Rebuilding, Not Bouncing Back: Postpartum Body Image

Now, I have had a lot of different feelings about this.

One feeling that I really want to like call to the forefront because my – values.

We've talked about values on this podcast so much.

One of my most important values is health.

And not that I was unhealthy my first postpartum, but I think there was so much scary stuff happening with figuring out how to be a mom, my identity shifting.

Like, And my, my world is rocked.

Like it was a terror, like it was terrifying.

All right.

Like it's a completely different identity.

And also I was nursing a lot and, and he required me to like stay with him to sleep.

So I would like be going to bed at like seven 30.

I'm not exaggerating.

Um, so that he would like fall asleep.

And then if I left the bed, he would cry.

So I would like be stuck in bed.

Yeah.

And so it was hard for me to have access to food at night because I was in bed.

A bar, as great as it is to have some bars in your nightstand, it's not a full meal, right? It's like 200 calories or something.

And I also was stressed and figuring out how to everything was crazy.

I don't think I realized losing this much weight this quickly was actually potentially a detriment to my goals postpartum.

My goals postpartum was to run a fast half marathon and I never really got to accomplish it.

I found out I was iron deficient.

My ferritin was low.

I found that out in pregnancy, so it's hard to know when that happened.

I My goal for this postpartum has really to been like I don't want to lose weight that quickly and I want to really kind of focus on nutrient density and eating enough to support breastfeeding and training and to ensure like iron stores are adequate.