You are what you eat…
…But what if you don’t eat anything?
I stumbled onto a twin mom’s page on
Instagram the other day (I browse them rather often) and beneath a picture of
her bulging twin belly, she had written up a long comment about how she
couldn’t wait to get back into shape after her boys were born. Of course, I
understood that! I may have only carried my twin daughters to 27 weeks, but I
was measuring 40 and had certainly reached a point where I felt like I couldn’t
possibly get any bigger. In all honesty, when I hit 26 weeks I was pretty
frightened by the size and rate my stomach was growing at; I can’t imagine what
I would have looked like if I’d carried them to full term! …I probably could
have just rolled myself to the hospital for delivery.
But as for the twin mom I was cyber-stalking,
what I didn’t understand were her intended methods. She wrote about how she had
developed a post-partum food plan that consisted almost exclusively of juicing,
and making extreme cuts to her daily caloric intake. She said she was sure the
key to post-partum weight loss was diet, and she was planning on highly
restricting hers to get back to her pre-baby size, for which she received
comments like: you go girl!” and “you can do it! You’re so inspiring!” Among
others.
And I have to say, the whole thing made
me very uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the worst part of it all was that hers is
NOT the first post I’ve seen that encouraged and received encouragement about
unhealthy dieting behaviour. In the age of the selfie, where “likes” are their
own form of currency, it seems that everyone is obsessed with their social
media image, and more and more are resorting to unnatural methods to achieve
one that will garner them approval. And one of the worst culprits is the
post-partum mom, posting transformation pictures and constantly competing with
her peers to be the one back into pre-baby clothes the fastest. Now, don’t get
me wrong: I’m ALL FOR seeing weight-loss transformations. I even don’t mind the
Instagram fitness pages. As annoying as they often are, they’re usually people
who have decided to get fit and share their enthusiasm with the world; in the
middle of a real obesity epidemic this is behaviour we should support (despite
how irksome all their gym “check-ins” can be). My issue therefore isn’t with
post-partum fitness, but rather the enormous pressure mothers feel to be a
certain size within a relatively short time after they’ve delivered.
When I was pregnant with my
twins, I received my fair share of body comments. Things like “wow, you’re
going to be as big as a house!” Along with guidance about how I could prevent
weight gain. In fact, I received more advice about my size than I actually did
about being a mother; it seemed as though the whole world was much more
interested in how large I was going to get and whether or not my belly would
torpedo. Even when I felt enormous I still received remarks along the lines of:
“Oh, you’ve still got a long way to go. You’re going to get huge.”
Understandably, it all left a bad taste
in my mouth; I didn’t like the idea that how much weight I gained while growing
TWO babies was more relevant than my impending motherhood. And it seemed like
most moms that I talked to had little-to-no real advice for getting into shape the right way after the girls were born;
even my twin baby book said breastfeeding and “chasing after two babies” would
make the weight drop quickly. In my search for answers I discovered that there
seemed to be a phobia of honesty: the fear that if we acknowledge that losing
baby weight is difficult we would be seen as a less competent mother or person
in the eyes of our peers. It’s an idea that started with celebrities putting
their post-baby bodies on magazine covers, and has gradually bled into the
veins of normal societies, building a feeling of inadequacy in most mothers
even before their children are born.
As a twin mom, I’ve definitely battled my
own demons in terms of post-partum weight loss. Even though I didn’t gain much
in terms of weight, pregnancy really warps your body in ways you can’t imagine.
Since delivering my girls, I’ve had many MANY days where I looked in the mirror
and said “that’s it! I give up!” Fortunately I’ve learned that time does heal
most things, and that in combination with hard work has taken my body to a
level of fitness that is superior to what it was even before I became pregnant.
And I guess that’s what I really want to
be honest about: I’ve worked REALLY REALLY hard to get where I am. I don’t eat
a lot of junk (though homemade cookies and muffins are my weakness) I don’t
skip workouts even when I’m tired, and I push myself past my limits when I’m
doing them. It’s taken me 6 long months to get where I am, and even though I’m
in great shape I’m still nowhere near where I want to be. And usually I’m okay with that; babies take
a toll on the body, especially two, and I’ve had to remind myself heavily to
relax and not be such a severe critic. But in this harsh world where how fast you
drop the baby weight seems to go hand-in-hand with your value as an individual,
I don’t want to be the person who
perpetuates the awful lie of “the pounds just dropped off!” Or “breast-feeding
is better than a diet!” Because:
1.
It makes moms who don't see those results feel like their pregnancy or
post-baby body is something to be ashamed of.
2.
If getting back to your pre-baby shape afterwards was as simple as
breastfeeding (or chasing after an immobile baby?) we wouldn’t be talking about
this at all.
3.
All of this body anxiety bullshit steals the joy of
motherhood by putting incredible pressure on women to lose the belly first and
foremost, rather than slow down and enjoy the experience.
Thankfully, I never gave in to juicing or
dieting to lose baby weight; I definitely had my “fat” days (a lot of them) where
I thought about it, but I was lucky enough to have a sane voice in the back of
my head (and a very supportive husband) that turned me away from that extreme,
unhealthy path. I chose instead to work my ass off, literally, and while it’s
been a longer road than a dieters, in doing so I have been able to not only
enjoy my babies, but also find value in myself that has nothing to do with the
numbers on a scale. And that’s what I want to scream from the rooftops: if you
want to exercise and get into rockin’ shape after having a baby, good for you!
Building physical strength will help with those long nights (and your sanity!)
and will set a good example for your children in the long run. But if you don’t
feel like you have the time, or the energy, that’s okay too; there’s nothing
wrong with simply relaxing in your free moments. You just created life! Ultimately, it's better to do nothing than to resort to serious diet restriction.
But whatever you do, don’t let those
“look how skinny I am now, AND I’m a mom” pictures make you feel like a fat
shit bag, and push you to do something extreme or unhealthy; I am struck with a
certainty that anyone who starves to shrink copes with deep unhappiness, and
that’s not something you want to put on yourself or your family. It may be the
slow road, but health is always the happy road, and women need to wake up and
realize that we deserve that.
Despite what all the magazine covers, and
Instagram posts, and Facebook photo updates say, here’s the real truth: you are allowed to love yourself for
something other than your pant size.
