The Next Phase, Part 1: Meal Plan & Preggie Update

Well, I've finished out my 1st trimester and this is when I hear life gets a little easier.. I say that I hear that because I still got the pregnant barfies. In most women this is gone by now, but I guess I've never been one to be "normal."

Week: 15 - Beginning of the 2nd trimester! In the life of a fitness competitor, wouldn't it seem more fitting to count DOWN the weeks? ;) I'm now 25 weeks out! WOOT! Still feels like forever.  

Weight:  132 lbs (7 lb gain.)

Sleep: I have been feeling somewhat better, so I've been working out more... So, I've been sleeping a little better at night. Although, HOLY HELL, DREAMS! My dreams are sooo vivid (hormones).. Ahem, sex dreams are theeeee best. 

Symptoms: Better, sort of... Nausea and sickness are still around frequently... Please don't feel that you need to fix this because my doctor has stated that I just might be one of those women that gets sick all the way through, and I have tried EVERYTHING aside from taking medication, which I refuse to do.

The fatigue has pretty much hung around.. I walk around like I'm on a sleeping pill all day trying to fight off its effects... But its really just hormones.

Just imagine having PMS always. ALWAYS. I'm trying to be good about telling people when I just feel plain old grumpy for no reason. All the ladies seem to get it, and the husband appreciates it. ;)

Miss Anything? Competing. Training hard. Ordering new bikinis. Wearing bikinis. Having abs. The Olympia just happened and it sucks to not really be able to focus on that right now... Or anytime soon. Maybe late next year? Its kind of far fetched considering you're not *supposed* to workout for 6 weeks past giving birth (this will be a WHOLE other post, I don't totally agree with this logic).

But the best way to beat the crummy attitude about that, is to continue working on my diet and exercise! Am I right?! Makes me feel less insecure about my changing body & body composition.

Mood: BETTER ALSO. Well, mostly. Trying to be better about recognizing when my crazy pregnancy hormones are just making me angry. :) I'm calling that... Pregangry.

Cravings: Pickles and apples. Not together. But a LOT of apples.

Also, everything.

Diet: Towards the end of week 13, I really noticed my tummy was queasy less often, and I was shakey less often.. So I took it upon myself to get back to making good solid lunches with a variety of foods... fruits, veggies, mostly gluten free carbs like rice cakes and rice noodles, and some high protein bagels. Unfortunately for me, I've been sick SO much that I can only hold down carbs first thing in the morning. I tried making spinach & fruit shakes, but they almost made me sicker. For weeks on end all I could hold down in the mornings were bagels, so the P28 bagels REALLY came in handy!

So, I've actually had to mess around with this a LOT. I've worked on a different meal plan almost every week simply because nothing was working with the nausea like I had hoped. Here's what my meal plan looks like for the next few weeks:
7am - Coffee and a P28 bagel with cream cheese
10am - Yogurt & Fruit
12pm - Some kind of salad loaded with veggies, a lean meat and any dressing of my choosing, trying to avoid choices like cheese or olives. 
2pm - a protein candy bar. ;) Okay, its usually a cliff bar or a promax bar, but they taste like candy.
5pm - Yoga days: an apple & coconut water; Lift days: apple & protein shake
630ish - Anything, but something well rounded... A veggie, a lean meat and a whole grain of some sort... This has often ended up in the form of a good pasta or burrito. :) And sometimes breakfast for dinner.
9ish - Protein crepes with fruit, or a FiberOne Bar... Although I should make more crepes. They are fabulous and really fill me up overnight.

Goals:
We got our back room cleaned out and even got the office organized! It was giant dump run and Goodwill run, but soooo worth it. Now we can officially start moving the furniture out of the office but we also have a few walls to get knocked out... We have a little house, only 2 bedrooms in 1200 sq feet, so the plan is to knock out a wall between our living room & dining room so we can make room for our gigantor desk in the living room. Its a lot to handle but Baby Bang has given us a reason to be motivated. :)

Well, new stuff happening! We get to find out the gender in another couple of weeks, which has felt like an ETERNITY! And I've been fighting the urge to feel annoyed with my doctor who likes to wait to find out the gender until 19-20 weeks. Ugh... We do have names picked out for either sex, but will wait until we find out to share them. :) We tried sharing our boy name with some family and got a whole lot of "WHAT??" So, we're just waiting.

Pregnancy in general is pretty weird. You just have to be okay with it. And I've not ever been one to just concede and be fine with miscellaneous stressors, or a body I'm uncomfortable in, so this has been a challenge. I'm usually one to change whatever I don't like about myself or my situation so this is quite the new experience. It challenges my self-esteem to make a choice to love my body right now, when it doesn't reflect what I'd like it to, among other things.

My goals right now are:
1. Keep up on my water intake & pre-established meal plan
2. Eat only what's on my pre-established meal plan. (This is for a couple of reasons: First, of course, I want to gain weight at a healthy pace, not blow up. And also, high blood pressure runs in my family and any weight gain sets this in for me, so monitoring my food helps me monitor my sodium intake to keep my blood pressure low.)
3. Gym workouts 3-4x times a week and trying for hot yoga 2x a week. This is too much for many, and I wouldn't recommend this unless you were doing it pre-pregnancy, which I was. (Obviously this is me balancing creating strength and working on flexibility. Gotta take advantage of all the excess human growth hormone!)

Exercise Routine: Also towards the end of week 12 since I was feeling less sick, I started to get back to, at the VERY least, cardio. And on days I was feeling okay for it, I did some strengthening exercises... Body weight squats, pushups, hip thrusts, etc. Basically back to 3-4 times a week by week 15. And these last two weeks its been 3 days a week, with body parts split up and elliptical, at the gym... with 2 days of yoga. Yeah! Feels great to sweat hard again. Maybe in another week I'll have the coveted GLOW?!

Next week I will post my workout plan, which I feel very good about. More on that next week.

Question: Would registering for new VersaGrips be acceptable on my baby registry? I mean, that's ultimately what I'm going to NEED post-partum. ;)