As a pre-teen, the signs of developing into a woman came earlier to me than my school mates. I remember vividly when we went to the wave pool in 7th grade. I donned larger hips than the other girls. I could see and hear them giggle about me and calling me the F word…yes “fat.” In reality, I was not, I was “hippy” but not fat. I had more of a womanly shape. So while they considered me fat, I was actually not. But my mind would not absorb any of that. I was devastated for the next few years to come.

I carried my hips with me through high school. I made sure my lunches consisted of “healthy food” (or what I considered healthy at the time). I wasn’t dieting, but I was watching what I ate.

Then I underwent a spinal operation which left me under a body cast all summer, in a wheelchair for a month, and bed ridden in the hospital for a week, on strong painkillers, and unable to walk (gratitude to Grandma who stood by me, bathed me, helped me through the whole time). It was followed by a nasal operation 6 months later for a broken nose I suffered in an accident 4 years prior. While I was mainly sedentary for the time I was recovering. My body ended up loosing 20 pounds as it was healing. I was down to 95 pounds!

When I went back to school, cast-free, I flaunted my new physique and was so happy. Compliments swung left and right. It may have been short-lived, as a year later once my body was fully recovered, it gained the weight back.

University Student on a Diet

Fast-forward a few years and there was my first attempt at following an “actual” diet plan. So I picked up some Pilates programme with a diet plan. I bought the package, and followed the food plan. I think I must’ve spent hundreds of dollars on ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce and tasted horrible not because they weren’t good, but the recipe was just simply not for me. I must have followed it for a couple of months, without any results. I was getting up early, doing the Pilates at home, then heading to the gym to continue on my cardio, and eating the food. No change, so I dumped it.

Then I decided it was time I ignite my cardio. So I would run on the treadmill or the stairmaster at extreme speeds for 30-40 mins. Needless to say, I was exhausted with little to no results….

I really didn’t know what to do. I joined the university gym , did my weights, my laps, ate what I thought was a well rounded diet…again to no avail…hmmm.

The Hot Trainer

In the following months, I enlisted a trainer to help me through a recent injury to my back. Yes he was super hot, one of the best looking men I have seen to date! I had hopes that his looks would melt pounds away. Sadly, if only science worked that way it would have been so much easier on all of us lol…He showed me a few things. I got back on my feet from my injury, but didn’t lose any weight.

Flirting with Weight Watchers

I then registered for a karate competition. I needed to get into the light weight category, which meant dropping 10 pounds in 2 months. I decided it was time to try something radical; Weight Watchers. It worked! I was ecstatic at my new body. I managed to maintain it, with some fluctuation here and there.

First Pregnancy

Fast forward 2 years, I was now pregnant with my first child. I was lucky, I only put on 18 pounds. I was nauseated and threw up from the minute I reached 8 weeks until the day I delivered. So eating wasn’t my favourite thing, in fact, even water made me nauseous. I thought “Wow losing baby weight will be easy!” Right! NOT AT ALL!

Post First Pregnancy Weight

Even though I was left with only 10 pounds post-partum, Weight Watchers, which was once my magic potion, suddenly didn’t work anymore for losing baby weight. It took a lot more work to find something that did.

I still ate what was considered mainstream healthy, you know low fat this, low fat that crap. But hey, at the time, it worked. That’s the thing with the body, you constantly have to change it up for it to work, otherwise it’s a dead end.

Your body remembers what you did to it and won’t respond if you give it the same thing every time you want to push it off the edge, especially when it comes to losing baby weight. But it is also never a good idea to go into extremes from the start of your weight loss journey. If you push your body to its max capacity in terms of food, when that stops working and you have to start cutting again, you will have nothing to cut from and faced with a frustrating situation where you cannot drop weight.

I managed to drop the 10 pounds I had on, but I still wanted to shed some more to reach my ideal.

Glamour Magazine Diet

A year had passed, I tried different things but still no results. Losing baby weight was tough! One day I found a diet on Glamour.com. It required me to eat 5 times a day, smaller portions and exercise 5 times a week.

Food Plan

Breakfast

• Instant oatmeal
• handful of blueberries
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1 tablespoon of peanut butter

Snack

• 20 almonds
• 1 banana

Lunch

• Chicken breast
• 1/2 small pita bread
• Tablespoon hummus
• Salad
• Balsamic vinegar dressing

Snack 2

• Low fat yogourt
• Baby carrots

Dinner

• Chicken breast
• Veggies
• 1/2 cup rice

Exercise

I did 45 to 60 minutes of high intensity cardio (not HIIT which is High Intensity Interval Training – I wasn’t introduced to that yet) and ab work. It mainly consisted of:

• 30 to 45 minutes uphill with speed on the treadmill with gradual increase in incline and speed.
• 15 minutes of 4-5 sets of crunches, bicycle crunches, and lower ab leg raises.

 

While this seems like an overly simplified diet and exercise plan, it worked. For many of you if you haven’t been eating very well or exercising regularly in an intense manner, this will help you shed off pounds. I lost a total of 15 pounds on this diet which made me hit my ideal weight.

In Summary

My weight struggles lead me to go with Weight Watchers, a trainer and finally the Glamour diet to get my body back on track. Losing baby weight I had gained wasn’t easy but it was possible.

Eating smaller portions 5 times a day and exercising 5 times a week for 45 to 60 minutes in high intensity with ab workouts incorporated helped me reach my goal of losing baby weight after my first pregnancy.

The next phase will take you to what I did to get back on track after my second pregnancy and how losing baby weight after that shaped up to be.

This is Grace

Grace from Color & Grace. Based in Troy, Michigan, Grace is a 41 year-old petite woman who loves colours. Born and raised in China, she moved to America for love in 2007. Her day job – teacher. Her dream job – fashion blogger. Make sure to go and check out her blog and leave her a comment on her awesome outfit.

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