Wow – I’m 23 days postpartum and I barely recognise myself in the mirror! There is absolutely nothing glam about C-section recovery, looking after a newborn and the physical deconditioning that I’m feeling right now! 10 days ago, I decided that it was time to move into a “health and fitness” mindset, and indeed I’ve started to make the changes to commence the “Return to Fitness Glory” journey – but let me stress- they’re SMALL and SLOW behavioural changes. I’m not cutting hours of laps around the block, counting my macros and being ridiculous, I’m enjoying my new phase as a baby mumma and will take my time in getting back on track.
As with any client setting a Health and Fitness goal, I have spent a bit of time this week clarifying what my end targets are, what it is that I want to achieve – I will nut these out in more detail in a later blog post as some of them will be determined by my 6 week assessment with the OB. E.g. can I return to high impact training? Do I have diastasis recti (abdominal separation)? It’s important to have an end point, something to aim for, but I think it’s equally important to establish a baseline. This week involved a weigh in, measurements and some “before” pics – well postpartum photos but they are my official “hard truth” – this is where I’m at size wise, weight wise and aesthetic wise. It’s too early for me to test myself out on a fitness capactiy, but I know from how difficult it was to walk around the block, exactly where I’m at!
So here you have it people – my before measurements – this is the heaviest that I’ve been in my life and definitely the biggest measurement wise.
Below are my regular measurements and a more normal weight for me – overall it looks like I need to lose about 10kg and something like 63cm. MASSIVE goals!! But achievable with slow, steady focused training and nutrition
Numbers are numbers but what I think is perhaps more confronting are the postpartum images I took the other day – it’s certainly not what I expected to be 23 days out from the birth, but perhaps my expectations were a little unrealistic. My tummy is swollen and squishy and yes, it still feels like my insides are going to fall out at any given moment. There will 100% be no proper training until this feeling disappears – only basic Pilates movements, walks around the block and slow controlled body weight compound exercises like dips and squats (after OB clearance).
Here I am in all my postpartum glory – ready to commence my return to fitness and happy to have you along for the journey! 🙂
