The Difference a Week Can Make

So, after much deliberation as to the possible causes of me hanging on to extra weight, my husband and I decided that I would stop hormonal birth control. I researched and researched and got pretty inconsistent results regarding the effects of birth control on weight. I read anecdotes on both sides of the equation, read package inserts, even talked to someone who was in a birth control/weight related study. But, at the end of the day, my gut was what was telling me it was time to give it a try.

We had previously decided, after a 4 year long battle of infertility, that I would never be on hormone birth control again. However, his military schedule got turned on its head this year and our little plan of "let's see what happens" seemed reckless when we found out he was coming home from deployment months early to take nine month orders to California. Nine month orders. No birth control. Moving with a newborn - AGAIN. I couldn't do it and without a second thought, I took the prescription to the nearest pharmacy and started taking the pills.

Well, until that point I HAD been losing weight, effortlessly. I have had a huge year emotionally and I'm sure a lot of the weight loss was the unhealthy kind of weight loss. So it really wasn't that surprising that I started putting the weight back on when he got home. But after three months of pretty consistent progress in cleaning up our lifestyle (and at least thrice weekly work outs and changing our diet a LOT) I hadn't lost anything and I was discouraged. So we looked at everything and decided to try taking me off the hormones, just to see...

Well, all the Internet research aside, I feel confident I made the right choice. This was after 5 days without hormonal birth control. Without making any significant changes to my diet or exercise. And the scale has finally moved. 2lbs. In a week. The recommended amount to lose with healthy diet and exercise.

I'm not announcing some brand new breakthrough, recommending anyone do what I did, or anything like that. I'm just SO GLAD we figured out WHY **I**'ve been retaining water (or fat or whatever it was making the scale stay stuck at 193).

So I'm happy.

PS -- For the record, this is not a "trying to conceive" announcement.