The first few weeks of January have been important ones for me, as my wife and I have come to the decision to start planning for a baby soon. Over the past month, we’ve gone from hoping to spend this year solely doing research, to wanting to get started on fertility treatments after finding a job and moving, to where we are now: planning on submitting our referral to our chosen fertility clinic in the next month.
With the possibility of starting our first round of IUI coming as early as this spring (depending on the clinic’s waiting list, how our job hunts play out, and our pre-existing health), Last week I finalized the plans I had been making over the course of the month into one neat and tidy Fertility Diet Plan:
- Lose about 40 pounds at a rate of 2 pounds per week, over about 18 weeks.
- Be at my goal weight of a healthy BMI by the end of May 2020.
- Continue hitting the gym 3 times per week and ensure I’m there for a full hour, burning 1650 calories per week.
- Do 30 minutes of yoga the other days of the week (4), burning an additional 720 calories per week.
- Walking the dog for 30 minutes per day nets 1260 burned calories per week.
- Eat roughly 1200 calories per day (no lower), each day per week.
- Have a mainly whole food, plant based diet rich in nutrients
- Avoid trans fats, white grains, and “junk” food devoid of nutrients
- Take a prenatal vitamin (and possibly other vitamins) daily
- Weigh myself daily
- Drink 2 liters of water per day
- Practice meditation
I want to get into the practice of updating at least monthly on my overall diet progress, as I have done in the past with this blog. I find the looming deadline of a diet update post fuels my resolve and keeps me accountable to the process, while also being a fun way for me to look back on my progress (or identify issues that need solving).
I’m going to be fairly easy on myself for January as I only formulated my plan in the second-to-last week of the month. However, even before then I was trying to lose weight, so I have some progress to share.
January 1st weight: 205-208 lbs
Lowest weight achieved: 196.7 lbs
Current weight: 197.9 lbs
Weight
First of all, I wanted to talk about the start weight I used in my introductory post, and in future posts on my fertility diet. On January 1st, my wife and I went to the gym for the first time (hello, other new years resolution gym pals!) and I hopped on the analog scale. I am very unfamiliar with these types of scales, but my wife (who is a nurse and was very active throughout high school) knew how they operated. I believe I had some breakfast that morning, and possibly some tea or water. The analog scale read 208 lbs.
Not trusting the analog scale and worried that my measurement wouldn’t be as accurate because I had eaten that day, January 2nd I used my trusty digital scale which read 205 lbs. I didn’t record my weight again until January 6th, first thing in the morning. At that point I was down to 203 lbs.
I don’t exactly know how in the first week of January I managed to go from 208, to 205, to 203. My best guess is that withdrawing from the chocolate, alcohol and other sweets that I had consumed up until New Years Eve had something to do with it. I was off work that week, so I had a lot more time to focus on weeding through my pantry and getting things in tip-top shape for my new years resolution of losing 10 lbs (which transformed into my current goal of dropping about 40 lbs before conceiving).
The following week my weight fluctuated at first to 201.3, then back to the 202 range with daily incremental progress back to 201. By the next Monday (January 13) I weighed in at 200.2 pounds. The following week, my weight hardly changed day-to-day, with tiny losses sprinkled throughout my morning weigh-ins. On January 20th, I was at 199.6.
Last week, hormones wreaked havoc on me and my weight. I went from 199 to 196, then back up to today’s weight of 197.9. Meaning, I’ve lost 5.2 pounds since January 6th (or 1.73 pounds per week).
I’m happy with the progress on the scales, considering I wasn’t sticking as faithfully to the rules I created (again, they hadn’t been created yet).
Exercise
My wife and I sat down at the end of December 2019 and had a look at our calendar for the upcoming month. Wanting to make our new gym membership purchase worthwhile, we decided the best thing to promote us actually getting to the gym was to schedule it into our Apple Calendar as if it were an appointment we had to keep. We found 3 days per week that we would go to the gym. We went every one of those days!
I will admit that we swapped one day for another once, but we remained consistent with our goal of being at the gym and active 3 days a week.
The first two weeks of January I focused solely on cardio, hitting the elliptical for 15-30 minutes each gym session. As my endurance increased, I started adding strength training to my routine these last two weeks of the month. I’ve created a list on my phone of each machine I use, the reps and sets, and the weight I use to minimize the guessing game when sitting down at the machine. So far, it’s working really well.
The day I saw the weight drop to 196 pounds was the day after a really good ab workout, so I’m excited to do that again.
The last week of January (the week I am currently writing), I won’t be hitting the gym three times. I’m headed to a 3 day conference in Toronto that will include a LOT of walking, so I feel good about it. I also hope to do some yoga, go on some walks or be at least a little active around the conference days (which are a full 9-5 day).
Diet and Calories
As my diet and calories were only decided on a few days ago, I don’t have as much to report on here.
Figuring out a calorie plan and diet has been my main focus this month – and doing research into fertility-friendly nutrients has been my primary hobby in the mornings and evenings. I am currently reading The Fertility Diet which goes over everything with great detail, and is evidence-based. After I finish reading this book, I plan on coming up with some meal plans that fit into the recommendations provided by the authors.
I only started tracking calories a few days ago, so I don’t have much to report other than the general success and general difficulty one can expect starting a new (rather time intensive) diet routine. Luckily, I have a lot of recipes we usually make preloaded into MyFitnessPal.
Healthy Habits
January has been a great month for establishing the routines of taking a prenatal vitamin daily, weighing myself daily, drinking 2L of water a day and meditating daily during the work week. I have forgotten a few mornings, but I remember to take the pill when I get home from work.
I have been noticing a tangible lack of commitment to the healthy habits, and to some extent the diet as a whole on weekends. I tend to have unstructured weekends with household chores and social engagements peppered randomly throughout the two days I have off. As well, my wife will sometimes work a late shift which can throw off our mornings. This means I don’t have a set time to go to the gym, refill my waterbottle, or make and eat meals as I do during the week. I’m hoping to improve in this area by next month.
Goals for February
- Have a more structured weekend that follows diet and exercise commitments, as well as healthy habits
- Start my yoga practice
- Finish reading about fertility diet, and implement recommendations into my diet
- Send in referral to our fertility clinic (which will hopefully be another motivator for me!)
February is a big birthday month in my family, with me, my brother and my grandma’s birthdays in a two week period. We usually have a family celebration this month, which I’m hoping I can approach rationally. I will likely eat more than usual and a different variety of foods than normal – cheese, for example, will likely be in attendance, and I’m already drooling thinking about it! I’ll also have to watch my special birthday meal with my wife to make sure I’m having something healthy – but still a delicious treat.
Valentines Day could be another potential barrier, as my wife and I have plans to eat some delicious heart-shaped pizza together. I’m hoping I can again approach this celebration rationally, perhaps decreasing my portion sizes and ensuring I’m strict on the 1200 calorie and exercise plans on the days before and after indulging.
Usually, my new years resolutions tend to falter a bit by February, especially with all these celebrations happening in a two week period. I’m really hopeful that the desire to have a child in the next year will be enough to power through this difficult month. Cross your fingers for me!
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