2nd Trimester Triumphs and Fears

If you've read about my journey to running a 10k and then running most of a 5k in my first trimester this May, you already know two things: I'm fairly new to living healthily, and I'm pregnant. Those two facts together are sometimes hard to manage. Weight gain, whether healthy and with good reason like pregnancy, or not, gives me terrible flash backs. Rooted in the fear of former obesity, I hate feeling like I'm slowly getting trapped by my old body. Some of the fear comes from the future: wanting to have the healthiest birth and baby possible. I feel like, if I don't keep moving and find positive things to do, these past and future fears will suffocate my present.

There are several ways I'm trying my best to combat this fear:
1) I walk an hour every weekday morning. If I miss a morning, I make it up somehow in the day or walk extra the next day. I jogged in the past, but ligament pain is hampering that at the moment.
2) I swim as much as possible.
3) I find physical things to do that aren't too strenuous. Raking the yard, checking the mail (at the end of a long driveway,) hanging clothes on the clothesline, playing outside with Talia... basically, just looking for ways to keep moving instead of giving in to the siren's call of technology, air conditioning and the couch!

I try to think about the good things:
1) I lost all of the pregnancy weight within the first month. Though that still left me much higher than I should have been, the pregnancy part came off.
2) I am over halfway through my pregnancy and I've only gained 13 pounds. It could be much worse.
3) Even if I do gain some weight, I have the tools to know how to fight it this time. Even if I gain as much weight as I did with my first pregnancy, I'll still weigh LESS than my first pre-pregnancy weight!
4) Though always hungry, I try to make sure I'm really hungry; stomach growling or I can feel hunger, before I eat. I try to eat lots of fruits and vegetables.


Fear can either paralyze me or motivate me to overcome it. I choose to use what I have and what I know and keep moving, and moving forward! Afterall, the best way to overcome this fear of weight gain in pregnancy is to go the whole length and prove to myself afterwards by experience that I could do it.

How did you combat too much pregnancy weight gain? Do you have any tips that would help?