It's all good until you start eating hamburgers every day

I normally gain about 40 lbs during pregnancy. I have been quite lucky to get rid of it rather quickly. Though, I am worried about losing the weight this time. I am older, not ancient or anything, but I will be 32 and my metabolism isn't quite so awesome these days. Plus, my belly got a lot bigger a lot faster, so what if I gain even more weight?! This is truly a concern of mine. I work very hard at staying in shape and being healthy, and minus the coke and pizza addiction I have, I am an overall healthy person. Except, in pregnancy. I don't give in and just eat for two or think that since I am going to gain weight anyway I may as well eat whatever I want because that isn't the case, but the foods I want during pregnancy are overly processed or fatty. I will want to eat Doritos or Cheetos, I will want a huge brownie with snicker bar crumbles on top, I will want to eat the whole pizza by myself plus add breadsticks, and the big thing--hamburgers. Oh how I love to eat big fat thick juicy hamburgers when I am pregnant. I normally enjoy hamburgers just fine but I don't go out of my way to eat one. While I am pregnant I would knock you and your mom out of my way to get a burger from 5 Guys and then I would want to do it again 5 more times that week.

In an effort to try and not eat so poorly this pregnancy I started off doing quite well. In the first trimester, my craving for burgers and nasty chips, doesn't normally hit me right away. I am busy just trying to stay awake and eat really bland things like pretzels, saltines, cereal, and popcorn. This time I had a plan. I would work out. That failed miserably right away. I attempted twice in my first trimester and the first time I thought I had it because I made it half way through class kicking butt and feeling great, but then I got dizzy, very dizzy and my stomach began to cramp so I had to stop. I did try again but I didn't even make it halfway this time. I will try again to be sure, but probably not near as often as before and not so hard. Oh but food, I can control food. I ate apples, saltines, pretzels with hummus, carrots (plain and with hummus), watermelon, cereal, and eggs. I was so proud of myself. I was even able, for a week, to eat things that always make me gag during pregnancy-deli meat and chicken. Then one day it happened before I realized it. Chicken and deli meat never crossed my mind for food, yogurt made me gag, so did raspberries(that one was new), but still I carried on with my bland foods that were on the pretty good to good range of healthiness. I was proud of myself. I could do it. I hadn't gained any weight even though my stomach was huge for this stage of pregnancy. I wasn't starving myself either because I ate every hour. One day though I was still hungry. I tried all sorts of things but my gag reflex was preventing me from eating almost everything in our house- the turkey and cheese, the yogurt, the left over chicken broccoli alfredo, and alas we were out of cereal. I was hungry, I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell too because apparently being pregnant and hungry makes me angry. I called my husband and asked for a McDonald's hamburger from the dollar menu. I just had to have something. At first I didn't noticed my transition into nasty food. I just wanted to be able to eat something and fill full vs extremely shaky and moody. We took a couple car trips during this time and my husband would ask where I wanted to eat and I would answer with Steak N Shake. This is a fine place really and their food is good but I would never normally ask for it. He laughed a bit and said he thought it was funny how every time I am pregnant I want hamburgers. I was offended, no way, I have been fighting this, I have been winning, I haven't been eating hamburgers a lot, but then sadly I had to admit he was right. Anytime I was allowed to pick I asked for a big old hamburger. I guess there are somethings you just can't fight when you are pregnant-I will go to the bathroom all the time, I will get a huge puffy face, I will end up wishing at some point the baby would just miraculously be born without having to go into labor, and I will eat a lot of hamburgers.