“Bounce Back after Baby” – I am not a big fan of that phrase and I feel like I hear it a lot lately. My daughter was born in April, this picture is of me and her around Halloween. She was six months old and I still had 65 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I certainly did not experience the “bouncing back”. The human body is amazing, it has an incredible capacity to heal and change.
My body has done some amazing things:
It survived a stroke
It recovered from heart surgery
It healed a herniated disc in my lumbar spine
It became stronger after having two children.
It repaired ulcers and other stomach issues
It has carried me through 43 years of life, even though I have not necessarily always been nice to it. I wish I had the respect back then for my body that I do now.
I am sharing this today because it is almost the New Year … and I am starting to see the posts about new year’s resolutions, emphasis on setting weight loss goals, and all the advertisements about quick fix programs for getting in shape this year. I thought it would be a good time to share my experience with losing 80 pounds. Not as a way to help “lose the baby weight fast” but instead to share two important lessons I have learned about food, weight loss and wellness.
Some women do get back to their pre-baby bodies soon after having a baby but also some do not. Both are fine, but it is the pressure of the expectation that we need to bounce back quickly that is not fine. My issue with the term “bounce back” is that implies it will be effortless. I kept waiting for the pounds to just “fall away” as I had heard from so many other women. I kept waiting to see the magic of breastfeeding that would get the weight to just “drop off”. None of that happened for me. And that is OK, It took me a year and half to lose the weight. That was my post-baby journey.
I love fitness, yes, but not when I was a new mom. I was starving and exhausted all the time after my daughter was born. My first real workout was not until my daughter was around 9 months old. I just did not have the energy to do more than take care of her those initial months. The weight bothered me…a lot. A WHOLE LOT. I had been a professional extreme dieter for the previous 20 years (lol this is not positive bragging and yes my dieting started around age 12). My weight was like a yo-yo and I tried every diet imaginable. I starved myself sometimes, ate a lot of food I didn’t like (3 days of leek soup), supplements, powders, pills, calorie counting, frozen food deliveries, weigh-ins… you name it. And this was all to prevent myself from gaining 5-10 pounds. So when I gained 80 pounds …that really was hard for me to manage in many ways. Trust me!!! I wish I could go back and shake myself and say “don’t waste one precious moment with your newborn baby, your healthy beautiful baby, the baby it took you two years to get pregnant with, worrying about your weight. How ridiculous … right? I know it was waste of time, and robbed me of joy, but unfortunately that is what happened, that is where I was at that point in my life. My hope for everyone reading this is to be more thoughtful, kind and patient with their weightless journeys and their bodies.
One of the biggest lessons I learned is that appearing healthy (to me that used to mean looking thin & fit) does not actually mean that you are. Take it from someone who had a stroke at the age of 36, at a time in my life when I looked young and healthy. My hope in hearing that is that it will be a reminder to pay more attention to wellness over weight. I have also learned that food restriction does not necessarily mean weight loss. For many people it feels way more complicated than that. And actually, I eat more today (for real) then when I weighed 10-15 pounds more. I sometimes have to send pictures of my meals to friends to prove it.
If you are still reading along, I know you may be waiting to get to the part where I say eat this, and do that, and you too can lose 80 pounds .That is how I used to be.
I get asked all the time to share what I am eating. I have been hesitant because what I do may not be what someone else enjoys enough to stick with. I struggle with sharing “MY PLAN” because what I have found is that we are all individuals and what worked for me may not work for someone else. Setting people up to follow “plans” they don’t like is a recipe for failing to stick with it. Not because of lack of motivation or self-discipline, but because it doesn’t feel like an enjoyable way to live. This is such an important lesson I have learned about food/fitness/weightless. I am trying to come up with a useful way to share some of my eating tips and would love any suggestions on what any of you would find to be helpful ( please email me jessica@jessicadiazwellness.com).
My success at losing weight and keeping it off is a result of taking a hard look at how I was eating/living and how I thought and felt about food. I have done a lot of work emotionally to get to the point where I decided I was going to stop “restricting and punishing my body”. In honoring that, I no longer eat foods or do workouts that I don’t enjoy.
For some, balancing food intake with the amount they move equals = happy weight and feeling great. The adage” calories in vs calories out”. I get the concept, but for me, it seemed far from that simple. I truly believe there is just so much more to it. I think it is important to factor in how well we sleep, your overall energy, moods, how we manage stress, hormones, the way your body processes food, the types of food you eat, the nutritional density of the food you eat (100 calories from carrots v 100 calories from a cookie). I also think your age plays into it. I am a Certified Sports Nutrition specialist but by no means a doctor, dietitian or nutritional expert. I am sharing insights into what I have personally experienced in my body, seen in many women I know and work with, plus the 100s of books on diet/nutrition I’ve read. Based on all those things I have come to feel that the simple equation of calories in vs calories out doesn’t work the same for everyone. Maybe technically it does, but if it is not a sustainable way for you to live, or it makes you feel hungry/ miserable, you are not going to stick with a program designed around that premise.
If you are embarking on a plan to be healthier this year or start a new eating/fitness program …. There is one thing I hope you will do first:
Establish a baseline of your current health, your weight, your key health numbers (cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, thyroid etc.). You can be thin and still have high cholesterol or high blood pressure. This is an especially important starting point. You are never too young to start to be vigilant about monitoring your health. It is important to use these numbers as your guide, to know that any changes you are making to your lifestyle are moving you in a positive direction, towards long term health and preventing risks of certain disease. Your real health, not what you look like, is the most important thing. I suggest scheduling an appointment with your doctor for a physical and ask for a copy of all your lab results and track your own data. Please do not skip this step, even if you think you “know” you are healthy, even it is just a telehealth or virtual.
I now (post stroke) try to look at the numbers on the scale just as data points, letting me know how my body is responding to how/what I am eating and how much I am moving. Just numbers, just data. I try not to judge the number too much (this took me a lot practice). I had to repeat to myself in my head “Your current weight is just a data point, not a representation of your worth or wellness.”.
Once you have an overall picture/snapshot of your health, you can take a decide where you need to go, what direction you need to take your health. Try to let real health, feeling good, respecting your body be the guiding intention when creating new goals for 2021 (Not just lose weight and tone up). Top that with choosing healthy foods (that you like) and fun ways to move your body and see how much more pleasant and easy it will be to follow over a restrictive get fit fast fast plan.
2020
