cookies and cakes and brownies, oh my!

My family is doing a biggest loser competition, and anyone who knows me know that me and a diet are like oil and water. It just doesn't blend. I like to be happy and enjoy life- which for me revolves around food. I am passionate about eating well and having delicious food- especially baked goods and chocolate. Luckily for me, up until my pregnancy I was able to eat anything I wanted and with very minimal exercise (or no exercise) maintained my "happy weight". Then came pregnancy...I gained a lot. By 6 months I weighed what my mom weighed at the end of her twin pregnancy. I saw numbers on the scale I never imagined possible for me. It was a little scary, but I had 2 other people in my body so I cut myself some slack.
After the babies were born the pounds fell off for the first couple of months with just breastfeeding. I still ate at least as much as I did when I was pregnant, and was so incredibly exhausted constantly that exercise wasn't even in the equation. I was 10 lbs heavier than I was before, but I was happy with the one month results.
Then all of the sudden, 15 months later I still weigh the same. Maybe even a little more. When I stopped breastfeeding I kept eating the same and quickly realized something needed to change- I was gaining weight. Pregnancy completely changed my body, not just my ribs and my stomach, but it's ability to let me eat limitless amounts of sweets. I started trying to be a little more conscious about what I ate, and even went to the gym a couple times, but that only helped me maintain my weight, not loose it.
I've never really done a diet before and always thought they sounded like a cruel form of slow death, but I've also never really had to lose weight. I'm not crazy huge, still in the normal BMI for my height- but I used to be at the very bottom of that "normal weight" category, and I feel like that's where I belong. I want to get back.
So when Brad said no one else stood a chance against him in my family's biggest loser competition, it gave me the motivation I needed to prove to him that he's not the only "smart and hard working" person out there- I can do hard things too. It may seem ridiculous, but not enjoying my food is just about the hardest thing anyone could ask me to do. (outside of something crazy like leave my family)
For 2 weeks I've had basically no sugar or "bad" carbs (actually good carbs in my book). I did cheat a bit one day (do donuts and chocolate cake count as cheating?), but that was last week. I feel more tired and ornery than normal and I'm even more convinced sugar is good for me. I've done some crazy things- things like make brownies...with black beans and splenda- just to mildly enjoy the experience of sitting down and eating something that looks like a brownie. This isn't something that I can keep up forever, but the competition is only 4 more weeks and I only want to survive this craziness till I'm back to my normal weight. Then I'm *hoping* that I can go back to an only slightly modified version of my ways to maintain that weight. (ya know, like instead of eating 10+ of the cookies I make maybe 4-5 can do the trick.)
I want to beat Brad, but it's looking nearly impossible at this point. I'll still do my darndest to prove him wrong, but the most important thing to me is getting to the point that I can wear all my pants, that I don't feel self conscious when I get dressed, and feel a little more "myself". It's a little frustrating to imagine all this work will be in vain the next time I'm pregnant, but hopefully I'll discover it is possible to feel at home in my own skin post-pregnancy and that will give me more motivation not to wait over a year next time to give it a try. Here's to hoping.
There is a smaller version of me trapped somewhere...

Probably trapped because of all the things like this I'm always making:

Ahh, cookies...my dear friends. See you in a month or two.