[Ammi]

I have friends, older than me, who don't have children and they have amazing figures ladies in their twenties would be proud of, so I definately think that pregnancy does change things in terms of how easily you put on and retain weight afterwards, but I'm not sure why that is. For me though, I think I used that as an escuse for far too long. I put on huge amounts of weight in both my pregnancies because I stopped smoking through both and loved the excuse of being pregnant to eat whatever I wanted in whatever quantities I wanted. After my last pregnancy, it was so easy to take the 'what do you expect, I've got two kids' attitude because I don't think I really wanted to change my lifestyle. In the end (when my youngest was abou 13) I realised I had to stop using that excuse (actually it was after seeing a particularly unflattering photo of myself) and do something about it. I'm around 8st 3lb to 8st 6lb these days, it fluctuates a few pounds at certain times so I'm probably a bit underweight, but I don't want to put on any more in case I can't then stop it. And I know this is really shallow, but I'd rather be underweight than overweight. I do smoke as well, which does keep the weight down because I'd be more likely to have a fag break than a kitkat