Ready for the new me

Hello all

I'm a new mom in my early 40s. My DD is almost 11 months now.

I stand about 5'6" and for most of my adult life, I always felt I was heavy. My lowest weight was around 171 pounds and my highest weight was around 205 pounds. Pre pregnancy I was 187 pounds. Currently I'm at about 200 and I feel terrible, not only about the way I look, but also about the way I feel, generally speaking.

Since having my baby, I've made every effort to avoid the scale and and battle with the mirror every morning in an effort to feel good about myself. Before my baby, I was proud of my curves. Now, I feel as though those curves are gone. All I see is flab.

I'm owner/teacher of an English conversation school in Japan with my husband so to pay the bills we had to go back to work one month after my baby was born. We work 6 days a week, and most nights as well. As much as possible I bring lunch and dinner to the school, but we don't have a place to cook, so most of it is in tupperware.

I know that what I am eating, along with lack of exercise is why I'm not losing weight. Japan doesn't have the "diet food" mentality (yet) so buying things that are "low fat", "fat free" and "sugar free" etc. are not a possibility. That's OK - I'm prepared to work with real food here.

Clothes are also an issue here. They have bigger sized clothes but they are so unflattering and just make me feel worse.

I've been putting this off for a while, but life has finally calmed down enough for me to start taking care of me again. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find some good things here.

Would love to find some more new moms on the site for support and recipe ideas!