As a Personal Trainer I am sick of people trying to find quick fixes to lose weight. As a mother I am sick to death of the expectations that people have of us mothers that we can pop out a baby one day and walk out of hospital in our skinny jeans and crop tops the next. Yes some of us were blessed with amazing genes, and they can do the latter, but most mums look at themselves after having baby and are nearly convinced the doctors left a baby in there somewhere. You still have a belly, you have HUGE boobs, you have aches and pains in all areas and you have no idea what happened to your pre-baby self. Furthermore, breastfeeding doesn't help everyone to lose the babyweight! What happens then is that new mums resort to joining challenges and eating plans "designed for busy mums". Hey, I did the same! That was before I knew what I know now. I was planking and crunching with the best of them to "strengthen my core"! Mountain climbers, burpees, the works - and all of that not even 6 months postnatal!!! Unknowingly I most likely did more harm to my core than good. Which is why I still have at least a 2 finger gap and that is 2 years after giving birth! My core has only recently, after a lot of researching and hard work, been able to fire up properly. I wish I had completed my Postnatal fitness qualification before I had my baby!! It would've taken the guess work out of a lot of it. I have also joined a few online forums directed at new mums and their health & fitness, and even though I am rejoicing at the fact that people are aware and talking about the basic issues (diastasis and pelvic floor), I am shocked at some of the misconceptions still surrounding postnatal fitness! I cannot stress the fact that your body went through a major (quite literally) life changing event! It needs time to heal, rehabilitate and recover before we can place extra strain on it to lose weight and get fit!! You are no longer "just you", you have a little person who relies on you for the most basic of needs, and if you are malnourishing yourself and over-exercising, how do you expect to be able to care for your baby? Then I am faced with all these fads and trends (vibrating machines, waist trainers to name but a few) and I can all but shake my head at how these things are growing in popularity!
Any plyometric (or bouncy) exercise is not recommended until most of your postnatal rehab has happened, so why would you get on a vibrating machine? Your pelvic floor needs time to heal and recover, and the stress the vibration does, cannot be good. As for waist trainers - I thought we had left that in the Victorian Ages! You do get tummy support bands (FITSplint) for people who suffer from severe Diastasis, but those are specially designed and serve a medical purpose. Waist trainers (as made famous by the Kardashian-clan in recent media) really have no place in Postnatal Rehabilitation. There are many SAFE and EFFECTIVE exercises that will train your core and your pelvic floor and yes, it may not be the quick or easy way out, but it is the effective, long term solution. In conclusion, while some people are able to just bounce back without much fuss, the rest of us need to realise that our bodies might never return to it's pre-baby condition. You have nurtured and birthed a baby and there is no bigger accolade in this world! Time to forget about all the expectations and accept that our bodies are new and improved. :-)
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AuthorCarien Hesselberg - Mother, Wife, Personal Trainer. Archives
February 2015
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