Originally posted February 2011
I can’t go to the grocery store without passing at least four magazines with some postpartum celebrity mom either
a) cradling her newborn and calling motherhood “the greatest thing that has ever happened” to them or
b) showing off her new post-baby body in a bikini saying how easy it was to lose the weight. Or, like Kendra Wilkinson, they can do both:
So Kendra felt confident enough to be on a magazine cover 8 weeks after giving birth, but on her show, she complained of not losing any weight at one month postpartum:
And at the actual photo shoot for the cover, she admitted she was trying to suck her belly in, but since her UTERUS was still shrinking, there was only so much she could do.
So all this transformation happened in four weeks? If that’s the case, what the hell am I doing wrong?
Nothing. I’m not doing anything wrong.
I’ve beaten myself up numerous times over the past two years, since giving birth to my son, my last child. Why haven’t I lost the baby weight yet? Shoot, at two years postpartum, can I even call it baby weight?
I’m still on my fitness kick and working out as much as I can, roughly 3-4 times a week. Still, there is no magic eight-week transformation going on at the Young Mommy household. More like slow and steady wins the race.
But if I allow myself to internalize any of these messages – “Get your pre-baby body back fast or else you’ll be unf#&*#ble” – I’ll be setting myself up for failure for sure.
There’s so much pressure for women to do it all – be healthy and conscious of what we put in our bodies during pregnancy, become breastfeeding champs, manage to adjust to the most stressful time in our lives during what is most likely an inadequate maternity leave, and THEN be sexy and irresistible within minutes of giving birth.
I’m doing things on my own timetable. Working out, getting in my cardio, eating a clean diet, and most importantly, loving my body for what it has been able to do, not only for what I wish it looked like.
I want to be able to do 100 push-ups, 500 crunches, run a marathon, carry my two kids up the stairs without getting winded. THESE are the goals that mean something to me. Escaping the diabetes diagnosis that plagues many of my family members, having a resting heart rate in the 50s, having thigh muscles that enable me to squat, run, walk well into my later years. Being able to age gracefully without a drug cocktail keeping me alive.
So I’ll keep on with my slow and steady and ignore society’s push to have me look “hot” for the sake of looking hot. I want to be healthy, and that is more than an eight-week resolution.