My Wake-Up Call to Lose Weight

I hadn’t put on much weight during my pregnancy. At an appointment when I was almost five months along, my gynaecologist seemed concerned that I wasn’t gaining enough. I wasn’t dieting. I was eating normally and trying to be healthy. But I left feeling as though I might be putting my baby at risk. So I started eating more, watching the number on the scales go up. By the end of my pregnancy, I’d gained ten kilos, and I was quite proud of myself. During labour, I asked for an epidural. I wanted some relief from the pain. When it came time to push, I didn’t know what I was doing, and my baby was delivered with forceps. Then I went home with a newborn, a wound from the delivery, and everything else that comes with having just given birth. I was a complete mess. Some days, I couldn’t even find time for a shower. I was trying to breastfeed and eating more because I thought it would help me produce more milk. Looking after myself barely made it onto the list. Six months later, I decided to try going back to work. In the middle of a job interview, I burst into tears. Just before I’d walked into the room, my period had decided to make its grand return after six months. Perfect timing. So there I was, sitting in an interview, worrying about bleeding through my clothes and thinking about the baby I’d left with a nanny to be there. I wasn’t ready. Not even close. I cut the interview short and went home. I decided to give myself another year to focus on my baby. Somewhere in there, I’d try to lose the weight too. The weight that wouldn’t shift. The weight that meant buying new clothes because the old ones no longer fitted. My baby wasn’t sleeping, so neither was I. And I’d developed a serious thing for peanut butter. Crunchy peanut butter, to be precise. I could get through an entire jar. Give me some white bread to spread it on, and that was me sorted. My husband and my mum started commenting on my weight. Meanwhile, I was on forums, holding on to posts saying you had nine months after giving birth to lose it. Nine months. I’ve still got time. I kept telling myself that, as though there was a deadline and the weight would politely disappear before it arrived. In my early twenties, I’d gone more than three days without eating, drinking only water, then introducing blended fruit on the fourth day. It was an extreme way to try to lose weight, but in my tired mind, I remembered it as something that had worked. I’ve done it before. I can do it again