Weight Gain at 20 Weeks

It's basically a fact of life:

Pregnancy = Weight Gain

There is really no way around it. Before I got pregnant, I was doing Weight Watchers to get rid of the same 15 pounds I've been trying to lose since college and was finally doing a pretty good job. Right before I found out I was pregnant, I weighed in at 138, which was just 3 pounds away from what I weighed the day I went to college and almost 7 pounds less than what I weighed at my wedding!

After we found out that I was with child (does anyone say that any more?), WW went out the window, mainly because I was eating low-fat everything and there's all kinds of fake crap in diet foods. I started buying the real versions of everything and eating when I was hungry. During my one bout of "morning sickness" (if you can even call it that - I was just basically nauseous for a week straight but never puked) I could only stomach English Muffins with butter or honey and cranberry juice cut with water. At this point, I can't even look at an English Muffin without getting a tad puke-ish.

At any rate, I slowly started putting on weight and hovered around 140 for the majority of the first trimester, which I didn't think was too bad considering that my body was adjusting to eating real food and not just 19 WW points a day.

When I go to the doctor's, I get weighed every time but I take that with a grain of salt. My pre-pregnancy weight of 138 was taken at a noon WW meeting at which I wore very tiny gym shorts, a tank top, and hadn't eaten anything since 7pm the night before. Basically it was as close to naked as I could possibly be in a room full of people, and on an empty stomach. On the other hand, when I go to the doctor's, it's normally in the afternoon after I've eaten breakfast and lunch, and I wear normal clothes and my shoes.

Clearly I'm going to weigh more at these doctors appointments than I do when I weigh myself in the morning before I get in the shower.

However.... when I saw 154 on the scale at Monday's appointment, I just about shit myself. 155 is my "fat" weight. It's what I saw on the scale all through college and grad school. It means size 10 jeans that are sometimes too tight.

And then after my momentary freakout, I realized that as I stood there on the scale, looking at the digital "154", I was wearing size 4 GAP jeans. And a bra that is still smaller than what I wore in college. Clearly 154 pre-pregnancy and 154 at 19 weeks are two different things.

This morning, one day shy of 20 weeks, I weighed myself again (for the 4th time this week), post-pee and pre-shower. The scale is holding steady at 151, putting me officially up 13 pounds in 20 weeks. According to this pregnancy weight gain calculator, I've put on 2 pounds too many thus far. Whatever. I feel great. And yes, the weights I record at home are my official weights.

Then I scrolled down a bit on the webpage and saw that my weight at 40 weeks should be between 163 and 173 pounds (25-35 up from pre-pregnancy). Yikes. A pound a week weight gain from here on out puts me at 171 pounds at 40 weeks.

Crazy town. At least I know WW works for me.... till then, I guess I'm aiming for 171 on Nov. 5!