Possibly another book mums don't need...

As I have been re-visiting my hometown of Chicago for the last few weeks, I find myself gravitating to my favourite bookstores, the majority of which are now overrun with Alison Sweeney's new tome, The Mommy Diet. Sweeney, host of the The Biggest Loser (US) claims that this book reflects her new found sensitivities surrounding pregnancy weight gain and the pressures to lose baby weight quickly. While I am usually all for positive reading material for new mums when it comes to body image, there are several things that bother me about this book. Firstly, Sweeney (in spite of what are probably good intentions) is inextricably linked with a television show that puts ordinary but very obese individuals through the paces to lose extraordinary amounts of weight in a short period of time. While she acknowledges that this environment led to her own anxiety about losing weight postpartum, I still think that it is difficult for other mums who are inevitably going to read this book to separate her from the context from which she has become famous. Secondly, while Sweeney reiterates that the book is meant to be a book for 'healthy' pregnant and post-pregnant bodies, I find it bizarre that a book that is meant to be about 'health' or mindful eating/exercise has the word 'diet' in the title. Call me crazy, but I think most of us have pretty explicit pictures of what 'diet' means and it usual brings to mind pictures of restrictive eating and lots of exercise in order to lose weight which I think seems to contravene what Sweeney is intending to do with the book. The book is a month-to-month guide to weight loss which, to me, isn't much different than any of the three million other books on the market that purport to be 'different' and all about 'health' when really they are just diet books in disguise. I think the whole premise of the book is hypocritical. Although Sweeney says that she didn't lose her baby weight quickly, nevertheless, she lost it and I think she would be lying if she suggested she didn't have lots of support to do so.

Has anyone out there actually bought the book or have you seen it? What do you think of it?

Bethenny Frankel: the ultimate post-baby 'skinny girl'

Octomum dropping bombs: not good

Geez Louise.

We haven't heard much from Octomum lately but she's back in full force on two fronts 1) admitting to Us mag that she lost all 145 pounds of baby weight 'for the money' and also saying that she's not ruling out another baby in the future and 2) showing up on The View acting crazy like she hadn't taken her meds. She's so hyper on the show that Whoopi Goldberg asked: “Do you understand that some people think… maybe you’re not quite all there?” The audience applauded.

“I love your question,” Suleman responded.

OMG!

The charmed life isn't always so charmed

Lily Allen's angsty lyrics about heartbreak and deadbeat boyfriends may have made her an international success but in a candid interview, she talks for the first time about her widely publicised miscarriage:

"I couldn't even compute the emotions going through my head, but I was having to put out a press release about my miscarriage... I had this public sympathy for about five days and then everyone was on my case again and I didn't know what was happening to me… I just didn't deal with it at all. I didn't even start beginning to deal with it until the baby's due date. Then it just hit me like a house collapsing. I have therapy on and off but at that time it really helped me. Then I started to deal with it and move on. I still get sad. I still think. I don't mark (what would have been) my baby's birth but it's always there. […] I've had really bad, unbelievably awful times, but if I hadn't had them I wouldn't get the happiness I've got now. I'm very grateful because I could have turned down a very different path. It could have been awful. It really could."

Although I said in an earlier post that miscarriage isn't a news item (and it isn't), I think it's a great step forward for famous women to acknowledge that the a celebrity life is not always happy or easy or glamorous. On the same note, Sarah Jessica Parker spoke to Parade magazine and acknowledged that post-baby weight loss is very hard for 'real' women. "I hear a lot of actresses pretend they don't have help, and that can't be true," she says." It's really unfair to working women in America who read celebrity news and think, 'Why can't I lose weight when I've had a baby?' Well, everyone you're reading about has money for a trainer and a chef. That doesn't make it realistic. They don’t have the kind of help that I have if I need it," Parker tells PARADE. "I’m allowed to be a working mother because frankly, I can leave my child with someone I trust and love and a lot of mothers can’t do that."

Wrapping up the post-baby bloat

Christmas may have come early for this (former) Girl Next Door but Kendra Wilkinson is dead set on dropping her baby weight in record time (surprise, surprise). In the latest edition of Ok!, she vows to lose the 55lbs she gained during her pregnancy. “I used to have some sexy abs, but I was like, ‘There they go,’ ” Kendra gushed to OK!.

Let's hope Kendra takes it easy. She had a caesar (again, surprise surprise) and we all know you need to wait about 6 weeks until getting back on the treadmill.

Octomum drops her weight

Photo credit: splashnewsonline.com

Holy mother of octuplets! Have you seen Octomum!?

Like a pregnant version of a linebacker, Nadya hit 270lbs during her pregnancy and now she's back into her pre-baby jeans after a weight loss of 145 lbs without a trainer or surgery.

Losing 40 pounds immediately after delivering her octuplets, Suleman says she felt compelled to join a local gym after their birth. There, she fits in thrice-weekly midnight workouts (while a nanny watches over her sleeping children) with strength training but no cardio. "I get enough of that with the kids," Suleman, who gets by on three hours of sleep, tells Us.

Well, can't say that working out at midnight seems very healthy but I suppose it's better than dropping straight into the plastic surgeon's office.

Milla J shows off her post-baby bod for Maxim

Hello, Milla.

Twenty months on from giving birth to her first daughter, Ever Gabo, Milla J is stripping off for this month's issue of Maxim. According to the model/actress:

"Look, I do Vogue, OK? I'm not doing this [photo spread] to advertise a designer; I had a little girl recently, and I'm doing this to show my post-baby body!"

"Lingerie and a sheet were all I needed," she goes on. "I know it's all about my body. I want to give readers exactly what they want, and they want to see me."

Um, okay. I'm glad she has a healthy ego.....

Anyway, if you remember Milla gained 70lbs during her pregnancy so the transformation is pretty unbelievable.

Celebs set a bad example for weight loss: DUH.

Doritos girl on quitting exercise

Former Doritos girl, Ali Landry, has admitted to People that after giving birth to her daughter in 2007, she waited two years to begin exercising again.

nstead of hitting the gym, Landry, 34, relied on a home-delivery meal service to drop her pregnancy pounds. "I lost the majority of the [post-baby] weight pretty fast doing that," Landry said at Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS A Time for HeroeBlogger: The Baby Bump Project - Create Posts Celebrity Carnival in L.A. recently. "But I have to say, it was that skinny fat when you don't work out, and you're not toned."

Her feelings changed, however, when she was cast to appear on the celebrity sports competition show, Superstars:

"When I got the paperwork for Superstars, and I saw they asked what size swimsuit I wear, I had a hot flash, nearly broke into cold sweats and hired a trainer immediately."

"They, I think, put me in the best shape of my entire life. I am in shock that I have [definition] in my stomach after having a baby – I didn't even know that was possible," she says. "Hopefully, that will be encouraging to all the women out there who don't feel so good about their body after a baby."

Not sure why her story would be inspiring. In fact, it just reconfirms that even though Landry was happy not rushing to 'get her body back', as soon as she was going to go back to work she was pressured to drop her weight.

Bah.

MJH: loves herself a little too much

Man, Melissa Joan Hart can't seem to get enough of herself. She has now resorted to posting about her weight loss on her MySpace Blog.

Apparently, People mag forgot to mention the most important part of her post-baby weight loss:

"Hi all, Just want to explain a little more about things discussed within the People article. While the article is correct and properly quoted, I want to point out that I naturally have a small-frame body, being only 5'2" tall, so 155 pounds was an unhealthy weight for me, even with a baby. My "normal" healthy weight should remain under 120 lbs. More importantly, what was left out of the article was my body fat percentage, which is currently just under 18%, which I am extremely proud of right now. I am also fitting into my size 27 jeans. Stepping on a scale means nothing to me since muscle weighs more than fat. What matters is how I feel on a day-to-day basis. Thats it, just wanted to get that off my chest."

Um, narcissism much?

Sabrina the teenage witch: shameless self-promotion

Blah blah blah. Melissa Joan Hart is 'revealing her bikini body' after having two kids. It's taken her 14 months to get back to 113 lbs after seeing 'horrifying' photos of herself on the beach last year. "I still read blogs about me discussing how fat I've become," the former Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star tells PEOPLE in the new issue, available on newsstands Friday.

"Everyone still thinks I'm huge," says Hart, 33, whose post-pregnancy body was the subject of cruel Internet attacks after she gave birth to sons Mason, 3, and Braydon, 14 months, with husband, Course of Nature lead singer Mark Wilkerson, 32. "But I'm not anymore!"

And I'd like to ask her...has the loss of fat changed her life? Sure, she may say that she's happier, inspired, whatever. What really annoys me is this crap that is constantly fed to women and in particular, post-birth mothers, that suggests that weight loss makes life easier. Sure you can fit into smaller clothes but it doesnt ever change the fact that many women in this world are dealing with juggling a work/life balance and working out is only another pressure among a sea of already existing pressures. Getting into a bikini doesn't change any of that.

Boo to you, MJH.

Rebecca Romijn drops baby weight

Surprise, surprise. Rebecca Romijn has lost 60 lbs after giving birth to twins four months ago. Apparently, she says it was all due to breastfeeding:

"It's like you have to eat 5,000 extra calories a day or you can't produce enough food for them. So, that's been fun as well". [You only need a few hundred extra calories, but who's counting, right?)

The actress hasn't been exercising either:

"I think within the first three weeks, I took off like 35 lbs. without doing anything!" says says. "I haven't been able to work out that much because I have twins. It's impossible to get back into a regular schedule."

But she does acknowledge, "I'm not pretending to be back to the shape I was in beforehand anyway. I still have a ways to go. We've got Spanx underneath almost everything."

If only it were that easy for everyone else....

New book cracks open the secrets and lies of mummyhood

A new book out of the UK, Backwards in High Heels: The Impossible Art of Being Female by Sarah Vine and Tanya Kindersley, calls itself an 'instruction manual for having it all'. One chapter is called 'The Conspiracy of Silence' and it a discussion of the lies that women tell each other about pregnancy and childbirth and then a funny but slightly horrible description of what women actually mean when they say to one another that, for instance, that birth 'isn't that bad'. For example:

If you tell a friend that

1. It doesn’t matter if she gets fat, the weight will drop off afterwards, especially if she breastfeeds.

What you really mean is:

1. Her stomach will never be the same again, not even if she goes to the gym every day (which she won’t be able to because she won’t have the time), breastfeeds until her child goes to university and observes a strict vegan diet.

What are some 'lies' that you were told about pregnancy and birth?

Jeri Ryan loses weight and says sayonara to maternity leave

Law & Order star, Jeri Ryan has admitted that seeing her year of maternity leave come to a close had her in tears. "I cried," Ryan, 41, admitted about the first time she left day Gisele in Los Angeles to go to work on the NBC show in New York. "It was especially hard since I've been with her nonstop since she was born." The actress also mentioned to People that it took her a year to lose the 28 lbs gained during her pregnancy and that it was not easy: "It took me 10 months to get back to normal," says Ryan, whose exercise regime consists of Pilates three times a week. "It was a little frustrating, but I realize it's harder to take the weight off when you're 40."

Source: Jeri Ryan cries over ending maternity leave

Laila Ali happy not to look like she's had a child

If losing baby weight is hard for the everyday women of the world, how does it feel to gain weight when you are a professional boxer?

Laila Ali opened up to The Insider to say that losing weight has been extremely difficult. Almost to her pre-pregnancy weight since giving birth to her son Curtis six months ago, Ali is working on the last 10 pounds.“It takes nine months to put the weight on, so you just have to know it’s going to take time to get it off, which I do,” but says she is “not crazy about it like some people are.”

Nevertheless, a seemingly 'healthy' attitude to weight loss is punctuated by a disappointing summation of her post-bab body: “My body didn’t get stretched out too much to the point where it looks like I had a child, so I’m very lucky,” she explains.

God forbid you actually look like you gave birth after giving birth! Oh the horror!

Source: http://www.theinsider.com/news/1703657_Video_laila_Ali_And_Son_Curtis_Fun_Photo_Shoot

Naomi Watts has the weight sucked out of her

Naomi Watts, having given birth to her second son just one month ago, has the answer to post-baby weight loss: breastfeeding.

"I'm breast feeding and he's sucking it all out of me, it seems," Watts, 40, told People magazine on the red carpet when asked how she got back in shape so quickly.

"And when the baby comes out, it's a lot of weight right there."

Huzzah!

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4818347a1860.html

Celebrity envy

Tori Spelling has revealed that she looked to Jessica Alba for inspiration to lose the weight after the birth of her second child, Stella.

She says, "I would look at pictures of myself and compare them to Jessica Alba, who had her baby two days before me. I'd see photos of her two months after and go, 'Look at her!'"

She adds, "The best way to lose weight is to make it a family affair. It has changed my life. It's easier now because I'm not as focused on it. Take your time. If you get obsessed, you'll miss out on great moments with your children.”

Source: http://tinyurl.com/5kn3oz

Breast best for bouncing back

Ah Tori. She has blabbed to Ok! magazine that after 3.5 months she has stopped breastfeeding so she can lose her baby weight:

"I haven't lost the weight yet! I'm wearing Spanx," she revealed. "I just stopped breastfeeding so now I can start a diet program. Getting back to working out is the hardest part but we have a really active lifestyle."

*Sigh*

Clearly, Tori doesn't know about the University of Georgia study that appears in the August issue of International Breastfeeding Journal in which the researchers found that breastfeeding BOOSTS post-baby weight loss. Women who exclusively breastfed their babies lost more weight than mothers who used formula or formula and breastmilk ('mixed feeding')

Sources: http://www.okmagazine.com/news/view/9074
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSCOL66374420080916

Minnie Driver: 'debuting' her post-baby bod

Minnie D. one week post-birth, looking remarkably slender.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/news/minnie-driver-debuts-post-baby-bod

Gwen S: post-baby

Gwen Stefani has made her first post-baby debut since having her Zuma two weeks ago. She was snapped on her way to a postnatal appointment in LA.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/news/gwen-stefani-debuts-post-baby-bod