Post-partum weight loss, excercise and food
After nine months post-partum, I began to worry that my post-pregnancy weight is here to stay. The first time around, I went up a dress size and I didn’t care. I simply went shopping for new clothes, got rid of many of those that couldn’t fit and enjoyed my baby.
At nine months, I stopped breastfeeding and within two weeks, my clothes were sagging around me and I needed to go shopping for clothes again. That episode made me distrust the claim that breastfeeding helps you to lose weight since I only lost weight after I stopped breastfeeding. But I have since found literature that pointed out that some people experience the weight loss benefit of breastfeeding after they stop to breastfeed. I can’t locate that reference now but according to a 2004 study at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, breast-feeding weight loss may be a myth.
In the first six months after giving birth, the study’s 81 nonbreastfeeding mothers lost fat from their whole body, arms, and legs faster than the 87 breastfeeding moms.
My decision to breastfeed however had nothing to do with a promise of weight loss, nor do I think any mother should be base her decision to breastfeed on that. In fact, losing weight would have been a tall order for me considering how hungry I constantly was. Nonetheless, I desired to lose the weight, breastfeeding or not and thankfully, the hunger went away with the end of breastfeeding.
Second time around, I wasn’t as hungry as before, both during and after pregnancy. My lesser appetite may also have been responsible for gaining less weight so that I didn’t go up a dress size, but there was 15 pounds to lose so that I could breath in my clothes.
With the benefit of experience, I planned to be patient. “It will fall off after nine months”, I told anyone who cared to listen. A friend warned me that it wouldn’t be easy because I was younger than 30 the first time and now on the other side of the metabolic divide. I haven’t seen any literature that cites age 30 as the magical age when metabolism starts to slow. According to this ivillage article, every decade the body loses more lean body mass to fat and a higher concentration of fat makes it more difficult to lose weight.
The reason you may find it harder to lose weight as you get older is down to changes in your basal metabolic rate (bmr). This drops by two per cent for every decade of your life. Also, you lose 3.2kg (7lbs) of lean body mass with every decade, which is replaced by fat.
Whether my friend is right or not about the difficulty I would face with losing weight simply because I’m now over 30, I decided to be proactive about my fitness and hit the gym. After 6 months at the gym, I’ve barely lost two pounds.
Imagine that, two pounds in 6 months! But I was not discouraged because I could feel the results, I could breath in my clothes. I could close the buttons on my pants. I could see the definition of my waist - not striking, but visible. I could raise my arms up without fearing that I would rip my shirt sleeves. All good, but everyday (yes, everyday) when I climb on the scale, I find it hasn’t budged.
Now, I don’t want to be nitpicky since I have achieved my desired results and I’m breathing in my clothes. But I was bothered, if I can’t manage to lose weight after 6 months of working out (I concede this sometimes involved only one workout in a week or none at all, but some weeks, I got three in), what hope do I have as I get even older. So I decided to turn things up a notch…address the FOOD angle.
I was doing okay with food, I thought, until I decided to write down everything I ate. Walking by the kitchen counter, pick up a packet of crackers, pop into mouth, make baby’s bottle, notice second packet of crackers on the kitchen counter, grab it, tear it open, oh my goodness!, what am I doing? I’m not even hungry! It’s after lunch and I’m clacking away on the keyboard at work, I need a break, I take a stroll, to the vending machine, get a pack of Famous Amos cookies, crunch crunch crunch…oh my goodness!, I didn’t even want that!
I wrote down everything I ate for three weeks, and in that time I lost 2 pounds. 6 months of working out, I lost two pounds. Three weeks of mindful eating, I lost 2 pounds. I guess you shouldn’t plan to lose weight without addressing food intake.
