Love Your Body

I HATE MY BODY. Yep I said it. As a personal trainer and as a mother who wants to help other moms, I will always be honest about my experience. I hate my body, BUT I am working on loving it. It’s not easy and I struggle a lot sometimes. I have had 3 surgeries on my abdomen in 4 years… 2 C-sections and laparoscopic surgery to remove endometriosis. I sometimes feel like a bad example of what a trainer should look like but then I remind myself, there is no one way a woman should look.

My body is not going to look the same before I had my babies. I grew two humans, two very large humans I might add! My skin is not as tight as it used to be and when I lean over it looks like I have more to my stomach. My skin will hang over my pants. My c-section scars make the little bump I have on my lower stomach that much more noticeable. BUT! I will never not have this “pooch.” Even when I was younger and all muscle, I had it. It’s my anatomy. I struggle with adenomyosis (essentially blood fills inner lining of the Uterus causing it to enlarge and weigh more than it should) and my uterus sits anteriorly. I will never not have a pooch! So I have to do a lot of self-talk to remind myself that there is nothing I can do about these things.

My body has also been in pain for a very long time. Before my endometriosis surgery I could barely walk, I couldn’t sit on anything remotely hard, had a hard time laying down and my stomach would randomly bloat so bad. You can imagine how hard that is when you have two little kids that just want to play. I hated my body for it. Not only did it look like crap, but it couldn’t do the basics. The endometriosis was not the cause of all my issues, but it was starting to exacerbate issues I have had for a while. I wanted to move so badly! I missed how good it felt to be able to run, to do squats, and even sit on the floor with my kids. Now that I am post that surgery I now have more scars but I am able to move much better.

I am working on building back strength I lost during the last couple of years. I do credit my mostly good eating habits, genetics, and days I was able to move for keeping my weight under control. I don’t look like a fitness model, I never will. To look like that you have to be rigid on your food and workout a lot. That is not my goal. My goal is to be strong and move with ease and keep up with my kids. Yes I will lose a little weight and will look a little slimmer after a few months of getting back into a routine but I’m not going to be entering any contests!

All this to say that almost everyone struggles with how their body looks after babies. It’s how we can take those thoughts and change them for the better. Realizing there are things we can’t change about our bodies, loving our body for the amazing things it has done, and nourishing our body, is how we can slowly learn to love our bodies again. You can use what I tell myself all the time:

“My body will not look the same after growing two human beings, but my body is bad ass for growing two humans and doing what it can do today.”