Body After Baby Challenge - a start

There is a joke. An insensitive joke, but most jokes are.
A man accidentally severs his hand in a horrifying "men in the kitchen" cooking fiasco trying to show his wife how to better carve the turkey with a never-been-used electric turkey knife. When he wakes up following the reattachment surgery, "Will I be able to play the piano?" The doctor smiles proudly, still beaming over his mad surgering skillz, "Of course you will. Give it a few weeks to heal and you'll be playing like Liberace." The man smiles. "Oh good, I always wanted to be able to play the piano."

So I am joining the Body After Baby Challenge because my "twitter pal" @MamaNotes is a good saleswoman. She tempted me, not only with piano playing, or in this case, hotness, but a chance to win something, and you all know how much of a winning stuff sheep I am. What can I say? Winning just makes me feel good, and this stands a chance at being a Win Win situation, because if I can get off my blogging posterior and lose some of this weight, that'd definitely be the best prize of all.

Now, back to the man with the reattached hand. I was not a skinny girl to start with, so to put it in those terms, I never could play the piano either. Not that I haven't done my lessons. Back in December of 2007 I weighed in around 235 lbs. That's a lot of me to love. So, when a health club was opening down the street from my house with two, count them, one two, 2 pools, my mother-in-law graciously offered to pay for my membership because she knew how much I love to swim and that it'd be good for me. Well, swim I did. As a matter of fact, by the following August, I was down to about 195 lbs and lookin' pretty good. No really, 195 lbs isn't entirely scary on a curvy girl who is nearly 5'10". (Darn you, you last quarter of an inch!) So I was looking all right and feeling great. Sure I had a ways to go to get down to the coveted size 12 170 lbs hotness that gets me hit on in the grocery store by random young men who took the sitcoms seriously and thought the produce aisle was a great place to meet women. "Hey baby, wanna see my yellow squash zucchini?"

Feel sad for me yet that 170 is my goal when it might very well be your cry-yourself-to-sleep-with-a-carton-of-Cherries-Garcia weight? It's okay, don't. A few years ago I got very sick following a mild stroke and dropped down to about 165 and was concave in places a body shouldn't be. I've learned that healthy is more important than the number.

So although I never had much of a body BEFORE baby, I'm doing this thing.

So my longterm goal:
Find a sustainable routine that will enable me to walk around at a much healthier weight and with the muscles necessary to feel good about myself. This includes a lasting less "ooh, chocolate and buttercream" approach to eating, and a more "lets get this party started" approach to movement.

My shorterm goal:
Swim at least 4 days a week. Yes, this is down from the 6 days a week that helped me lose weight last year, but I didn't have an exclusively breastfed baby last year, and my schedule was a lot more flexible.
Pretend I just had my gallbladder out and JUST SAY NO TO BUTTER!

My immediate strategy:
Today, I am going to put Snapdragon in his sling and the two of us are going for a walk. A longish walk. Then we're coming home and I'm going through the cupboards like I used to to and pulling any transfatty nonesense that I really shouldn't be eating for donation to the food pantry. Change has to start somewhere, and it's starting here. Starting now.

If you wanna get in on it too, join us over at Mama Notes and get started on the Body After Baby Challenge. You know you want to.

Watch this post for the possible upcoming appearance of my "before" picture. No promises though. That involves finding someone other than Mr. Mocky-Pants, er, I mean Spouse, to take the picture!

Disclosure:
Going into the hospital to have Snapdragon- 236 lbs
Start of Challenge- 210 lbs