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?

May 2011 Arcoiris: 5k's while pregnant

May 2010 was my first experience ever participating in a 5k. March 2011 I ran my first 10k. This May 2011, I ran 3k and walked 2k... because this time I was running 12.5 weeks pregnant. (I would usually push through, but your body lets you know when you need to slow down in pregnancy.) With my first pregnancy, running any amount of a 5k would have been a difficult thing to imagine. I was 214 pounds when I got pregnant and I gained 48 with pregnancy. Most of that was due to a fear of being outside with strangers and what they'd think of me. That fear kept me from exercising the most effective and cheapest way possible: walking outside.

It's been a long and difficult transition since then, but things have changed, in a very ironic setting. Where I was once scared to walk in un-gated places without reason, now I can't walk for very real and substantiated fears. However, excuses are not an option. There is always a way to exercise, you just have to be determined to find it. I have used our 2 level stairway to run up and down, created a mini-track in our garage to run around, found numerous exercise videos on sparkpeople.com that don't require equipment and found many ways to play chase with my toddler creatively. There is always something that can be done. Thankfully, where we work has a dirt track that is free and it has come in very handy!

In addition to this, we now live in a country, Guatemala, where there are always different types of fruits and vegetables in season. Sparkpeople.com also helped me track calorie intake and make better food choices. With this mindset and available blessings, I am starting this pregnancy at 150 and have only gained 3 pounds in the first trimester.

What this doesn't conquer, but helps manage, is the paranoia that uncontrolled weight gain will still be a part of this pregnancy. I think this is something that I will have to prove to myself. Once I experience a healthy, active pregnancy, I will know that I can do it.
I am blessed with people who support me and a healthier lifestyle. While I have learned some independence, I still realize that the support of other people helped me get to the point of being able to be independent.

I would like to encourage you, whether struggling to be healthy in general or during pregnancy, with irrational fears like mine or just seemingly insurmountable weight to lose; you can do it. Don't accept excuses from yourself. Be creative and you can always find a way. I certainly plan to keep proving this to myself!

10k's and Challenges

Since moving to Guatemala in July 2009, I've met several personal goals. One was learning the entire (looong) Guatemalan National Anthem by heart. One was improving my Spanish. One was learning how to cook Guatemalan food. One was reading the entire Bible every year. One was losing 60 pounds. One was learning how to run.

Some of these, like having healthier habits, were made easier just because we were moving and everything was changing anyways. I strove to keep some of those changes going until I could form them into a healthier lifestyle. Other changes were made easier by the lower cost of living, like the price of fresh, healthy produce. Still others were easier because I am surrounded by amazing, active, supportive people at my job. I love the people I work with!

After forming many of these habits (I'm nowhere near finished) I realize how much I could have done at home, but didn't know how or where to start.
-One of the drawbacks here is safety, yet many times I didn't take the chance to walk outside when I could at home... much less run.
-Here, there is a voracious amoeba problem during the rainy season, but I still managed to learn how to swim thanks to an amazing friend. (I only got amoebas once.)
-I had a treadmill and friends with exercise equipment I could have used for free, while here I have to pay for it... but again I didn't know how to use it or where to start!

One of the motivations (out of many) that has been driving me has been that I wanted to get into shape before another baby came along. We plan on using a midwife here. (Hospitals have a 70% cesarean rate here, among other personal reasons.) That thought for me could do two different things: 1)Cause fear because I hadn't educated myself enough or prepared my body for what was coming or 2)Motivate me to educate myself and get in the best shape I could.

I started by walking for an hour every night after putting our child to bed at 8. Then a friend taught me how to swim a little at a time. Then, we started working out at the gym. Then, we ran around her (safer) neighborhood. Then I participated in my first 5k (walking but I knew I could do more.) Then we hiked a bit of a difficult volcano for beginners: Pacaya. Finally, we began jogging regularly after school.

When the next 5k/10k came around I was super nervous, but since it was the same price to enter for either one, I chose to challenge myself with the 10k. I had nightmares the night before... but I finished, though slowly, with a time of 01:03:30.

I have so much more I want to do in life. I will forever be cautious and easier to scare than some people, but I have learned how to not let my fear control me.

Now, I see something that interests me that I have never done and instead of feeling only fear, I also feel the adrenaline rush of a possible new challenge to conquer!


What are you scared of? Can you turn it around and face it as a challenge? I am no super person. Any of this that I did, anyone else can do!