The Weight Loss Journey After Twins
So I've written about a lot of things in this blog but this is probably the most vulnerable I'll ever get. So here goes nothing.... I have always been someone that has struggled with my weight… what I weigh, where I carry the weight, how my clothes fit and how I view myself. Love handles have always been a constant in my life... When I got pregnant with my twins, my struggle with my body continued. I was already at the highest weight I had ever been in my life when I got pregnant because life had got in the way of my healthy habits that I had built prior to my wedding in 2014… work, travel and honestly, a little bit of laziness were to blame. Once pregnant, I proceeded to put on fifty pounds. When I delivered my twins (at only 28 weeks mind you) I was almost 200 pounds at 5 feet 4 inches. I was huge, swollen and uncomfortable. I also had no idea how I would ever get back to feeling good about myself. Not winning at all… Pregnancy- 1, Corey-0.
After my caesarean section on February 1, 2016, I lost about twenty pounds almost immediately between the delivery and pumping. After that initial weight loss, I stayed at that weight for about a year. Initially, I was stressed out with the twins in the hospital and was pumping so I was constantly hungry. I continued to eat a lot, which mostly included a lot of hospital food and take out. I also needed eight weeks of recover after my C-section so I could not do any physical activity during that time.
Once the twins came home from the hospital at that eight-week mark, I was just mentally and physically exhausted. We continued to eat a lot of take out because I was often too tired to cook anything and I also sat around a lot because I was running on three hours of sleep a night. My exercise was going up and down the basement stairs to do multiple loads of laundry per day. It was a tough time and my weight didn’t budge. I tried to hide how big I was with large t-shirts and a lot of leggings. I wore my maternity clothes throughout the entire summer because I could not fit into any of my old summer clothes. It was seriously embarrassing.
Once the twins were sleeping better and I returned to work in September, I thought I could structure my eating better and try to work out more often now that we were back on a true schedule. I decided I was going to try the Atkins diet first. I failed miserably at it after a couple of weeks and only lost a few pounds. It was just too extreme for me and I craved certain foods that I was not supposed to eat. After that, I tried the Zero Belly Diet. I had higher hopes for this one but it required a lot of prep time and time was something I quickly realized I would not have as a working mother of twins. It was also costing me a lot of money to buy all the groceries I needed for the recipes and the scale was not going down. After that, I just sort of gave up. I felt big all the time and it became harder and harder to look after the twins, especially once they were mobile. One day, I was trying to get up off the floor and had the hardest time and I knew it was because I was carrying around forty pounds more than I should. I was mortified and decided I needed to do something to get to a healthier weight.
A friend of mine (and fellow working mother of twins) had tried a program that I had not heard of and then had become a coach for the program. She truly believed in the life changing transformations she had seen for others and experienced herself and she shared that with me. We spoke about the program over Facetime and it seemed like something I could handle and I hoped for the same wonderful results that she had.
I started this program in the middle of February of 2017, right after my twins had turned one year old at 175 pounds. After the first month, I was down 13 pounds and just felt so much better. I had so much more energy and I looked at eating completely differently. To date, I am down 30 pounds and weighing in at 145 pounds. I still have some work to do to reach my goal weight of 135 pounds but I am so proud of myself. To lose 25 pounds while working full time, traveling all over the world for work, working Thursday nights at the Energy Barre and managing a family, home and a zoo of animals, it’s such an accomplishment for me! I don’t say this often but I am proud of myself and feel so much more comfortable in my own skin.
Will I ever look or feel like I did before my twins? Probably not. There is skin that is never going to be as tight as it was before and there are scars that are never going to go away. Can I feel happy with what I look like now? Absolutely! I didn’t lose the weight to be skinny- I lost it because I wanted to be a healthy and happy mother for my kids. Being an active mother is easier now that I don’t carry around an extra Cole (he’s 24 lbs now) all over my body. I also know that once I get down to my goal weight, I’ll feel even better! Losing the weight has also made getting more active easier- going for walks and surviving a barre class is way more manageable when you’re not carrying around that load!
In my free time (I know, I laughed too) I have also become a coach for this program, and am starting my first three clients on July 10th! I believe in this program so much and it has changed my life, how I feel and how I look at food so I want to be able to share my experiences and this program with others. Whether you want to lose 10 pounds or 100, this program can absolutely work for you, with almost no prep time and easy on the go meals. This program can also be specialized for pregnant or pumping mothers. This program is doable for anyone and if anyone is interested in learning more, please reach out to me at coreythomas86@gmail.com or message me on Facebook! I am looking forward to being able to help others and change their lives in the same way that my coach and this program changed mine!
