The exercise and putting it all together bit
In this part of the Wonder Tome, Lucy has given you a huge amount of choice and flexibility in the exercises but, again, they are not meant to be done to perfection although, of course, if one of the exercises inspires you to do something, then that is fab—our job here is done. The only thing Lucy wants you to do for sure, as much for your sanity as anything else, is to get out there walking on your pram walks—but all that will become clear later. For the keenies who follow all the programme and get fabulous results (including toned butts), that is fine too.
But this chapter is so much more than just a set of exercises. Together, Lucy and I have created a week-by-week breakdown for the first month, explaining how to combine all your new-found knowledge on food, exercise and being kind to yourself. The first week is quite detailed—you should get the hang of it with that—then weeks two, three and four are a little more free-flow. You really will have got the hang of it by then. By month two you will be cruising and to maintain it is easier than you would have thought.
Look out for Lucy’s trainers icon throughout the book when she dispenses sage advice. The owl icon appears when I have something wise to say and helps you differentiate between our voices.
The lifestyle bit
A vital part of getting the you back is to rediscover your self-confidence by being nice to yourself and also realising that people are having the same experiences as you. Some of you will find some parts of being a mum easy and other parts hard, and some of you will find the whole thing hard—it depends on you and your personality and on your little one, too. There are babies that pop out good as gold and others, well, they are a bit more of a challenge. Who knows why that happens? Even one brother can be a little lamb and the other a pickle (polite term). Of course you love them (sometimes not all of the time, but most of the time), but often it is hard not to think of motherhood as an unpaid servant’s role—changing nappies, preparing food (if weaning), being woken up in the night and picking up tiny socks. And then there’s the realisation of responsibility and in this huge new role it is all too easy to lose yourself and who you are. Of course, you are happy to be Mum, but it would be nice to take the badge off and put your feet up at the local day spa and feel, well, human.
So be nice to yourself, don’t give yourself a hard time and do some small things to claw back your confidence and your time—and you.
Retire to the bathroom to read the next chapter. (Tiny knock on the bathroom door, turning to manic hammering with Barbie head.) ‘Mamma? Mamma?
MAAAAMA! MAAAAMA! MA! MA!’
If it’s not too late, start NOW
I really hope that you are picking up this book in the bookshop and are having a browse, newly pregnant. I can save you a lot of time and trouble, and I can get you to re-claim those jeans much more quickly—or even a pair of lusciously sexy new ones. All ears? Start now. Yes, you heard right, start now! I am not talking about a slimming diet, goodness no, us nutritional types don’t talk in terms of an actual diet, just a better diet, an optimum nutrition diet.
Us Brits have a really poor attitude to food. As I am definitely not a shrink and only a humble nutritionist and wise old owl, I don’t really know about all the psychological reasons behind this. However, I do know that lots of parents use food as reward right from a really early age.
* ‘Be a good girl and eat up all your food.’
* ‘You only get the chocolate chip cookie when you have finished your cabbage.’
Surely, no contest? Gollup down the cabbage and get ‘the nice stuff’, while holding your nose and practically gagging on the cabbage. You have just been told that cabbage is yucky and that chocolate is nice—a reward, in effect. Years later when we are in charge of our own nutritional destiny as an adult, you can therefore skip straight to the chocolate chip cookies and there is no one there to make you eat that cabbage. ‘Oh joy! Tee hee! See if they can stop me (etc).’
The downside is that chocolate chip cookies in large amounts cause our girths to expand. And there really is no getting around this. Sorry.
So a great many of us have the concept of reward in food. ‘If I am going through a really hard time and I have been good, I need a treat or I will feel deprived.’ And if we do have a so-called healthy diet, we bottle up all this goodness and, lo and behold, when the doc tells us that the Stork is due to pay you a visit, you say, ‘Great, now I can eat what I want!’ You can’t. Sorry.
‘Tell us, oh Guru,’ I hear you cry, ‘Tell us. Oh, what is the secret? What is this Optimum Nutrition Diet that I must follow to be both slim and wise like you, oh great and worthy one?’ The secret is…that you must:
* Eat loads of fresh and luscious vegetables washed down with pure water.
* Eat plenty of health-giving fruit, some whole grains full of vitamins and minerals.
* Consume fish and a little meat, if you like. That’s it!
So remember that:
* A healthy attitude to food saves you an extra trouser size or two.
* Start to look at your nutrition and exercise before you actually get pregnant.
* A splurge from time to time means you are human and not an alien being.
During pregnancy
On my roundup of fresh research victims, my beam of attention turned to my colleague Louise who is now pregnant with number two (a little sibling for the lovely Jasper). Louise is a qualified nutritional therapist who managed to complete her training while Jasper was getting ready to hatch—quite an achievement. So what are her observations about getting back in shape?
Lumps and bumps
Lumps and bumps for a start—bits bulge out where no bits bulged before. That is quite disconcerting, Louise says. When you have been used to being in control of your body, it can be fairly alarming when suddenly, like a magician’s balloon at a children’s party, your stomach resembles a sausage dog.
The mythical eating for two plot
With Jasper, Louise also feels that she had said a mythical, ‘Sod it!’ once she found she was pregnant. She let go of her discipline around food. Her portions became massive (definitely ‘eating for two’), but as luck would have it, because she was training to be a nutritional therapist, at least her double portions were healthy ones—but too much of a good thing isn’t necessarily wonderful. Healthy food is great, healthy food is even great in big portions, but watch the mega giant portions!
This time Louise has wised up to that. Yes, you may feel hungrier; yes, your body is changing and has different needs but it is the quality of the food that is vital, not necessarily the amount. In fact, you only need 200 extra calories in the last three months of your pregnancy. The newly pregnant, ‘let’s push the “go nuts” button and think about stuffing-the-whole-thing-back-in-the-box of carefulness after a couple of months’ attitude is really difficult to overcome