Pregnancy

How to Fall Back in Love with Your Body After Babies

Megan Dahlman
March 15, 2022

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Picture

You have given birth to beautiful bundles of screaming joy and now what? You feel like what they left behind is a saggy body that doesn’t even feel like yours anymore. In some respects, it wasn’t really yours for a few years, anyway. Your body was first abducted by the miracle growing inside of you, pushing, stretching and inducing sickness and discomfort round the clock. And then you gave birth and your body turned into a miraculous (notice I keep using that word?) factory of milk production subjected to pulling, tugging and exposure to every possible bodily fluid. You’ve probably thought “what is happening to me?!” You sometimes feel like your body is a hot mess with no hope in the world.

What now? As a mom, you should be able to recognize that life is certainly different now. Things just won’t be the same. However, we let our minds get stuck in pre-baby-body mode, and find ourselves grieving over a body that no longer exists.

So Awesome

First of all, it’s important to acknowledge the miracle that has occurred. Your body did all that! Can you believe it? Step back and be in awe of what your body is capable of. You are a strong woman and capable of quite a lot. Even before you step foot in a gym, do a squat, and lift a dumbbell, the fact that you birthed a baby says a lot about your strength. Acknowledge the natural strength of your body and press forward with that knowledge.


Grieving

Speaking of pressing forward, stop looking back. We have a nostalgia for what our bodies were before babies, and like I mentioned before, there is a silent grief that occurs. It’s very important to stop comparing your new body to what it was before. Stop grieving over what you have lost, and embrace this new body, stretch marks and all. Your physical journey from here on out will be entirely different from what you have ever experienced before. Things might ache more than they used to, it might take you a little longer to recover, your extra tummy skin might not stay put quite as well, and you probably will have to pee fifteen times during a workout. This is ok! You are not a victim of all of this. Remember, you are a strong woman. Just keep moving forward.

Fresh Perspective

Cling to this new perspective and let it inspire you to discover what your body can do NOW. The moment you stop worrying about how your skin looks, how squishy your thighs are, and how saggy everything is and start challenging yourself to see how strong, powerful, fast and fit you can be now, you will be far more likely to surprise yourself. And you know what? If you can run up a mountain, do 30 perfect push-ups, and lift a 50 pound bag of chicken feed without blinking an eye, who cares about the stretch marks anyway? You’re strong. You’re not fragile. And you’re not a victim. Isn’t that more important?


Guilt

With all this said, it’s time you shed your workout guilt. You probably carry a lot of guilt as it is…Mom guilt. “I should be providing more crafts for my kids. I should be reading to them more. I should be limiting TV time. I should be implementing better parenting strategies.” We don’t need to add workout guilt to this. “I should be working out more. I should have gone for a run. I should have eaten better.” Knock it off! These thought patterns are anything but helpful, and they turn fitness into a dreaded endeavor. You will always be dragging your feet to get into better shape when you think like this. Instead, press forward into new challenges. Approach fitness as a competition with yourself, always trying to outdo yourself, get better and raise your own bar.

Lately, my goals have included handstands, various arm balances and pushing heavier weights. Yes, all of it requires a lot of practice, a lot of yoga sessions, a lot of time spent working out, but my motivation is fun and inspiring. And you know what? I'm getting it. I can now do more stuff with my body as a 34-year old mother of two than I used to be able to do. Not too shabby.

Your body is not a lost cause. It is still capable of quite a lot. What you need, however, is a way to pursue health and fitness in a manner that jives with your new mom-lifestyle and schedule. You could have the best perspective and inspiration in the world, but if your pursuits are not practical, it just won’t happen.

Practical Workouts

You need quick and effective workouts that you can do at home during naptimes or with kids crawling around you. These workouts need to be fun, challenging, and produce results. They also need to be completely functional and respectful of how your body actually works. Unfortunately, I see a lot of “quick at-home” workouts that are poorly designed and don’t take into consideration how the body moves best. A workout with lunges, squats, plie squats, jumps, and every other glute and thigh exercise thrown in there is terribly unbalanced and will probably create some sort of injuries if done on a regular basis. Bad news.

If you need help getting started with something that extremely effective AND safe, then check this out. It can be done at home in very minimal time, and it's the absolute best place for you to start.


Practical Nutrition

When it comes to nourishing your strong body, the last thing you need is drastic changes with numbers and specific measurements. This is not practical and completely unsustainable. Instead, start implementing these simple nutrition strategies right now with every meal. Let’s call this your Easy-Peasy Nutrition Guidelines:

  1. Eat some sort of protein with every meal. Think eggs, chicken, fish, meat, tofu and nuts.
  2. Eat some sort of fresh produce, preferably vegetables, with every meal.
  3. Eat healthy fats throughout the day. Think nuts, seeds, olives and olive oil, avocadoes, fish and algae oils, coconut oil and real butter, etc.
  4. Eat real food. Shy away from anything in a package, sticking to real, whole foods whenever possible. For example, have a snack of one hard-boiled egg and banana instead of a granola bar.
  5. Drink lots of water. Drink a full glass of water with every meal and then sip water throughout the day.


That’s just 5 eating strategies that are easy to remember and implement. Easy-peasy, right? Yes, there are certainly more things you can do with your eating habits to dial it in even more, and you can read much more about nutrition here. Become very consistent at eating like this, and then think about doing more.


Hot mess?

Remember, you are not a hot mess, but a strong momma. Your body is a vessel for the miraculous. That’s pretty incredible. Let that inspire you to keep challenging yourself, see how much stronger you can become, and what your physical capabilities really are.

​Can you climb that mountain? Can you run a marathon or even a 5k? Can you do three pull-ups? Can you do a headstand? And can you nourish your body well to accomplish all of these challenges? Your body after having babies is capable of so much. Don’t let the saggy skin and squishy thighs hold you back. Just keep pressing forward.

Hey, guess what? You can start showing up for your body in simple ways, right now.
Let us take the guesswork out of where and how to start taking action.
Woman sitting on the floor typing on her laptop

Discover your unique metabolic body type, and learn exactly how to train and eat to maximize your natural strengths and improve your weaknesses.

Take the FREE Quiz
Female cutting up vegtables

Discover how thousands of everyday moms are quitting the trendy diets and detoxes and finally changing their eating habits for life.

Download for FREE Now
Female doing a diastasis recti assessment

This brand-new guide reveals the safest way for you to strengthen and flatten your postpartum abs so you can feel confident in your core again.

Download for FREE Now
Trainer, nutrition coach, and Christian mom — in a culture that’s obsessed with “gym-selfies” and a number on the scale, I’m passionate about helping moms discover what it feels like to actually love their bodies and thrive in them.
Read More About Megan
Hi! I’m Megan.
take the quiz
Self-Care Simplified is for Christian moms that want to be equipped and encouraged to take simple steps towards the healthy life you want for yourself and the people you love.
Be sure to subscribe to Self-Care Simplified wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.
RECENT posts