It’s been less than 48 hours since I gave birth and already the memories are fading like raindrops on a desert highway. So here I am on my phone trying to capture my rapidly shrinking recollections while baby Kairi sleeps milk drunk across my chest.

At around 38 and a half weeks I’d noticed I was becoming impatient with being pregnant. People around me seemed to be having their babies left, right and centre... yet here I was still unable to stir a pot on the stove, get in and out of a car, or use a sink without having to position my body at an awkward angle to keep my belly out of the way. And if I wasn’t mindful I’d just bump my belly into things, which was both annoying and painful!

My due date was Jan 13 but I predicted baby would come Thursday Jan 4. My first child Archie arrived five days early and I’d predicted his birth date with laser accuracy. 

So when this baby didn’t arrive on the date I’d predicted, I realised I’d just have to be patient and stop thinking about it. “Assume you’ll go to 43 weeks” was the wise advice from my dietitian friend and mama of two, Susanna.
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Once upon a time, a beautiful princess decided she wanted to have a baby. So she instantly fell pregnant and ​had a perfect pregnancy where she grew a "cute little" bump and didn't gain weight in any other part of her body. Her face didn't explode with pimples in the first trimester whilst her body adjusted to the crazy hormone fluctuations, and she was never EVER a mega bitch to her husband, the prince.

She kept exercising five times a week and eating one salad a day throughout her whole pregnancy like a respectable lady ought to. Then she had a wonderful birth and the next week returned to her pre-baby body so she could continue her life as a professional fitness model as if nothing happened.

Her belly never resembled a cake sagging in the middle from overdoing the baking powder. She never once accidentally shat her pants or peed whilst reaching for a box of cereal in the supermarket, no way. And her baby was perfect and sleeping through the night by zero weeks of age, just in case you were wondering.  And she lived happily ever after. The end.

...

So many normal and necessary changes happen to a woman’s body - and life - during pregnancy and after birth. And yet society and the media gloss over all the (literally) shitty stuff and instead feed us the unicorn fairytale version of what motherhood and parenting is "supposed" to look like.

No where is this more evident than in the whole idea of getting your "pre-baby body" back.

Diet culture is relentless in sending new mothers messages about needing to fix their so-called imperfections - that they need to "bounce back", lose the baby weight, and flatten their newly soft and stretched tummies within weeks.

Sadly, the way many new mums attempt to live up to this impossible standard is through restrictive dieting and over-zealous exercise, often taken on before the pelvic floor and abdomen have had a chance to repair. Neither of which are in the best interests of mum or baby, especially if mum is breastfeeding.

Ok, I'm going to attempt to summarise the main events of the third trimester of this pregnancy. I say attempt because it feels like a LOT has happened! We've been camping, unexpectedly moved house, I've sat uni exams, finished work for the year, written a bunch of articles ahead of time for a magazine I'm a columnist for (to prepare for the next few months of newborn amnesia mode), and I was a guest on a cracking anti-diet podcast!

​And at 38 weeks pregnant, I'm on the homerun and finally sliding into rest, nap and birth preparator mode after what's been a bloody exhausting third trimester full of ups and downs...
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Holy crap. I just read that blog I wrote about my second trimester when I was pregnant with Archie in 2015. And I'm glad to say, this time around things have been refreshingly different.

Why? On the surface I could say that my life circumstances are different: there are actual spaces in my schedule. I'm living somewhere I like. And I'm being more gentle with myself in terms of work, exercise, and pretty much everything else.

But when I dig deeper, I can see that things are different this time around because I am different. My decidedly gentler approach to everything is a result of my being stronger than I used to be. I don't take as much shit from people as I once did. Including myself.

I've waxed lyrical about my disdain for the commodification of yoga and how until very recently, it drove me away from yoga for nearly two years. You can read me being all anti-mainstream yoga Ranty McRantus, here.

But the other big reason I quit yoga was this: ​after I gave birth to my first child, my personal yoga practice was feeling spiritually unfulfilling. And physically depleting as hell. 

Following Archie's birth, the yoga I knew and loved - the dynamic, acrobatic, energetic practice full of dance and strong postures, inversions and fast flow - it just no longer... worked. It was not giving me the vitality, peace and stillness it once did.
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It has taken many painful mistakes, a near-complete abstinence from yoga for a time, and a rediscovery of yoga at a deeper level for me to come out the other side. Here's what happened after I had my first baby, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes I did.
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I've taken the last year and a half off teaching yoga. Some people assume I've just continued to teach and are mildly surprised when I tell them I'm not actually teaching. Others have noticed my absence and have been asking me when I'll start teaching again.

I know I've been especially missed by the (wonderful) AcroYoga community on the Gold Coast. ​The last yoga event I lead was a couples restorative AcroYoga workshop over 18 months ago. It was a gorgeous workshop and fully booked out. The people who attended were super sweet and provided such encouraging feedback. The staff at the host studio were incredibly helpful, down to earth and lovely. And I had a fantastic time teaching it.

​I receive near-weekly emails from curious newbies asking when I'll be teaching my next Acro workshop or class. I politely turn them away and direct them instead to other teachers.

The best reason I can come up with for my absence from the yoga world?

I just haven't felt like teaching yoga.

And more to the point, up until recently I have pretty much taken the last year and a half off from practising yoga.

Yep. No personal practice, besides the odd yoga class every few months, and some meditation in between looking after a newborn who is now a toddler (i.e. extremely sporadic meditation). My preferred form of movement switched from pre-baby trail running, daily vinyasa riddled with handstands and AcroYoga... to walking, reformer pilates and strength training to prepare for and recover from childbirth, and to build the strength I need to haul a toddler around without putting my back out.

I QUIT YOGA. Turned my back on it almost completely. After over a decade of reasonably dedicated practice and nearly as long teaching.

Why?

Basically, two reasons:

1. Once I gave birth to my first child (and probably a bit before that), the personal yoga practice I knew and loved - the dynamic, dance-like, acrobatic, yang-centred practice that is so celebrated in modern yoga culture - suddenly felt like total shit.

2. I had a gutful of how wanky it had all become.
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Ok, so this blog comes a little late. I'm now 17 weeks pregnant, meaning I'm well into my second trimester. With a wedding, a honeymoon, a not-really-weaned toddler, recommencing uni, and the busiest spell I've had in clinic EVER, I've been a bit slack on the personal blogs! But I'll do my best to recount things from those first three lunar cycles of this pregnancy, my second pregnancy...

Ironically, when I started writing this blog series on improving fertility naturally (somewhat out of self-interest because umm I wanted to get pregnant again), I was actually already one week pregnant - but of course didn't consciously know it at that early stage.
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Yep, it's official... Andreas and I are finally married!

On the morning of Saturday 8th of July, we enjoyed a fantastic day surrounded by our closest friends and family. We were wed by amazing celebrant Rachel Harwood of Fire & Earth Ceremonies in a picturesque park in Currumbin, then had a lunch time feast down the road in Tugun Progress Hall.

Our aim was to have a low key, casual kind of wedding... but of course, as things tend to with weddings, our plans became a little more... uh, layered: more people were invited than originally planned, more food ordered, our park picnic was upgraded to a hall feast, and our booze-free wedding plans went out the window! But it all turned out beautifully.

​Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all our friends and family who joined us both in person and in spirit on our special day.

And that other special announcement? 

I'm 16 weeks pregnant! Round two, here we go. 

I was 13 weeks on our big day. And the pregnancy was "planned"... but it wasn't... so we ended up bringing our wedding day three months forward so I would fit into my dress. Yes, it was hectic!

I've now posted a blog about my first trimester in case you're curious.

​Here are a few of my favourite shots from the day, photographed with flair by my good friend, PT and massage therapist Nick Hart of Hartography.

I recently came across a celebrity trainer's 12 week weight loss program that really got my goat. Nothing new there, same old shit about restricting calories in via dieting and doing mega workouts to "burn calories off." Same old cheesy marketing and aesthetically pleasing presentation of just enough accurate information intermingled with bullcrap to confuse the majority of consumers who are not savvy about diet culture's sneaky AF ways.

But what really upset me - even more than the same old rubbish - was that as an extension of this dreadful program there were weight loss plans for pregnant and postpartum women. Complete with daily caloric "allowances" for these groups of women.

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. The quest for "body after baby" is massively prevalent in our society and it's harmful to both women and their babies.

​Pregnancy is not the time to try to lose weight. And postpartum is one of the riskiest times in a woman's life for developing or worsening an eating disorder.

The caloric allowances allotted to these vulnerable groups of women on this particular diet plan are scarily misinformed, and dangerous. This is the kind of stuff that sets women up for deteriorating body image and developing eating disorders during and after the vulnerable time that is pregnancy.

But before we get to that, let's start with why calorie counting in the first place is a waste of time.

As a non-diet dietitian who loves food, you won't be surprised to hear that I rarely talk calories or kilojoules with my clients – unless its to point out they need more. There are so many flaws with the general idea of counting calories, including:

• calorie counting grossly over-simplifies the ways body weight is determined and encourages subscription to the "just ensure calories in is less than calories out" mentality towards weight control. With this polarised lens, we forget the many other factors that influence body weight just as much if not far more than food and activity, including genetics, stigma, socioeconomic factors, stress, sleep deprivation, hormonal imbalances, environmental toxicity, gut bacteria, etc
• calorie content (calculated in food laboratories by bomb calorimetry or indirect calorie estimation) reported on packaged food labels can be off by as much as 20% due to variations in manufacturing, season, and suppliers.
• similarly, the calorie content of whole foods is wildly unpredictable. Two similar-sized Fuji apples can have vastly different calorie contents due to the soil and climate they're grown in, the time of season they're harvested, how they've been handled after picking, and how they're prepared.
• calorie counting doesn't take into account the type or quality of food you're eating (and it matters.)

• calorie counting is far more difficult and inaccurate than people think, whether in regards to calculating food intake or calories used in exercise. Under or over reporting is common and human.
• calorie counting does not factor in the immense individual variation in metabolic rate. BMR calculators can be off by 20% or more, in which case, is it really worth calculating?
• calorie counting is also complicated by variations in individuals' muscle mass, amount and type of physical and mental activity, and many other totally random and unpredictable genetic factors that we may not even be aware of, let alone have the capacity to plug into a caloric requirements calculator.

Then of course there's the elephant in the room: that weight loss dieting - whether by calorie counting and food restriction or some other method - does not work.

But myths abound over how much women should be eating. In conversations with women with weight concern, I notice a lot of magic calorie numbers being thrown around when it comes to how many daily calories they think they should be eating: 800? 1200? 1500? 1800?

And just how much more do you need to eat when pregnant or breastfeeding - "because this celebrity trainer says it's x" (P.S. she's terribly, dangerously wrong.)

So just this once, let's talk frankly about calories.
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