I'm starting a new diet

Okay, this post will probably be all over the place as I didn't sleep much last night. Taylor stayed at my mom's house and I thought "Yes, a great night's sleep!" Wrong! Callee didn't sleep well and so no one slept well. Hopefully she will sleep in for Mike today though. I'm not sure what is wrong with her. She just finished her antibiotics two days ago so I don't think she is getting sick again and this is great sleeping weather so why isn't she sleeping? All I know is I'm going to need to start sleeping because Wednesday night I stayed up too late and was soooo tired yesterday. Ok enough about my lack of sleep, but can you see this is important to me?

I love my kids, but what happened to the old me? The thin, toned, fun loving, can hold a conversation that didn't deal with kids or sleep old me? Oh how I miss her, but I love my kids more and there will come a day when they are grown up and hopefully all of those other topics will come flooding back to me. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Next topic, dieting (shudder)! I have been dieting for about 3 months now. I have lost an ample amount of weight since I first began, but I'm still not where I want to be. I have hit a plateau with the diet I am currently on so, I am starting a new diet on Monday, the Special K diet. It is supposed to work pretty well, but has anybody else tried this diet? Does it work or am I just getting my hopes up? I am planning on weighing myself on Monday morning and then again the following Monday morning. I will continue to do this until I lose all the weight I want to or I get so discouraged from it not working that I give up and find another diet. I have 6 more pounds to lose to be back at my pre-pregnancy (my baby is 14 months, talk about lazy!) weight, but I would love to lose about 10 more pounds. Then, how do you maintain your weight?

I will admit that I have been blessed, I have never dieted before. After Taylor, the weight just fell off me. With Callee, I couldn't move around too much and had gained a lot more weight so I wasn't so lucky. When Callee was 6 weeks old, I had to have my first knee surgery and I couldn't even walk without pain from that for about 6 months so forget about exercise. My husband thinks I'm crazy for wanting to continue on with my diets, but I don't think he realizes I was a lot smaller than this when we met. I was toned, had abs of steel and my hips were not 7 feet wide. Then, I got pregnant (ooohhhh!)

Rock hard abs..........gone!
Hips.........spread 7 feet!
Thighs..........can we say tree trunks?

I just need to get to my pre-Callee pregnancy weight and then I want to (try) and get my abs back! I don't think this is unreasonable and I am doing it in a safe way so I don't see what the problem is. Any advice for me? Diets that worked or didn't, how do you maintain the weight after you take it off? Please let me know by leaving a comment, all advice is welcome!