It unveils the BIG secret (I type that with sarcasm, because really, it's no secret at all) to how she lost her pregnancy weight. As I read this post, I felt like it was almost something that I could've written word for word. I've sort of touched on the role that my prenatal care played on my postnatal weight loss before, but after reading Shawna's post, I felt I had to share. She put something into words that I felt my entire pregnancy and I'm baffled why more pregnant women don't feel this way! From her post:
"When I found out I was pregnant, I had this major mental shift. Suddenly my health was more important to me than ever before. When I exercised, so did my baby. When I ate healthfully, so did my baby. When I failed in these two areas, so did my baby. This was enough motivation for me."
So many times, I hear women using their pregnancy as an excuse to "cheat" and eat whatever they want, whenever they want, while being completely sedentary. Am I the only one who cringed when people told me "it's ok, you're eating for two now"? I hate this part of our culture. We should be encouraging each other to be healthy, and to exercise, not to stuff our faces during the most crucial growing period of our baby's life!
From Whattoexpect.com:
"Does eating for two mean that you get to eat twice as much of everything? Unfortunately...[the] math doesn't work that way. Keeping in mind that one of the two you're eating for is nowhere near your size (just pea-like, in fact, in the first trimester), you'll only need to eat an average of about 300 calories a day (more, if you're very active) above what you'd eat to maintain your pregnancy weight gain — the equivalent of, say, two glasses of skim milk and a bowl of oatmeal. ...By the second trimester, though, you should up your daily calorie intake during pregnancy by 350 calories, and toward the end of your pregnancy, you can eat an extra 500 calories per day..."
So, bottom-line: Yes, you need to consume more calories while you're pregnant, but it's not as much more as people lead you to believe, and those calories should be from foods that you would be comfortable feeding to your baby (because, afterall, that's basically what you're doing).
My OB-Gyn recommended that I gain between 25-30lbs during my pregnancy, and I gained 28lbs total. After Gwen was born, I certainly did not return to the gym as quickly as some people do. I did a lot of walking when the weather turned nicer, some "mommy & me" Yoga, and some fitness classes here and there, but I didn't actually join my new gym until September (8 months postpartum). However, I was miraculously (again, sarcastic) able to lose all of my baby weight by 3 weeks postpartum! In those 3 weeks (besides breastfeeding) I did nothing to even try to lose the weight. I realize that a lot of people would roll their eyes at this (and to those people, whatever, no one's making you read this), but the reason why I'm writing this is because my point is that I busted my butt BEFORE and DURING my pregnancy, to prepare my body for this. I worked out very regularly, and became much more focused on eating healthfully. I know for a fact that if I hadn't done these things, a.) I would've gained much more weight, and b.) I wouldn't have lost the weight nearly as quickly.
More wise words from Shawna's blog:
"The human body will completely take care of itself, if you take care of the body. Pregnancy is not a sentence for a lifetime of excess weight. It's just a pregnancy. If you gain the right amount [and take care of yourself], you will lose it just as fast (well, much faster, really). I believe it is that simple." As do I!
