I Lost Weight by 10K Steps, Calorie Counting and Daily Weigh-ins

I've been pregnant twice, and both times I gained 100 pounds. And both times, I lost it in around six months.

I know 100 pounds in nine months is an insane amount of weight to gain. But I was essentially bedridden with hyperemesis gravidarum during both pregnancies. I couldn't get out of bed, and I couldn't eat anything healthy.

All I could eat was carbs and junk food, so the weight just piled on.

Throughout my pregnancy, I was really freaking out. I kept thinking: "How am I going to lose this? Is this going to be me forever?"

Then, when I had the baby, I was breastfeeding, so I couldn't go on any crazy diets or juice cleanses or anything like that. And with a newborn, you can't spend all day in a gym, so I felt limited in my options for losing the weight.

But I was committed. I weighed 230 pounds and I knew I had to lose it; I could not stay 100 pounds over what was normal for me.

I did three things in particular to lose weight.

1. Walking 10,000 Steps a Day

The first thing I did was walk 10,000 steps every day. I got an activity tracker—a FitBit—to count my steps.

Each day, I would go on a huge walk with the baby in the buggy. I'd pound the pavement, and it was so difficult because I was carrying around so much extra weight.

My back was sore, my legs ached, and I would come home after an hour of walking dripping in sweat and my face as red as a tomato.

I would be out of breath in the first minute, but I kept at it and kept at it, and finally, it started getting easier. And by the end, I was walking fast in no time at all.

The FitBit is great because it buzzes if you're not doing enough steps. So, as well as my daily goal of 10,000 steps, I also had an hourly goal. And if I wasn't hitting my hourly goal, it would buzz and say: "You've got 10 minutes left to get those."

Whenever it buzzed, I'd stand up and do laps between my living room and kitchen, running back and forth until I hit those steps.

I also had a community of friends using the app and we challenged each other, like who could do the most steps in a weekend, which made it fun.

Apart from the daily walking, I also did workouts at home. It wasn't easy to get to the gym with a new baby, so I found workout videos online and did them in my living room.

Zumba was a favorite of mine, and circuit training, too. There are loads of exercise options out there, so if you can't get to the gym, just do it at home.

2. Calorie Counting

The second thing I did was calorie counting. I had just come out of nine months of not being able to eat what I wanted to. I could only eat certain foods, so I felt like a diet that limited me was not going to work.

I needed some freedom, and I needed to be able to eat what I wanted to. I found the best thing for me was calorie counting because I could still eat the foods I wanted to but in a limited way.

I downloaded an app called MyFitnessPal, and I entered in all my details, so my gender, height, weight, and what my daily calorie goal was. I added a few hundred onto that just because I was breastfeeding.

Early on, I realized that if I went under, it was not a good thing. For example, if I had something coming up that weekend and I wanted to lose a little bit more weight, I would eat maybe a few hundred calories less one day.

But that was a bad idea because it made the pattern of my weight loss erratic, and took me a while to get back to a steady downward trend. So, I learned not to go under and try and hit that target as close as I could every single day.

There were days as well when I'd have to go over my calories because of an event or something like that, but I'd just work out a little more rather than cut my intake.

It was also really important to me to have three regular meals a day and snacks, so I couldn't just use all my calories in one meal, which was another thing that made my weight loss slope go all over the place.

I tried to spread out the calories as much as I could throughout the day, and I logged every single meal I ate on the MyFitnessPal app to keep track of my intake.

3. Daily Weigh-ins

The third thing I did was daily weigh-ins. I know a lot of people are against daily weigh-ins. They say you're only supposed to weigh yourself once a week because of daily fluctuations.

But the daily weigh-in motivated me to not cheat or slip up. I felt like if I was having a weekly weigh-in, I could have a slice of pizza and justify it by saying: "Oh, by the time my weigh-in comes along, I'll have worked it off."

You can't do that with daily weigh-ins. It's there on the scale in front of you, so you don't really get away with any cheating. I would weigh myself at the same time every day, in the morning before I ate or drank anything, so it was a true reading.

I downloaded the My Weight app to track my weight loss. When I first put in my details, it said I was obese class 2.

Seeing the word "obese" beside my name was alarming because I've never really been overweight. I just had to bring my weight down. Eventually, I did, down to obese class 1, then very overweight, overweight, and finally normal.

My Weight gives you a weight loss graph, so it's a great feeling to see it going down. But then there were some days—and this I why I understand there are critics of daily weigh-in—where I was sticking to my very strict regime and I'd flatline, or even go up.

When that happens, you just lose faith and it's very frustrating. I cried. It might have been hormones, or maybe my baby was on a feeding frenzy, and I was producing more breast milk. I don't know.

But I just had to believe and keep going and believe it would go back the right way, and it did.

The Importance of Knowing Your Body

Apart from those three things, I think it's so important to know your body and to understand which foods agree with you and which foods don't.

For example, I cannot eat carbs. I have friends who can eat a whole loaf of bread in one sitting and they won't gain any weight. But I just need to look at a slice of bread, and I gain a pound.

So, for me, cutting carbs was important on this journey. Instead of bread, I would have corncakes. And instead of spaghetti, I would have courgette spaghetti. I'd make substitutions like that.

Dairy is another type of food that didn't agree with me. I'd bloat and my face would break out. So I cut down on my dairy. It's personal—you'll know which foods you can eat.

Committing Yourself

But the biggest factor is committing yourself to weight loss. I knew I had to get back to who I was, and quickly. I had lost myself in every single way: Socially, emotionally, mentally. I needed to lose this weight.

Committing yourself is the most difficult thing. Right now, if I were to try to lose 5 pounds, I think it would be more difficult than when I had to lose 100 pounds, because there's not really any need to.

The process wasn't a diet; it was a lifestyle. This was my life, and this is how I was living it. And it wasn't bad either; it didn't torture me every day because I wasn't able to eat what I wanted to and I had to work out.

It was a good thing because I was so happy and excited when I saw the numbers on the scale and graph going down. The journey was difficult and a lot of hard work, but it was also very positive.

Of course, there are times like if you're out for someone's birthday and everyone's eating chocolate cake, but you can't. It's a horrible feeling. But it's all the more rewarding to step on the scales the next day and see those numbers going down.

It was like a tunnel: I saw the goal, and I just had to keep going, and I tried not to step outside as much as I could.

If you're at the start of your weight loss journey, good luck. It is hard work, but it is so worth it when you finally reach your target goal. It is the best feeling in the world.

Lindsey Lonergan runs the Wolfe Momma channel on YouTube.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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