An Unfit Mother: How to get your Health, Shape and Sanity back after Childbirth. Kate Cook
extra calories for breastfeeding—isn’t nature thoughtful?
* Good news! Breastfeeding your baby gobbles up 500—600 extra calories a day.
* Good news! Two hormones called leptin and serotonin work together to put your body in weight-loss mode—no one is quite sure how leptin works exactly but what is certain is that leptin levels stay high throughout pregnancy and that leptin is released by fat tissue and signals the brain to limit fat intake. Leptin levels drop at birth, allowing you to recalibrate your body’s ‘set point’—your metabolism is working in overdrive to burn more calories than usual to give you extra energy. The serotonin works to control your energy balance and helps keep your appetite in check. So get cracking now with healthy eating—you have the gods on your side.
* Good news! Your tummy may look pretty saggy now, but it will bounce back to where it was.
* Good news! Your uterus contracts during breastfeeding—and helps everything return to shape. These contractions can be quite strong, but keep your chin up, it means your stomach is shrinking.
* Good news! Well not really good news exactly, but if you are feeling really sluggish, treacle tired and really not getting back to where you were—could your thyroid be working below par? Other signs are hair loss and feeling the cold. Worth checking out?
Step away from the scales
Don’t always assume that the scales are a true measure of what is going on with the body. If exercise levels are adequate, you may be putting on muscle but losing actual fat, which is what we want, isn’t it? Muscle weighs three times more than fat, so concentrate on losing inches even if you are not losing the pounds. I recommend you measure your waist at its narrowest point and your hips at their widest point and do this if you absolutely have to just once a week.
There are lots of ways to determine what you should weigh, but remember that most of these scales are done for average people and can be misleading. For example, body mass index (a scale that looks at mass rather than weight on its own) doesn’t take into consideration if you have a lot of muscle. So, obviously don’t ignore the indicators of where you should be, but don’t feel that you have to live by them either.
Look at the tip on body image on page 188. Loving your body now is the only way you will accept yourself as you are—without all the chat and wishing you were a size 10—face facts, you aren’t. But if you just get on with great nutrition, great exercise and a great attitude, you will be fine. You might want to use the indicator of your clothes to judge whether you have got to your goals, rather than weight alone.
I completely agree with Lucy—give your scales to your worst enemy—they are a curse. Get weighed every so often when you go to the doctors or the gym, but don’t live by the scales or you make a pact with the devil!
If you get into the game of weighing yourself every day, then every day becomes a desperate competition with yourself. ‘OMYGOD! How could I have put on three pounds in a night?’ ‘Right,’ you declare, ‘I am going to take my earrings off, stand on one foot and see if that makes a difference. OK, if I go to the loo, that will knock off a few pounds.’ You beat yourself up for the BAD days and stuff your face, because—what does it matter? But when you have actually lost weight, well, you starve yourself all day because you are on the right track—mad logic.
Another game that goes on in your head is to get down to a target weight that, in effect, you have made up. When I played this game, for example, I had to be an ‘odd’ number on the scales, so I had to be 8 stone 7 and not 8 stone 8…
…and, of course, when you get to 8 stone 7, the game is to get to 8 stone 5…
…and then that is not really good enough because, in fact, the most ideal weight is 8 stone 3…
…Then all your friends start badgering you because you look too thin…arggh!
So the best thing is, don’t even get into those games in the first place. The nutrition programme in this book should liberate you from all that. Please let it. You can allow yourself to be liberated by:
* Blowing up your scales with dynamite—or, better still, giving them to a ‘friend’.
* Just cracking on with eating well, doing some exercise and trying to change your attitude.
* If you really can’t give up the scales, try putting them on different surfaces.
* Or slightly alter the scale dial to read just a bit lighter, because the scales can’t possibly be right. Can they?
A balancing act
Have I got a brilliant no-brainer exercise for you to do or what? All you have to do is be able to stand on one leg. I know that after a long day that can actually prove more difficult than it looks. Why would you want to stand on one leg? Because standing on one leg tones your leg muscles, and gives a little support to your butt muscles—even better, holding the muscles tight increases your metabolism. If you can hold in your tummy at the same time, this helps you to keep your balance, vital to the whole thing. Don’t forget to change legs or you will get one toned leg and one flappy one. Oh yes, and keep the knees bent.
Now how easy is that? Feeling better and ready to get down to business? Of course you are!
Eat healthily
If I was prescriptive—guess what? I would be giving you a Diet, just like everyone else does. And guess what again? I am sure you have already discovered that you just don’t have time to follow diets. They are too much of a schlep—especially with junior in tow. In the old days you could go out shopping for all the ‘right’ kit and do it all perfectly, but now you have other demands. Without driving yourself crazy, you can no longer be that precise. And calorie counting—we don’t do that either—calorie counting long-term doesn’t work unless you are very good with maths.
It is important to know that when you start eating right in this way that you are embarking on a journey—you won’t be arriving top speed at your destination, but once you’re on the road and making a start, step by step, you will get nearer to where you want to be. You will get the results. I have applied the method I am sharing with you with literally thousands of people and so I know it works. Follow this programme and you will be off the slimming diet treadmill and getting on with your life, which is so much more important than worrying about your weight all the time.
You don’t need to diet to lose weight
Have you noticed how everything these days is over complicated? People want things to be complicated because then it seems as if it is worth it. If the system is too easy, surely it can’t be true and can’t be working. But remember that people who invent diets are just trying to make money out of you and make it so complicated that you are a prisoner to their system. You have to buy their book—and carry it round with you in your handbag at all times so that every time you feel like eating, you have to check back to see if you are doing the ‘right thing’ or the ‘wrong thing’. The diet only works if you are using their method and if you are unsure how the sacred method works, then you can buy the video, DVD, CD, flashcards, food, calorie counter, exercise pack—and that’s a whole lot more money they just made out of you.
The point is that every one of these diet gurus has a part of the truth, but not the whole truth. And following a rigid system disempowers you as a woman. With a twinkle in my eye, I always say that these diets were invented by blokes—blokes who like working on spreadsheets to keep a track of points, calories, goals and other blokey things. We are prisoners to systems to keep us in check. Wouldn’t it be powerful if us girls were liberated from the worry of food and that food became something that we really enjoyed without beating ourselves up about it the whole time? How much more time we would have? Tomorrow the world!