"don't be fat," said the rhino to the cat

Basically, this post is going to tell you how to not be fat. See, the problem here is that I may not be the best authority on the subject. Which makes me the rhino. And you the cat. Is that gonna stop me? Uh, has lack of expertise ever stopped me before? (or anyone else on the internet?)

So, before I gross you out let me give you some perspective.

This right here is pretty much my body status quo from age 13 up until the time I got pregnant. Not tiny, not huge. Just spastic and normal sauce. Also I suck at bowling. Which is weird, because I feel like my technique is solid.

So then I got pregnant. And I got fat, but like pregnant-person fat. It doesn't count as normal fat unless you can't tell you're pregnant. 

So, that was like 10 days before the longest hospital stay of my life (aka the beautiful and life-changing birth of my child). I was....ready. I was definitely rounder in places I hadn't been before (look at my arrrms), but I'm still chalking this all up to being pregnant.

And then here we are like a week and a half after I had her. Which, as coincidence would have it, was my 11th birthday.

And then this happened.

Yeah yeah, I know most of those are the same day. But I don't really have cause to take pictures of myself all the time, especially when my kid is hanging around being so photogenic. Gahhhhh. It's awful, isn't it? I was having so much freaking fun on that tire swing. Probably because I had more momentum than I had EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. Omgosh, internet. I am about to be so honest with you that I might throw up. I was sitting at about 160-165 in these pictures. Which isn't that much, unless you're only FIVE FOOT ONE. Anyway, on the day I had Reese I was about 167. Soooo. The reason most of these pictures are the same day is because I was travelling for work and we had nothing on our schedule for a day, so we went a-sight-seeing. And holycrapbatman, these pictures were a shock to me when I saw them. I think I am like the opposite of an anorexic person, where when I look in the mirror I see normal kaitlin, but the rest of the world sees the "ilovefood" kaitlin. 

When I got back from my work trip, I realized that those people I met and worked with don't know that I am actually normal-sized and what they are seeing here is like a temporary  "Please pardon our dust while we remodel" type situation. They think I am the rhino. And why would they think anything otherwise? It's not like I was really doing anything about it. Once I had Reese, I thought it would all melt away, especially since I was nursing, and I would be back to status quo kaitlin right quick. NOT. I got fatter. Which I did not realize. Until these rude pictures slapped me in the face.

So I got really motivated. I went running everyday for like two weeks straight. And then I got busy. In like one day I ruined a newly-forming habit. So then I really got strict with my yoga routine. For a while. Needless to say, working out two hours a day is just not a luxury I can afford.

And then I accidentally lost weight. Dave is such a good budget-teer, and I am more of a "it will all work out" type. Which is NOT a useful attitude towards money. Anyway, he sat me down one month and said, "We need to tighten up our finances. We have x amount of debt that I want to eradicate as quickly as possible, so we need to get back to budgeting and sticking to our budget." And I was like, "cool." So we did. He would just give me a a budget every week with no instructions on what to spend it on, but it was for any/all non-bill expenses. Gas, grocery, clothes, Tiger Beat magazines. So when I was at the grocery store, if I only had $40 that day to spend, you can bet I was not going to be sucked in by the guiles of a $4 package of oreos. Instead of being lazy and just getting whatever was quick, I ended up buying things that were cheap and would go far. Like chicken, rice, potatoes. So now, not only are we never eating out, but our food takes actual human time to make. So it's basically impossible to eat solely out of boredom, because you have to spend 30 minutes making it first. 

People have been asking me a lot lately what I have been doing to lose weight, and I mostly just grunt in response. Because it's not an exciting story. I have gone on workout binge after workout binge since forever and not really seen weight loss results. It's all about what I eat, apparently. We are also not psychotic health nuts. We don't count calories or only make the "skinny" versions of recipes. I even still drink soda (gasp).We just make food, eat at meal times, and try not to be sitting all day. We have both accidentally lost about 30 lbs each. Which is cool, because now that I don't wake up with achy shoulders, I actually want to rock the house with my mad yoga skills. And I look less like I will eat your family.