From August to December of 2008 I lost 40 pounds. It just fell off week after week and I felt great. I was using WW eTools religiously and started working out regularly and everything just clicked and I felt like I had made a lifestyle change that would stick. My gallbladder surgery was scheduled for December 10 and in preparation I worked out HARD for the 2 weeks leading up to that date, knowing it would be a week or two before I could return to my regular schedule seemed to motivate me and it felt great.

Then my surgery got cancelled at the last second (literally, I was prepped and waiting to be wheeled to the operating room) and everything fell apart. I fibbed about the real reason for the cancellation, telling everyone that some chest congestion kept me from going under the anesthesia, when in truth I found out during the surgery prep that I was pregnant. Pregnant! After trying for a bit with no success, then getting sick and trying hard not to get pregnant, here I was knocked up and unable to have surgery. I was excited and shocked – this timing was a perfect fit for our “3-years apart” plan – but I didn’t feel pregnant at all and was trying to wrap my head around it.

Knowing I was pregnant gave me an excuse not to continue my workout schedule; which lead to me not working out at all, and to fall off the WW wagon. The holidays hit and then I lost the pregnancy to miscarriage and everything got put on hold. The miscarriage did not hit me as hard as I expected – nothing about this pregnancy felt right and I wasn’t terribly surprised when it happened. It was hard and emotionally draining but I was not as wrecked as I thought I would be. It also gave me an excuse to further my delay my return to eating right and exercising and instead indulge in comfort eating. All of this lead to me gaining 7 pounds back in about 6 weeks. I felt sluggish and tired so getting back in my routine seemed even harder.

Now my surgery is back on for February 9 which has given me some motivation to hit the treadmill and turn Jillian back on. But I just can’t get my eating back on track. I’d lost most of the 7 lb gain but now my weight is starting to creep back up. I KNOW it’s because I’m only doing half of the job – it takes working out + eating right to lose weight, but I’m getting increasingly frustrated. I’m working out really hard (I’m actually running on the treadmill – something I haven’t done in …well I don’t think I’ve ever run on a treadmill before), I’m keenly aware of my abs, quads and shoulders as they are always sore, but the scale keeps moving in the wrong direction.

There is a new wellness competition starting soon at work which has me as a co-captain of a team and I’m hoping that my competitive spirit will help me get back in balance with both the eating and the exercising. I hope to recover from this surgery and get pregnant again quickly and I know being healthy is a key component to that equation, but right now I’m really struggling to keep both things going at the same time.