Suzy Preston: on gaining weight

After losing 43kg on The Biggest Loser (America), it was hard for Suzy Preston (she is married to the winner of the same series, Matt Hoover) to see the weight creep back on when she got pregnant.

On her pre-pregnancy body:

'Four months before I got pregnant, I was in the best shape ever. I’d got all the excess skin removed and was feeling the best I ever had'.

On gaining weight during pregnancy:

Her anxiety about gaining weight got so bad that she was having panic attacks during her regular weigh-ins with her doctor. “I had to stop looking at the scale,” she says.

On being pregnant:

'This pregnancy thing is overrated, but I am really excited about being a mom'.

On post-baby weight loss:

'I got a jogging stroller. My goal is to be able run the five miles a day I was doing before I got pregnant'.

Suzy gave birth to Rex Timothy on 23 June.

Source: www.intouchweekly.hollwood.com

Maggie Gyllenhaall: weight loss and the wonder of motherhood

I love Maggie Gyllenhaall and I think she has proven that it is entirely possibly to be famous and pregnant and not be photographed obsessively. Anyway, if remember from a few weeks back she was snapped in a Manhattan park feeding her daughter and because her breast was exposed she was criticised all over the internet. She spoke to the Guardian about her new life as a mother and slams suggestions that she dropped her baby weight immediately after the birth:

On motherhood:
'It has changed my life in the most incredible way'.

On her baby weight:
'Totally ridiculous. I was really shocked that they would write that. At that point I was 25 or 30lb heavier than I had been before I got pregnant. I had literally just given birth! It's so unhelpful to everybody, to print stupid stuff like that'.

On pressure to be slim and fabulous:
'It would be dishonest and unhelpful to say I haven't felt that pressure. I do feel it - just not enough to change what I'm doing very much. I mean, I still go out to dinner all the time'.

Full article: http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2120688,00.html

Penny Lancaster loses baby weight 'naturally'

Rod Stewart's model missus, Penny Lancaster, spoke to Ok! magazine about becoming a mother and gaining weight. She says she feels more 'womanly' and loves her postbaby body.

On her body:
'Rod prefers my body since I gave birth. I'm more confident. Having had a baby I feel more womanly. Obviously I put weight on, but I honestly didn't care. I loved getting big! I was determined that my baby's health came first'.

On losing weight:
'It's only now that I feel I have got my figure back. But I've done it the right way, the natural way. For the first nine months while breastfeeding, I kept up my calorie intake and my exercise routine consisted of pushing Alastair in his pram'.

Why do I find it hard to believe that her weight loss was solely the result of breastfeeding? Interesting, she told the Mirror a different story last year just five months after the birth...I'm not trying to imply that it's wrong to want to work out post-birth, I just HATE IT when celebrities lie and say they did nothing to lose weight when they obviously do exercise and eat healthfully.

Some highlights of her exercise regimen..and it wasnt just breastfeeding that knocked the weight off...

'I couldn't cycle at first, it was still too painful with the stitches, so we went to our house in Palm Beach where I used the swimming pool."

'When I tried to speed up my cardio workout, my milk started running low, so I had to slow. Now I walk on an incline on the treadmill instead of running'.

'It's important to exercise the core muscles afterwards pregnancy because your belly just turns to jelly. I used to be able to do 30 press-ups but after I could do only one. I do Pilates and yoga-style exercise now'.


Sources:
http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/Penny+Lancaster+s+daughter+wish-16536.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tm_objectid=16994141&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=penny-lancaster-exclusive--how-i-got-my-body-back-name_page.html

Cindy Crawford: on being a wife, mum and business mogul

Cindy Crawford, the new face of Omega watches, has been hanging out in Sydney to promote the new Omega store and had some time to do a few interviews in between. This is from the Herald Sun Sunday Magazine pp.15-18

On her body:

'I'm like any woman. I have good hair days and bad hair days. I have parts of my body I like and parts I'm less keen on now that I'm older. By at 41, my body has changed. I've had two kids, so my waist isn't as small as it was, but I'm comfortable in my skin and that's a great thing about getting older. Once you turn 40, you learn to like who you are and where you're at in life'.

On motherhood:

'I love it. I have a great relationship with my own mother, so it's fantastic to be able to build something similarly strong with my own children'.

On size zero:

'Models have taken a lot of the blame for that look. We have to look a certain way to do our job properly, but fashion goes in cycles. When I was starting out, I did well because I was fit and athletic and then, in the 90s, the super-skinny thing began. Nowadays, it's more often the celebrities who are size zero, but models get the blame for that trend.

On not being a size zero:

'I was never very thin and I never will be. But particularly, having a young daughter, I'm very aware that she sees that I eat, that I enjoy my food and that if I want to have something, I'll have it, but that I also exercise by playing tennis, hiking and swimming to stay healthy, too'.

Here's a flashback of an interview when she was pregnant with her daughter from Fit Pregnancy:

You’re famous for being a total babe, but do you have any body insecurities?

Oh, absolutely. I’ve posed nude in Playboy, and I posed nude on the cover of W while I was expecting Presley, but I won’t even wear bikinis when I’m pregnant. I don’t mind wearing tight stuff, but I feel too naked if I have my tummy showing — I wear a tank and a sarong. It’s weird, huh?

Any nude posing this time?

Not yet. Some days I feel better about this silhouette than on other days. I’m not one of those women who feel their most beautiful and feminine when they’re pregnant.

Full article: http://www.fitpregnancy.com/style/319

Image: http://www.theage.com.au/ftimages/2007/06/14/1181414426401.html

Jamie Pressly: one hot mama

Jamie Pressly, one month postbaby snapped looking svelte at a club in LA earlier this week http://ww.tmz.com/2007/06/28/jamie-pressly-waisting-away-after-baby/

How in the world did Nicole Ritchie get knocked up?

Is anyone else confused? How does a girl (and I call her a girl because she looks like one) who fluctuates between 38-45 kilos become pregnant? Surely, Nicole isn't having regular periods!

Women who are very underweight before they become pregnant are 72% more likely to miscarry in the first three months of pregnancy. Given that Ritchie has a sort of sketchy history with eating disorders, I wonder how she will cope with the inevitable weight gain associated with pregnancy. In my own research, I have found that women who have long-standing obsessions with their body weight pre-pregnancy find it very challenging to grow bigger in pregnancy. In more extreme cases, such intense bodily dissatisfaction can lead to antenatal or postnatal depression.

According to the American Pregnancy Association, eating disorders that are not looked after properly during pregnancy can lead to:

Premature labor
Low birth weight
Stillbirth or fetal death
Likelihood of Cesarean birth
Delayed fetal growth
Respiratory problems
Gestational diabetes
Complications during labor
Depression

Miscarriage

Preeclampsia

Let's hope Nicole can make it through safely (if she is indeed pregnant and not avoiding jail time!)

Sources: http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyhealth/eatingdisorders.html

http://www.tmz.com/category/nicole-richie/

Kate Winslet: proud of her stretchmarks

I hired a fantastic film, Little Children, this weekend (only just released in Australia) featuring Kate Winslet as a bored and particularly uncaring mother who has an affair with a married father played by insanely attractive Patrick Wilson. When it was first released, Hollywood was all abuzz not only because of a few fairly graphic sex scenes but more importantly because Kate Winslet was bold enough to show off her stretchmarks. I read some of these articles prior to seeing the movie and, I have to say, the critics' overwhelming praise for Winslet's acceptance of her post-baby body motivated me to hire the movie specifically for this reason. After all, how many times in your life will you get to see a beautiful actress portrayed as a 'real' person? And why does everyone assume that Winslet should be embarassed or ashamed of her body? An article from the Telegraph titled 'Why Winslet bared body and soul?' implies that she should justify her 'womanly curves'. I still find it funny that even though Winslet is perhaps a bit more curvy than most skinny bitch celebrities, she's still thinner than most women, and yet her weight is a constant source of debate.

"Not to put down other women in movies or movies in general," says Winslet, "but I do have an issue with this kind of image of perfection that a movie can put across. You want to say to people 'Stop! Stop! It's not real. We've been in makeup for 212 hours. We don't really look like that.' I mean, I'm living proof that we don't really look like that."

Refreshing....

"I've had two kids, and every woman out there knows that when you've had a child your body just doesn't go back to normal," she says. "I have lots of stretch marks and all the rest of it, and I'm sort of proud of all my battle wounds."

"I just thought to myself, 'You know what? I am playing a woman who is a mother and therefore it doesn't stand to reason that every part of my body would be perfect – which, by the way, it's not. Who is perfect?"

"It was important for me to just be a real person and be in the position where I can stand up and say, 'Hey, look, I'm normal. I have these stretch marks. I'm not perfect,' " she says. "The notion that women in films are perfect and beautiful and have some kind of secret beauty that nobody else has is just so ridiculous to me, because we're all normal."

This all sounds great, doesn't it? Finally, an actress admits that it's okay to be a mother and not have a 'perfect' body.

So, I watch the movie. NO STRETCHMARKS TO BE SEEN! There must have been some serious post-production magic happening because Kate looked perfect, her skin flawless and you would never have any inclination that the state of her body in this movie could have sparked such bizarre dialogues about her courage to expose her 'battle wounds'.

Full articles: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtmlxml=/arts/2006/10/27/bfchildren27.xml

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1562979-2,00.html