Post...Pardon???: Almost One Year Update

The update you've been weighting for...

First, it’s not officially a year, but I felt I needed to make this post now. Not because I’ll be too busy by the end of the month (though I do need to plan a birthday party), but because this week I posted a picture of me in the jeans I’ve been pushing for the last three months and my DMs were FLOODED.

So here it is: Yes, I’ve lost weight. And yes, it’s a significant amount of weight. My plan was to just let the dust settle and go on my merry way, try and be an OOTD girlie and act like that isn’t the hardest pivot ever, but, while all the DMs yesterday were lovely and a huge confidence boost, all of them came from women and a lot of them came from other moms. Moms of five-year-olds and moms in the throws of postpartum and often times with the question of “HOW??” pleadingly following it. I could have just said thank you, I did for a while, but I don’t want someone to think this was au natural. I don’t want someone to think this is genetics or an intense workout routine. I don’t want anyone to judge me either, but I've learned that’s unavoidable so…

It’s The Shot.

It feels weird to say. Everyone who sees me everyday knows, I’m not hiding it in “real life”, but when you live your life online, the line of what I keep private and what feels sharable is ever changing. The picture, while just me in a public bathroom, felt oddly vulnerable. I don’t take pictures, I barely look in the mirror in the mornings (which will be a shock to no one.) And losing weight hasn’t changed that—I’m not walking around my house all done up, I didn’t even have a picture for this cover photo to show you a before in after!! But as I stressed over what to say or not to say, I also received a a few DMs from sleuths who were very excited to message me “OH HEY OZEMPIC!” like they’d cracked the case and I realized…no one thinks I’ve been working out nonstop. Anyone who thought a second beyond that picture already figured it out.

To be fair, if you only started following me on the gram in the last four years, you’ve seen me pregnant for essentially all of that time. Those who have been with me longer probably don’t remember a time before. I certainly don’t. I was pregnant in back half of 2021, delivered in 2022, pregnant literally a year later in 2023 and then trickled that pregnancy the tiniest bit into 2024. Sprinkle in some postpartum here and there and you’ve got a smorgasbord of weight gain and not a ton of fluctuation. So yes, it’s going to seem drastic in comparison, but also…it is drastic. And it seems I won’t be able to post another full length mirror pic in the year of our lord 2025 without getting this out of the way the way now so there you go. I admit it!

Last June was a reckoning. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, my Postpartum 2.0 Journey was tumultuous. It was erratic. And in the weeks leading up to returning to work, it was an emotional rollercoaster of lost identity loop-de-loops and self loathing death drops—and that did not just have to do with my weight. Because we’re not supposed to focus on our weight, RIGHT? When your body does something incredible like creating a human, you can’t hate yourself, RIGHT? IT’S BEAUTIFUL. When your hormones are all messed up because of postpartum, you have to go easy on yourself, RIGHT? IT’S NATURAL. It’ll get better with time, RIGHT?? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong (for me—this is a personal essay after all, I won’t claim the entire postpartum community feels the same.)

My amazing body hasn’t belonged to me for years. Nothing looked or felt like me, inside or out. I’ve never said this, but I gained over seventy pounds with my first pregnancy (I say over as in “it went over 70 and I don’t know by how much because at that point it wasn’t my business”), on top of weight I’d already been trying to lose, and, while I lost a bit of of that on my own, I gained it all back when I got pregnant again a year later. Happily, because, again, I am so grateful I was able to get pregnant not once but twice. That my body could do this for me (yes, my body did the blood pressure scary thing for me too but otherwise, she was a solid vessel and I thank her!) not once but twice. I do not take that for granted.

I just took me for granted.

When that second baby slipped on out, it wasn’t the drama and trauma from Baby #1. It was totally different aka not miserable, unable to physically sit down, emotionally drained and tired constantly. I was up and moving and grooving and TOTALLY FINE. I said “I’M FINE” so much I’m sure some people even believed me. I even believed me for a while!

Spoiler: I ended up not “fine”.

I assumed, as a new mom, this was me now—often emotional, constantly frazzled, slightly short-tempered, aware of every flaw and just trying doing my best. My relationship was different, but two new roommates lived with us so of course I felt a little lost in it. I had two kids, of course I felt torn between them and everything else. My days were filled with all things baby, it’s understandable I had to put me on a back burner. In hindsight, I now know I forgot to turn that burner on, forgot to turn it to a lower simmer, but when the last few weeks of maternity leave came, when I was faced returning to my job, a job I forgot how to do and didn’t know how I’d manage with two kids, I cracked.

Sometimes I wonder if this crack would have formed regardless of everything coming together like that. My job looming, my birthday coming and going, two babies back to back. If it had just been one, or even none, just the overwhelming pressure of “growing up”, of not having the answers to anything, maybe I would have fixed it myself. But kids need answers, babies need everything, and newly thirty-three-year-old me was just begging someone to tell me what to do. (I legit typed my age wrong twice while typing this, is that weird??") I sometimes forget, the main character that I am, everyone else has their own shit they’re figuring out. Everyone else is taking their first stab at life too. I had to write myself a new plot point in the soap opera that was my life, drama of my own making, but I couldn’t write myself out of it, nor did I try. Until I cracked.

2024 can be broken into to halves—the first, while filled with joy and new life and memories I’m trying not to lose, ended with the bottom falling out. I’m lucky my bottom had several safety nets built in, that it wasn’t too big of a drop. Some people have a larger drop than they expect, do not have the support they need. Mine was not nearly as dramatic as this analogy is making it seem, but I love an analogy so…let’s continue. My bottom was probably faulty before two kids, had probably almost dropped out a few times over the years, but I managed to patch it up. I seem to work myself that way—nonstop until I crash, hanging onto the edge and then pulling myself back up. But I needed to crash. I needed to see the bottom and decide if I wanted to live there like I had been dancing around for so long, or go somewhere else.

Only I could decide that.

The week I went back to work, I started The Shot and I also started therapy. Visibly, you all see a difference, that’s why you’re reading this. I get it, I’m nosy too so I’ll just tell you. That baby weight is gone, plus a little more on top of that which I’d been trying so hard to lose before my wedding and never could (I did NOT lose all of this weight from “the shot”, some came before!) Visibly, you can see the progress, so you’re saying to yourself “of course you feel better”, and I do, but I learned pretty quickly as the weight fell off, the theoretical weight was still very heavy.

I’m still hard on myself. When I take a picture, I still grimace, either because I don’t love what I see or I don’t recognize her, though now for different reasons. I kind of look like college me, but college me was much more fearless. She was bold. She was also so naive (and tipsy in a lot of pictures? Love that for her). I also look way more tired, because I am. I also sort of look like the girl Bill met. The one who sang Shaggy’s “Wasn’t Me” during karaoke and got kicked off stage when it got to the rap part. The one who worked her ass off, who worked two jobs so she could afford a stupidly priced apartment and brunch every weekend. The one who said she’d be a boy mom. I definitely don’t know her, can you imagine me with boys???

*Editors note: I did not intend to do two Mean Girls GIFs, or really any for that matter, but here we are.

Today’s me is wiser, sometimes to a fault. She’s cautious, for sure to a fault. She thinks everything, in some way or another, is her fault. I don’t love her like I love those other mes, even if she is skinnier. But I think that’s the problem—we’re much kinder to ourselves after the fact, we have sympathy now when there wasn’t any then. We’re so hard on ourselves in the moment and then an hour or a week or a year later we’re left wondering why that was such a big deal? What made that moment so hard to begin with? We look back at pictures and think “why was I so tough on her?” or “why did I yell at her?” or “that outfit was a choice but I look like I’m having fun”. We look back and we wish we could have done it differently, but then we wouldn’t be here. And for all my ranting and sappiness, I do like where I am today. I’m just tired of beating myself up for wanting more or not trying enough or needing something else. And I know I’m going to look back and wonder why I was so mean to me, when I was just doing my best.

I’m indebted to June 2024 me, not because I lost a lot of weight, but because she did SOMETHING. Without telling anyone, I did something for me. I ordered these shots and I called a therapist for me. Most of you will focus on the weight part, have something to say either good or bad, and that’s fine. I really don’t care and it is nice. I do feel better. The compliments yesterday did raise my confidence, I did see myself more through everyone else’s eyes and not through my own.

But I didn’t do this for compliments or cute clothes. I did this for future me and, seven months later, I’m glad I did. But I’m more proud of the other changes, the ones you don’t see, the ones that are taking a lot more time and are going to make future me the happiest.

I debated this post for a long time—about seven months to be exact. To live transparently or to keep things private. Every glimpse of my face has come with at least one “you look different”. Again, not unkind, but also…odd. I don’t look in the mirror a lot during the day, I just forget to. The phone became that and it’s not shocking looking back that I pulled away. But here we are now and, while I’d love to throw a link up and say nothing, post and OOTD and just act like this was how things have been, but I need the new mom out there to know I didn’t wake up at 5am to work out every day. I didn’t win the genetic lottery (I mean I did, but not like that!!) I cheated, I did it the easy way, whatever you want to say, and I’m okay with that.

I wrote this because, while you’re happy for my physical changes, it’s the ones you can’t see that I’m proudest of. The ones you won’t be able to see here, but maybe you’ll be able to feel them. I didn’t post this today to inspire you to lose some weight or to start therapy (although I do think therapy is amazing). I did this for future yous…how’s that for cheesy?

It could be loading the dishwasher tonight so it’s done tomorrow or folding your laundry or it could be booking a hair appointment or your nails or a trip (three months ago me booked a surprise trip for Bill to Vegas this weekend and I’m SO proud of her for that!) It could be reading at night instead of watching TV, it could be starting therapy. It could be starting a side project or freezing your eggs or deciding to quit your job six months from today. It should be, at the very least, taking the picture, even if today’s you doesn’t like it right now. Future you needs to see it.

Future you is begging you to go easy on this version, to give her a break, to help her out. She’s doing her best and if her best isn’t what you want right now, she’s trying. So maybe help her out.