Getting out of maternity clothes

When I had my first child 5 years ago, I was not exercising much, and I didn’t work out after I gave birth. I gained 55 pounds when pregnant and stayed in maternity clothes for 6 months after she was born. The second time around, my maternity clothes were way out of fashion, and I vowed to get back into prepregnancy clothes as soon as possible.

By the time I got pregnant with my son, I was the best shape I’ve been in since high school, and my eating habits were much improved. I told myself I was going to stay in shape and exercise throughout this pregnancy and not lose all the progress I had made. Ha! I get freakishly huge when pregnant. (Yep, that's my belly below at 39 weeks.) I had to stop doing TurboKick at about 5 months and switched to Zumba (which was a sight).  

By 8 months pregnant, I dropped the gym membership because I knew I wasn’t going to go for a while. My son was born in October, and as much as I wanted to get back in shape right away, Thanksgiving and Christmas were right around the corner. I decided that I was going to enjoy the holidays. I was nursing, so I ate whatever I wanted.

But in January, I committed to getting in shape. Les Mill Combat, a mixed martial arts home workout program, came out, and I was stoked. I bought it and committed to the 60-day schedule. This was working out 5 days a week. I wish I could say I did the full 60 days, but I did make it on this schedule for 42 days. I was certainly not feeling anywhere close to how I did before getting pregnant, so I heavily modified a lot of the exercises (no jumping, push-ups on my knees, etc.). But, I still lost 7 pounds and 3 inches off my waist, 2 inches off my hips and dropped 4% body fat. I was out of maternity clothes after 30 days and really starting to feel great.

The before pics on the left were 3 months postpartum. The after pics on the right are after 6 weeks of Les Mills Combat.

 

That was a year ago, and I’ve been up and down, off and on with my eating and workout outs since then, but I keep going, and with my next program, I plan to have an even better transformation.