The Importance of Icecream

I've struggled with my weight most of my life. I started secondary school overweight and put on extra since university. I've never been huge but certainly slipped into the obese category on the BMI charts. I say "struggled" but, truth be known, I put very little effort into dealing with it until recently.

The big push came last year: I decided that it was soon going to be time to start a family and if I couldn't lose the weight before having a baby I certainly wasn't going to lose it afterwards. I also wanted to make sure I was as healthy as possible in pregnancy. I lost just over two stone from late January to September; nothing meteoric, but a good steady, maintainable pace. I came off the pill, waited for my first real period and then we started trying. Father Badger was rather disappointed: we'd told ourselves that it could take months of trying and he was looking forward to the process, but I was pregnant within a few weeks!

Morning sickness kicked off the weight gain: I was never sick, but required regular doses of "absorbant" food (such as Marmite on toast) to suppress the nausea. By month four the nausea had been replaced by permanent hunger and by the time Baby Badger arrived I was three stone heavier. I told myself that pregnancy was not the time to worry about it, nor were the first few months after the birth.

My period of grace is over... I've lost a stone and a half of the weight through the birth and retained fluid gradually leaving my system. Breastfeeding has no doubt also played a huge part in controlling my weight as I feed my continuingly large appetite. I have, unfortunately, developed a passion for Ben and Jerry's icecream, and I'm just not willing to go cold turkey so I've had to resort to exercise!

This evening I managed my fourth post-baby jog around the village (a mile and a half), this time without slowing to a walk, and I've signed up for a 10km road race in December. I fully expect to be last across the line but if I am it doesn't matter - it's something to aim for, something I'm doing purely for me.

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