Since the last postpartum fitness post I wrote was at 3 months, I thought I would do a little update on how things are going now that I’m almost 6 months postpartum.  I also wanted to try to answer some of your questions from Instagram on the topic so I have those below as well.  As always feel free to leave any questions in the comments if I don’t answer something.  Be sure to go read my first postpartum fitness blog post here as well as this post about getting back into a routine post-baby.

Postpartum Fitness Update: 6 months postpartum

Alright so let’s just jump right in.  Around 5 months postpartum I started really feeling like myself again and feeling good.  Still tired, of course (that may never go away?!) but as far as my body and my mind goes, I feel really great.  Maybe even better that before I got pregnant, which is definitely not something I expected.  After having a baby I have just had this new found appreciation for my body and what it can do…but to be honest I really didn’t start feeling that way until around 3 or 4 months pp.  Until then, I was still kind of in a fog and my body was still recovering.  So now that I have this new love for my body beyond what I ever used to have, I have been giving myself so much more grace.  I mean, I think I was a pretty balanced person beforehand and I certainly didn’t hate my body…but I’m human and I’d knit-pick things about my body I didn’t love.  It’s a bad habit and I hate I ever did it, but you probably know how it is.  If you don’t, teach me your ways!  My hips are bigger now and before I think that area would have been subject to some knit-picking, but truth is I don’t care and I really love how I look and feel.

Another thing around 5 months, ironically over the month of December & Christmas, I was losing weight and even my pre-pregnancy jeans were loose on me.  I have no idea why this happened because I was crushing Christmas cookies and pie and cheese and wine and all the things.  And I had kind of taken a more relaxed approach to my fitness…instead of a very regimented 6 days a week with Sunday off, now I was more doing a 5-6 days a week but one or even two running days will just be long walks.  I now do shorter, slightly less intense circuits with light weights on my strength training days.  I’m telling you all of this just to make the point that actually when I started just being HAPPY with my body and where I was in life and not trying to stress over food or exercise, I actually lost weight.  I think the whole “stress” aspect is something that is not considered enough when people are trying to lose weight.  And again, not that I was really “trying” to lose weight, it just happened.  I know this about my body though, that it does seem to respond better to “less”.  I have a mesomorph body type and can easily put on muscle, so I don’t have to do as much super heavy lifting for that.  But your body might be different! You just have to figure out what your body responds to and how you’re built if you have specific goals because I do think that helps you understand what approach to take.

I know I’ve heard breastfeeding burns calories too but I don’t do anything differently for breastfeeding.  I eat when I’m hungry, drink a ton of water, and I don’t try to use it as a way to lose weight.  So I’m not sure if that has had an impact on my weight loss but I think I just try to live as healthy of a life as possible but still enjoy plenty of treats and of course wine!

Please mamas, if you’re killing yourself to get back in shape, please just take a step back and find appreciation in your beautiful, strong, rockstar body.  Eat nutritious foods but don’t ever deprive yourself, and find movement you enjoy even if it’s just walking.  Try to throw some strength training in there too, because as women we are more prone to developing osteoporosis as we get older and having some muscle mass with help with your bone density! Even if it’s just 15 minutes of using dumbbells in your living room.  Do that!  But please, don’t stress over losing weight. Your body has gone through so much since pregnancy, delivery, and now all the physical demands of being a mother.  Be kind to it!!  It is doing so much for you and your babe.  I am so grateful for my new outlook for this body and how comfortable I feel in my skin now!

Current Routine

Below is my schedule of workouts right now but each week really is different and I try really hard just to listen to my body and honor what it is feeling.  Here’s what my schedule is sort of looking like right now:

• Monday: Circuit workout – legs
• Tuesday: Run OR long walk
• Wednesday: Circuit workout – arms
• Thursday: Run OR long walk
• Friday: Circuit workout – abs
• Saturday: Usually a run 🙂
• Sunday: Rest day but maybe a walk

Q&A

Y’all submitted some questions to me on Instagram I wanted to answer…see below!  A few were addressed in my earlier blog posts that I linked above so be sure to check those out if you sent me a question and you don’t see it here.  Also, a lot of questions were similar about core strength & recovery etc. so I grouped those into one.

How did you heal your core and did you have to do any core modifications?  So I didn’t have Diastasis Recti so I didn’t need to do anything proactively to heal my core except just give my body time to heal itself.  Those muscles will come back together on their own minus any DR issues, but since I didn’t have that I didn’t have to worry about it.  I did do core modifications during pregnancy but afterwards, I just waited the 6 weeks until I was cleared and then started incorporating some of that Heidi Powell guide and some of my own moves from my guide.  I did it slowly and listened to my body.   It really does feel like starting over from scratch but that’s fine! Just have to be patient with it.

How do you make time to exercise between working and taking care of a baby?  It’s definitely a balancing act and no two days are the same!  I don’t sit down very much, ha!  I have pretty much just taken the opportunity to workout first thing in the morning during her first nap.  I also have been mainly sticking with circuit workouts that are 30 min or less.  If I’m walking, I just take her in the stroller and if I’m running, I usually wait until Craig gets home from work even though that’s usually 7pm to go out.  I think at 6 months she can go in the jogging stroller, so we just have to put it together!!  I’m excited to use that finally.  But, It’s harder some days to exercise if we didn’t get a good night’s sleep so those days we usually walk slowly for fresh air.  And Emma isn’t mobile yet, so she plays on her play mat or in her activity center and I’ll sit with her and write a blog post or edit photos, answer emails, or sometimes just not work at all and be with her.  She’s really good at self play though so that’s nice and doesn’t constantly need me to be entertaining her.

Tips or exercises for strengthening the core, pelvic floor, and lower back?  First tip is always wait until you are cleared by your doctor.  Ask your doctor to check you for Diastasis Recti.  If they don’t do it, you can go see a physical therapist to have them check for you.  Start slow on the exercise for that area and slowly build up.  Rushing it or doing too much too soon will only leave it worse.  Again my pregnancy guide has core and pelvic floor activation exercises you can do (similar to kegels but that really just targets one area of the pelvic floor) and then I found the Heidi Powell guide to be very helpful as well.

Have you found anything has affected your milk supply? Are you exclusively breastfeeding?  Yes, I am exclusively breastfeeding still and I haven’t had any issues with exercise affecting my milk supply.  I talk more about it in this post but really the only thing I notice that decreases my supply is if I’m not drinking enough water.

How can you add plyometrics back into your routine safely?  For those that don’t know, plyometrics are “jumping” exercises like squat jumps, lunge jumps, jumping jacks…basically anything that includes a jump.  So I would say you’d want to make sure your core and pelvic floor especially are feeling much stronger prior to doing these.  But then as those heal and get stronger, I think you could take the same approach to slowly incorporate them and see how you’re feeling.  I mean, I sometimes still feel like I might pee myself a little when I’m doing jump rope so I don’t do that a ton, lol.  But engaging those pelvic floor muscles while you’re doing the jumping can help stabilize and support the muscles more.

Meal prep and food ideas for busy moms?  TBH I can’t “meal prep” because I just have zero patience for it, ha.  So I won’t have the best advice here.  I try to just keep us stocked with easy, healthy options though.  Some things we always have in the kitchen are ground turkey, spinach/mixed greens, carrots, bananas, berries, salmon, brown rice/quinoa, penne pasta, whole grain bread, steamable vegetables, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, soups. I use the microwave a lot 🙂  Be sure to check out my food section on my blog for other ideas!!  I also really love HomeChef meals.  I’ve tried every meal kit delivery service out there and this one is by far the easiest and fastest, plus it’s so good.  I love they also have oven-ready meals that require zero cooking, you just pop them in the oven!

I hope this post has answered your questions but if you have any more please feel free to ask them below or you can always DM me on Instagram!

Other posts you may be interested in:

• 6 Things I Didn’t Expect After Having a Baby – things no one told me!
• Pregnancy Cravings, Nutrition, & Exercise
• My Hospital Bag: What I ACTUALLY used
• Emma’s Birth Story

xo,

Bess