Week 13, Day 7 - Calorie counting thoughts & Pregorexia???!

I'm a bit frustrated with the lack of knowledge out there regarding pregnancy and calories and nutrition and fitness. I feel like I've got all this knowledge in my head about what I should do, yet everything conflicts when it comes to being PREGNANT and implementing my arsenal of fitness/weight management tricks & tips!

This morning I weighed in at 138 - that is so, SO not okay. I was hoping to maintain 136 for the next 4 weeks or so - yeah, not working. I'm trying not to stress about weight gain, yet according to my two previous pregnancies, I should not be gaining this much, this soon. At least, I didn't before. My last pregnancy, I weighed 140 at week 20. See what I mean? I'm only at week 13, weighing 138!

It's also hard for me to be working on fitness & nutrition during pregnancy when I don't really have a plan or some kind of guideline to follow. It's kind of just a mishmash of things I "think" will work...just kind of frustrating.

So I might switch to counting calories for a couple of weeks - but at the same time, if I give myself permission to eat whatever I want, just within my calorie count for the day - I KNOW I will not choose raw. I'll be doing Skinny Cow ice cream. And things like pasta, and dairy, and everything SO not raw vegan. And then I'll get heartburn, and sciatic nerve pain, and backaches, and feel blah.....I loved the absence of all those things when I was pregnant and raw before.

I also don't believe that a person has to count calories when they are eating only raw foods. The fruits & vegetables are easily assimilated by the body and there isn't any fat for it to store. It's like the perfect diet - just REALLY hard to do!

It's when you do what I'M doing that you get into trouble - eat like 3/4 of the day raw, then go completely nuts and eat 4 corn tortilla quesadillas with mozzarella cheese & onions fried in oil, and then some chocolate chips, and then a piece of toast with strawberry jam, + 2 pancakes with jam on them. Oh, and a small peanut butter cookie.

You see my dilemma? It's like I'm trying to straddle both worlds - what I ate today that was cooked would be FINE if I was eating nothing else for the day, as in, fasting. If I was eating my allotted calories of 1400 for the day. But the cooked food COMBINED with the raw...I don't think makes for a very good partnership because all of a sudden it's all sitting heavy on my stomach. And the raw calories ARE counting.

Rrrrrr.

I know someday all this will be totally insignificant, like when I'm where my SISTER is, who lucky girl, is getting induced next Friday! Yay for her being done!!!!!

But for now it's like a major burr in my saddle; I hate not being able to figure stuff out. Or even to think I know what to do (eat 100% raw), then not be able to implement it with very much discipline. Honestly though, it's frustrating not knowing what to do, what will work, etc.

Edited an hour later:

I just HAD to get on here and include this most awesome article I read just now. It's actually really sad, but it helped me ALOT to really put things into perspective. Really.

It's about a condition called "Pregorexia" where a person is consumed with not gaining weight during pregnancy - and it really resounded with me. I definitely do not want to take my interest in being fit and healthy that far!!! No way! This article tells a woman's story, and this is what really struck a chord with me:

This pregnancy weight felt foreign and unhealthy to me. I felt so out of control with my body changes ... the stretching of my stomach, the increased size of my breasts ... all those changes made me feel like I was losing myself and my identity of being "thin" and in CONTROL of myself. I don't remember thin celebrities impacting my decision, I just remember my goal of keeping myself small was what was deeply rooted in my core.

I can relate to this so much. It's hard for me that I am not in control of my weight, or my stomach, or my breast size - like it's all just growing and GROWING and there is nothing I can do about it! But it is my desire to really just CHILL and realize this is a beautiful thing and could possibly be the last time I am pregnant, so...I am going to just continue on with eating raw and exercising and not worry about counting calories for now. =)

Also....I had an AWESOME workout today!! Probably the best one ever - I worked hard for about 40 minutes and did each exercise twice. I felt the BURN and it was hard work! Not an easy peasy lame workout for SURE. So that makes 2x of working out for this week. I'd love to do the same tomorrow to make it 3x, but I also need to do another 5k run before the weekend and my legs are pretty shot after I do my workout. Doing a workout + 5k, I don't know...I think would be overdoing it especially when I just started doing ANY exercise only 11 days ago.

BTW, Jen, welcome to the world of eating ESE!!! You can see what a powerful method fasting is - and why I fell in love with it IMMEDIATELY way back when. If it can make you lose those 2 lbs no problem, it can definitely keep on doing that for a long-term plan of weight loss or even weight management. Like if I ate way too much the day before and KNEW it, I would just fast from dinner to dinner and wa-lah, it was like my bad day before had never even happened.

It gets to the point where you can easily plan for occasions - like if I knew I was going on a date, I'd simply fast up until our date and then could totally have a yummy dinner with no problems. I think the secret of it all, is to do it and then realize that hey, you're not dying, you know? That wow, you can actually manage the kids and the house and hey - yes you're hungry but not like a maniac type of OMG give me food. Plus, food tastes soooo good when you eat it that night for dinner!

I would have put these in your comments but my computer is so dang slow it takes like 3 minutes just to load the silly comment popup. So, here ya go. I hope you're reading, otherwise I'm going to feel dumb talking to the air. LOL.