8 Reasons I Still Feel Justified Calling it Baby Weight

/
Mac and cheese

My youngest child recently turned 18 months old. Meanwhile, I'm still carrying around about 10 extra pounds that I like to refer to as my "baby weight." At this point, I'm pretty sure it should more accurately be called "late-night-snacking weight." Or "I'm-almost-30-and-need-to-stop-eating-like-I'm-22 weight." But "baby weight" sounds a lot better. It sounds like it's not my fault.

Besides, there are lots of ways in which my kids are responsible for my inability to lose weight.

Here are 8 reasons I still feel justified calling it baby weight:

1. Kids don't finish their food.

And it's a sin to waste it. You're telling me you wouldn't eat half a plate of congealed mac and cheese, or a few rubbery hot dog chunks, or the rest of a gnawed-on cookie if it was staring you in the face?

2. Eating without kids in my presence is a luxury.

So I do it pretty much every night after they go to bed. Because it's blissful to eat chips without little hands trying to steal them from me, and to chew my food without telling my daughter to please not climb on the table, and to not have to pick up my toddler's milk cup from the floor every other bite.

3. I was trained to eat an extra 500 calories a day while I was breastfeeding.

That's not an easy habit to break. Those 500 calories used to literally get sucked right out of me. Now they hang around over the waistband of my jeans.

4. Good moms bake cookies with their kids. 

At least that's what I've gathered from Pinterest, commercials, and magazines. If I'm making cookies, you better believe I'm going to eat at least a couple spoonfuls of cookie dough (you know, for testing purposes). Then I will need to eat some of the cookies or else all of those sugar-filled, empty calories will be in my children's bellies, and what kind of mom would that make me?

5. Being a mom is stressful.

Stress contributes to weight gain and negatively affects attempts to lose weight. So, the more my kids stress me out, the more "baby weight" I put on (or am unable to take off). And it seems that the stress of being a mom only increases as my kids grow older, which means (according to science) this "baby weight" probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon. 

6. Being a mom is exhausting. 

I was regularly sleep-deprived for about a year following the birth of each of my children, and have been occasionally sleep-deprived ever since. Sleep deprivation contributes to weight gain. So I don't see how this baby weight is going anywhere until my kids stop randomly waking up at 2:30AM and start understanding the concept of sleeping in on the weekends. 

7. Each kid equals an additional 4 to 20 slices of birthday cake per year.

There's the slice of birthday cake I eat along with my family on my daughters' actual birthdays. Then the slice of cake I eat at their birthday parties. Then there's the 2 to 5 slices of leftover cake I eat in the days following their birthday parties. And, finally the 0 to 13 (depending on how popular my kids are in any given year) slices of cake I eat at all of their little friends' birthday parties (oh great, now I'm chubby and my tongue is blue).

8. Three words. Hall. O. Ween. 

Every October my children receive tens of thousands of calories worth of candy from my neighbors. I don't want to get dirty looks from our dentist or deal with the effects of feeding my kids too much sugar, so a lot of that candy would go to waste if I didn't step in and take some for the team. Seeing as my days of eating a pillowcase full of candy without gaining a pound are long gone, those Snickers bars are going to end up narrowing my thigh gap.

So, there you have it - 8 reasons I'm going to continue calling these 10 (okay, maybe 15) pounds my "baby weight." And, as much as I would like to be able to zip up all of my pants, I would rather have all of the ups and downs that come along with my two little ladies. (Most of the time.)