Body After Twins

It's the post you've all been waiting for...

A detailed post about how I got my body back after twins! I'm going to spell it all out for you and include all the dirty details. Yes, that means I'm telling you my weight at my highest and lowest! I'm going to go over what worked for me as far as diet and exercise goes. Get ready for a good read! And disclaimer: there's no trick. It was all good old-fashioned diet and exercise. Womp womp.

BEFORE: 2 months post twins weight:145
AFTER: 20 months post twins weight 124.8
20 pound difference!

Let's start at the beginning. When I was pregnant with the twins I gained 55 pounds. I started at about 130 and ended at about 185 (holy crap, I know!). I'm 5'4. When I delivered I measured 46 weeks pregnant (is that even a thing?!) and by the grace of God I really don't have any stretch marks. You can hate me for that but you win some and you lose some, right?!

34 weeks

37 weeks

36 weeks

 The week after the twins were born I lost 40 pounds (that's a lot of baby and water weight!). That put my weight at about 145. After the twins were born I exercised but I wasn't consistent and my diet was "I'm eating what I want because I'm breastfeeding twins." Neither of those worked for me.

My body doesn't play nice when it comes to breast-feeding. You see for some mamas all they have to do is BF and the weight falls off. My body is real cool and does the opposite. It hangs onto the extra weight till it's done nourishing children. I remained at 145 till I stopped breast-feeding the twins at the one year mark in August 2017.

Once BFing was behind me I tuned up the heat on my exercise and I settled in at about 135. Then the holidays came and I kind of just sat at that weight. I was eating dessert every night and feeling super yucky. I probably weighed 140 in the New Year.

In January of this year my gym (A Taylored Body) started a fitness challenge. I decided to enter with my best friend so we could keep each other accountable. We started by cutting out all desserts/sweets (not including fruit) for the month of January. I started losing weight (yay!).

In February we had a big cheat day to celebrate making it a month without sweets. We then vowed to only have dessert once a week. I also started doing intermittent fasting in which I abstain from food for 16 hours. It's not as hard as it sounds. For example, if I stopped eating at 7pm then I wouldn't eat again until 11 am. You can Google this but basically when you fast for 16 hours it allows your body to focus on burning fat instead of burning off food that is always in your stomach. I currently still do this about 4-5 days a week. Oh, but I am allowed to have black coffee while fasting.

In March I continued fasting, going to the gym, and eating my daily diet (see below). Once April hit I was at 130. When I got pregnant with Blair I weighed 127. My ultimate goal was to get to 125 which was still more than my wedding day weight of 117. However, when I got married I was "skinny-fat"... thin- but didn't have any muscle tone.

on our honeymoon

Two weeks before my fitness competition ended I changed my diet to try and squeeze out the last few pounds. My Fitness Diet is below. I knew this diet wasn't something I was going to maintain for life but the competition had money on the line so I wanted to go for it. I started losing the last few pounds and was thrilled!

In April On weigh-in day at the gym I clocked in at 124.8....HALLELUJAH! A few ounces under my goal... I was stoked! I celebrated with a big FAT donut haha. My body fat percentage dropped from 26% to 23% in 3 months and I lost 12.8 pounds. Below is a picture of my stats...

And my before after photos from January to April

Annnnd my donut celebration ;)

What I'm doing currently to maintain my weight
intermittent fasting (4-5 days a week)
dessert once a week
no alcohol (unless for a holiday or special occasion)
carbs only at my first meal (always whole wheat/grain)
exercise 5 days a week

Daily Diet
am fasting
black coffee
two over easy eggs on dry whole wheat toast
banana with one tablespoon all natural peanut butter
coffee with one tablespoon creamer
carrots and hummus or apple and 15 almonds or carrots and guacamole (individual serving)
any lean meat over a bagged salad (sometimes veggies on the side)
*I sometimes have a bite of my kids mac-n-cheese or I have one Oreo after dinner but I realllllly try to not do this. I don't want it to become habit.

Fitness Challenge Diet (2 weeks before)
am fasting
4 egg whites
1/4 cup of steel cut oats made with almond milk and cinnamon
apple and 15 almonds
protein shake made with almond milk
lean meat (fish is best) with cruciferous veggies or asparagus
*My trainer wanted me to eat fish and veggies for lunch also but I just couldn't do it. I ended up substituting my snacks for lunch because of my am fasting.

I do weigh myself here and there throughout the week to make sure I'm not having an upward trend. I'm 5'4 and am trying to stay around 125. It's my "happy weight." Yes, I could lose more and there is always room for improvement but it's all about balance. I don't want to be miserable "dieting" and not be able to have dessert/alcohol here and there but for me I can't have it daily. My body does SO much better without sugar. Sugar is my weakness! Diet in general is hard for me. I'm crazy disciplined with going to the gym but now I've realized that if my diet is clean then I don't have to kill myself at the gym. Diet is 80% of how you look...the gym helps that last 20%! That was a sad realization for me but an important one.

Let me know if you guys have any questions below. Again, this is what worked for me but everyone is different!