Yahoo Movies This is how I *actually* got back into fitness after birth
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that those first weeks after you welcome a new baby into the world are rough. What with the lack of sleep, the anxiety around keeping someone else alive and the fact your body has changed beyond recognition, postpartum life can be a challenge. So it’s no surprise that self-care, especially exercise, can sometimes fall by the wayside.
But not for a Women’s Health editor, right? I should be all over this.
Except I wasn’t.
The reality is, I really struggled. Severe postpartum incontinence and grade two bladder prolapse meant a lot of exercise was simply off the table. But the fatigue was the real issue. Months of unrelenting sleep deprivation was hitting hard, leaving me exhausted. And while the rational side of my brain was telling me that some gentle movement would actually give me an energy boost and leave me less tired, the emotional side just wanted to stay under a blanket on the sofa and snooze.
Plus, there was the complete and utter disconnect from my body to contend with. This was my second baby, so it wasn’t a complete shock to me, but I think the hormones had tricked me into forgetting just how tough that forth trimester can be. I was a bleeding, leaking, wobbly mess – with a lovely bout of back acne thrown in for good measure. Basically, I felt gross, and the thought of squeezing myself into my gym gear filled me with dread.
So, I decided to asked the experts for help, namely Women’s Health’s expert trainer Rosie Stockley. An authority in all things pre- and post-natal fitness, she advised me that the best thing to do was to start by focussing on NEAT exercise.
If you’re a NEAT newbie, let me break it down for you. NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which, when is basically everyday activity when it’s at home. Think of it as anything which doesn’t constitute formal exercise (running, lifting, swimming, resistance training etc.
It’s different to your BMR, too (ie your Basal Metabolic Rate, or the calories you burn by doing the things you need to stay alive like breathing or sleeping). Your NEAT exercise is the energy expended on top of your BMR – think the calories burned when you nip to the shops to pick up some milk.
So, I took Rosie’s advice and started focussing on those daily chores that I do anyway, and looking at ways in which I could increase their natural calorie burn to try to achieve a calorie deficit.
The first thing? Getting out and about with the baby. I’d already been meeting friends for a coffee with my daughter tucked up in a cosy blanket in her pram, I started suggesting walking coffee dates instead using a baby carrier. Suddenly, I was doing a gentle work out wearing a cute, gurgling 12lb weighted vest without even thinking about it.
To the delight of my dog, I then increased the length and duration of his walks, doing a two hour lap up to and around Wimbledon Common at least three times a week. I was astounded to find this was burning a good 750 calories each time, far more than I’d usually burn in a sweaty spin session or hardcore HIIT workout.
Yes, it required a fair chunk of my day to complete, but that was the joy of mat leave – I’ve got all the time in the world. Within a few weeks, I began to notice a difference in my energy levels and my clothes began to feel looser.
Remember, you shouldn’t start any formal exercise before your six-week sign off from your GP at the very earliest.
After a few weeks of that, I decided it was time to dip my toe into a more structured fitness routine, and give the postpartum fitness plan Rosie Stockley devised for WH a go. Full disclosure, it’s great – quick, low impact, perfectly tailored to post-natal bodies and versatile enough that you can adjust it to make it slightly more challenging when you fancy a sweatier session.
The problem for me was, well, me. While I threw myself into the first week with gusto, by week two my motivation was waning. Faced with the choice of a 20-minute workout or a 20-minute nap, the nap always won out. “I’ll do some exercise later once I’m feeling a bit less tired”, I told myself. Spoiler alert: I never did.
So I quickly realised that I needed to be held accountable if I wanted to actually tick any exercise off my daily to-do list. The most obvious way to do this is to get yourself a personal trainer – someone who can tailor a plan to your body and fitness goals, and hold you accountable to sessions.
But let’s be real, personal trainers are a considerable expense at the best of times, and one I knew I definitely couldn’t afford on maternity leave. So I looked at signing up to group classes and quickly realised that joining a gym was the most cost-effective option if you’re looking for variety.
Enter the newly opened Virgin Active in Wimbledon, which boasts spinning, reformer Pilates, yoga, strength and conditioning, sound baths, a lifting club and aqua classes on its daily timetables. Basically, exercise which requires you to diarise it and commit – just what I needed to keep me accountable and actually showing up for myself on my post-partum fitness journey.
It’s pretty swanky, but I reasoned with myself that if I signed up for a nicer gym – the kind where there are hairdryers and straighteners and hotel-style toiletries in the locker rooms – I’d be more likely to go. Plus any gym where you don’t have to bring your own towels is always a win for a new mum when you’ve already got a mountain of poonami-stained laundry at home.
I started with a Reformer Pilates class. Virgin offers three types of class, Foundation for beginners, Align for more experienced and Recovery for those looking to focus on sorting out those everyday niggles. Since I was back to square one with my strength levels and unsure of how my leaky bladder would hold up in class, I signed up to a Foundations class for my first session back on the bed. Was it as challenging as I would normally do? No, but my pelvic floor held up, giving me the confidence to book into other classes, too.
Through trial and error, I learned that I could still spin as well, as long as I didn’t attempt any of the heavy climbs during a ride, and even the strength and conditioning classes weren’t completely off-limits proved that I stuck to a low-weight, high-rep set up.
Shout out to the Virgin instructors here, who are always quick to adjust any exercise to suit my flawed pelvic floor. I appreciate it can be embarrassing to have to tell a stranger that you’ll wet yourself if you do a burpee, but it’s so important you do. Not only does shame thrive in silence, but you’ll probably be surprised at how understanding most people are.
Of course, there’s still the issue of childcare to contend with, but on the days when I couldn’t get a helping hand with my daughter while I slipped off to a gym class, I took her with me instead, adding to my NEAT activity levels by taking her swimming with me in their serene 20m pool. Super cute and super-efficient at burning a few more calories at the same time.
So how did I actually get back into fitness? Slowly, and by knowing my own limitations both physically and mentally. I’ve still got a long way to go, of course, before I’m back to feeling anywhere near to me former levels of fitness, but for now I’m just enjoying ghosting the sofa and having that endorphin-infused post-workout feeling again. And I know now, accountability is key.
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