Bethenny Frankel anoints herself Empress of Pregnancy Fitness

Sweet baby Jeebus. Why is that being a reality tv 'star' somehow qualifies you to write books about crap that you don't know anything about?

Case in point: Real Housewives of New York 'star' and celebrity chef Bethenny Frankel has said that she is writing a book called Naturally Fit Pregnancy. If you remember, Frankel was in the media recently for losing nearly 30lbs in 3 weeks following the birth of her first child.

Here's the thing: Frankel recently revealed that she has been anorexic and bulimic in her life. Her mother was also bulimic. I'm not sure that with (some might speculate) unresolved eating issues and who lost a ridiculous amount of weight following her first birth should really be giving advice to everyday preggo gals.

Besides, there's no such thing as 'naturally fit'. Women who are 'fit' working bloody hard to be 'fit'. Let's not kid ourselves here.

Kourtney Kardashian passes out trying to lose baby weight

Oh Kourtney, silly girl.

Well, it wasn't so long ago that Kourtney Kardashian (KK) was banging on about how quickly she lost her baby weight in Life & Style mag. According to New York Daily News, if you watched Sunday's episode of Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, you would have seen the physical costs associated with her extreme dieting.

In the episode, Kourtney is running and finds herself passed out, having eaten nothing for the day (in anticipation of the upcoming Life & Style photo shoot).

"I've been obsessing about this weight thing a little too much," she says. "I'm so embarrassed that I punished my body for a photo shoot."

Well, I guess we can all thank Kourney for admitting that her post-baby weight loss wasn't as easy as it is portrayed on the magazine. On the other hand, it makes me so sad that rational human beings can be forced into going to ridiculous lengths to look good for the media. All of the working out and dieting she did was probably for nothing considering so many of the images we see are airbrushed anyway!

Paula Radcliffe: pregnant and running

As an avid runner, Paula Radcliffe has always been one of my running heroines. I've written about her and running during pregnancy a number of times in the last few years. Well, she's pregnant for the second time around and the Daily Mail recently did a feature on her as she prepares for London 2012.

My girl Paula is still running 14 miles per day in her 5th month of pregnancy:

"I've been running around seven miles in about 45 minutes twice a day, combined with altitude and gravity training on a specially designed treadmill."

American marathoner Kara Goucher is also pregnant and she has been getting tips from Paula on how to proceed with training.

It is generally accepted that running in pregnancy is safe as long as you don't start running when you become pregnant or get too overheated. If you are a seasoned runner, there is no problem with keeping up your normal routines.

What worries me, however, is that in publishing her training regimen (even though Radcliffe is an elite athlete) there are still surely some women out there (who are not elite athletes) that will think that they aren't exercising enough or that they need to keep up with one of the greatest female marathoners in recent history.

What do you think? Are you proud of Paula for being a running queen? Or is it unethical to tell the world about her pregnancy training regimen?

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

One of my favourite activities when I go to the US involves catching up on watching the 'Real Housewives' series. While I'm more of an Orange County kind of girl, every so often I dabble with the ladies of the New York crew. Bethenny Frankel, owner of Skinny Girl cocktails and cookbooks is now being slammed for her post-baby body which is featured in the new Us magazine. Apparently, Frankel lost 29of the 35 lbs she gained during her pregnancy in 3 weeks. Frankel had a Caesarean, five weeks early and her daughter Bryn was underweight(duh?).

The question now remains as to whether Frankel is sending a 'bad message' by being the ultimate 'skinny girl' two minutes after giving birth. This is my take: I don't think it necessarily sends a 'bad message' that women lose weight after giving birth. Some women shed weight quickly post-birth and to be honest, we have no idea how Frankel lost her weight. She is a small woman to begin with so it's entirely possible that the weight just fell off. Thus, I don't think it's fair to judge her straight away. On the other hand, given that her career as a chef has moved her into the market for diet cookbooks and various other bizarre 'skinny girl' recipes, I think it would be hard to say that Frankel isn't a little obsessed with how she looks and would probably go to great lengths to maintain her 'skinny girl' image. According to the New York Post, Frankel wrote in a blog post, "Growing up in an extremely dysfunctional and toxic series of households bred me for an obsession with food and diet and weight," Frankel wrote in a blog post on Bravo.com.

So if anything I guess I feel sorry for her. It sucks to live your life worried about what other people think of you. I hate that so many women get weighed down by all of this crap.

Kourtney Kardashian calls Ok! fake

It's not everyday that I want to give mad props to Kourtney Kardashian. For those of you who may have forgotten, she gave birth to her first son Mason in December. Kourtney has come out with guns blazing, stating publicly that the Ok! magazine cover which features she and her new son with an accompanying story about her post-baby weight loss secrets is all talk and no truth.

Kardashian told WWD that not only was she never interviewed for the Ok! story in the first place, the photo that appears on the cover is actually a photo taken seven days after Mason's birth by Albert Michael of StarTraksPhoto.com. The cover image has been touched up to make Kardashian appear thinner on OK’s cover than in the original photo, which first appeared as part of the Jan. 11 issue of Life & Style.

As the original image (on the left) shows only Kardashian's upper body, Ok! clearly took it upon themselves to reconstruct the lower half of her body for the cover photo. Kourtney even tweeted about the retouch:

"One of those weeklies got it wrong again...they didn't have an exclusive with me. And I gained 40 pounds while pregs, not 26...But thanks!"

I'm really happy that a celebrity actually has admitted to the absolutely ridiculous body abominations that are regularly appearing in the tabloids. It's bad enough that new mums feel that they have to compete with celebrities to drop their baby weight, but when the post-baby bodies that are slapped around the weeklies are also being re-touched (and literally fabricated) to the hilt, it makes you realise that it actually is impossible to achieve the body shapes featured in the magazines.

Good on you Kourtney for coming clean!

Looks like the secret to post-baby weight loss isn't diet and exercise. It's Photoshop

Weight gain is a sisterly affair

Oh how quickly things change. It was only 4 days ago that Kourtney Kardashian was blabbing about how much she loved being pregnant, how gaining weight was totally natural and how excited she was about becoming a mother.

Well, the honeymoon is over and Kourt has had it with the pregnancy pounds. "I gained three pounds since yesterday!" she complained to E! News. "I weigh myself every day," she explained. Her pregnancy total as of Monday night: 26 pounds.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that her sisters, Kim and Khloe are both dieting with Quick Trim and have been for the past few months? Kim thinks so:

"She is anxious to get on the same plan as us. She sees a definite difference in weight loss from us. I feel like I am in the best shape of my life right now."

The research on body image states unequivocally that sisters are the extremely important when it comes to female body image. Most women compare their bodies to their sisters and eating disorders are known to run in families, particularly in households where teenage girls are competing to be the best and the most beautiful. It doesn't surprise me that Kourtney is having a hard time gaining weight. How horrible would it be to listen to all of the praise heaped on to your sisters for their weight losses and you continue to pack on the weight?

Maybe, for the first time ever, I actually feel a bit sorry for old Kourt.

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.

LeeLee, little kid cravings and lots of exercise

Does anyone remember LeeLee Sobieski? Well, um, she's pregnant and according to Us, she's been having some 'little kid' food cravings:

"I eat less ice cream than I ever did because the baby takes up so much space. Ginger is really good. I kind of want ginger to settle the stomach sometimes and then macaroni and cheese. I kind of like little kid food. I think I like eating what little kids eat."

She's still working out with her trainer which, according to the recently published results of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, is a good thing because the researchers found that first-time mothers who exercised at least three times a week during their pregnancy were less likely to give birth to a baby with excessive birth weight. Women who exercised during pregnancy were also found to decrease their risk of developing pre-eclampsia by 20%.

Losing weight is a 'cinch': puke

Apparently, losing your baby weight is now a 'cinch' thanks to a modern-day corset thing by Anew that allows post-baby mums to 'look fit' without actually getting 'fit'. Sort of like another expensive version of Spanx so you can shrink your waist and your wallet without actually losing anything in between.

Not sure how I feel about this. The product website has this slogan 'Achieve your balance, Anew your life' sort of implying that if you can have a slimmer waist, somehow your life will be transformed. I think for most women, as 'empowering' as fitting into your pre-pregnancy clothes may be, what really needs to be addressed are the life-altering changes that come with motherhood. It's never really about the weight. The weight is just an easy place to focus your anxiety. A corset isn't going to solve your problems and hiding the extra weight is really only a temporary cure.

Heidi 'letting it all hang out'

"The great thing about being pregnant and going to these things is that I don’t have to suck my stomach in,” the supermodel and Project Runway host told PEOPLE at Los Angeles Confidential’s pre-Emmy party. “It’s fabulous! I can let it all out.”

And let it out she did...in a fabulous party frock just a few weeks out from the birth of her fourth child. I can imagine that being pregnant for a supermodel has to be pretty weird and also liberating. When everyone knows you for your washboard abs and tiny waist, on some level, for women like Klum that have jobs that require that they manage the size of their bodies constantly, it's easy to see why being pregnant would actually be a relief in a way that for most women it really isn't. I wrote about this same idea in an earlier post about Milla Jovovich.
Milla, as many of you know, gained quite a bit of weight during her first pregnancy (70lbs). She often cited her feelings of empowerment and liberation in being able to eat whatever she wanted after a lifetime of having to watch every morsel of food that passed her lips.

Heidi Klum said the other day that she wasn't sure that she would be able to lose her baby weight in time for the Victoria's Secret runway show in December. In her last pregnancy, she had her baby in September and was famously back on the catwalk in two months. For her own sake, I hope that Heidi doesn't push herself back into her knickers just for the satisfaction of her fans. Having a baby is a big deal. She needs to recover in her own time and not according to everyone else's timeline.

In other news, the BBP has been selected for preservation in PANDORA by the State Library of Victoria. PANDORA is an online archive in which selected Australian websites, deemed to be of 'national importance' are preserved and made permanently available to the public for research and reference. Personal sites, like this, are usually only selected if they provide information of significant research value unavailable elsewhere. PRETTY BLOODY EXCITING!

Celebs set a bad example for weight loss: DUH.

The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, a German organisation, has officially recommended that women should not rush to lose weight post-baby and that celebrities set a 'bad example'. The advice will be used as official guidance for British mothers and also drafted by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

The IQEHC says that weight gain is normal in pregnancy and that "women are exposed to many unrealistic images of female body size, and body size around pregnancy or after birth is no exception."

Um..YA THINK!?

While it is nice to hear that at least one government will actually be taking steps to unacknowledge the undue pressure many women experience when it comes to body size after having children, at the same time, I think that this kind of proclamation is pointless. Merely stating that women shouldn't feel pressure to lose weight is not necessarily going to improve a woman's body image. It is unrealistic to think that the world will get rid of tabloids or stop publishing news stories about pregnant celebrities and skinny post-baby bodies. What I would really like to see are practical measures that could easily be implemented by maternity services and hospitals around the world including free counseling services for women, free exercise classes and supportive mothers' groups. Acknowledging that the focus on celebrity bodies and slenderness is dangerous for women (pregnant or not) has been long established by feminists. It puzzles me as to why the idea that skinny celebrity mums set a bad example is like a revelation. If anyone had bothered to ask everyday women what they thought about body image it probably could have been established this a long time ago.

NoTORIous Spelling looking a little lean

Totally Tori is back in the news again, apparently slamming anorexia allegations given her increasingly shrinking body. Only 9 months since giving birth to her second child, Tori is beating back rumours from Star magazine that claim she is only 98 pounds. Her rep says she is definitely not that thin.

Read more: Tori slams anorexic accuasations

Isla Fisher: fat thighs, no good

Isla Fisher was chatting to Page Six about her new movie, Confessions of a Shopaholic and just happened to drop a juicy tidbit about pregnancy:

"I never work out. I just don't enjoy it. I gained 60 pounds during my pregnancy, so [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer hired me a trainer for Confessions of a Shopaholic. But the trainer said I had a bad attitude. He told me I was genetically blessed because I'm little, but he did warn me that it was gonna catch up with me.

Just when you start to think that she's refreshingly 'normal', she goes on to say:
"I didn't feel self-conscious about my body until I had a baby, and now I think, 'Thank God there's a photograph of my thighs when they looked like that."

Aw. It's sort of like putting ketchup on an expensive steak. Can you just admit that like most other women and celebrities for that fact, you do care about your weight? The whole 'I never exercise or worry about my weight' thing is so old it's like 1985 and we're all wearing leg warmers.

Source: http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20090215/Enchanted+Isla

Jessica Alba: weight loss is hard

Jessica Alba reveals to Elle this month that losing her baby weight was more than just hard. In a race to get fit for the sexy photo shoot for Campari (above), she says,"[The workouts] were horrible. I cried. And I haven't worked out since."

Looks like the life of a celeb mum isn't so easy after all. But do we believe she hasn't worked out at all since then?

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/news/jess-alba-i-cried-trying-to-lose-baby-weight

Jodie Sweetin on losing baby weight

We haven't heard much from ex-Full House darling Jodie Sweetin since she gave birth a few months back. Turns out she's blogging for Ok! about losing weight and trying to make a career for herself again since her crystal meth addiction. Apparently she's doing the Nutrisystem thing which as you might remember, helped Tori Spelling lose a ridiculous amount of weight after baby #1 (oh, Tori is also on the cover of Ok! this week with her new 'miracle baby' daughter *yawn*)

Anyway, Jodie's blog is strangely addictive: http://www.okmagazine.com/jodiesweetin

Rachel Weisz thinks motherhood is sexy

Actress Rachel Weisz thinks that motherhood is hot. Since giving birth in May 2006, Rachel says:

“I feel sexier after having a baby. I think you feel a lot more confident and much more appreciative of your body and what it’s capable of doing. I’ve got a lot more respect for it.”

And she claims that she isn't one of those celebrities that shifts the baby weight in a few weeks:

“When I stopped breastfeeding I gained some. It took me more than a year to get back to where I was.”

Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/article811230.ece

baby weight + ballerina = no good

I seem to spend an inordinate time discussing pregnant celebrity weight loss and weight gain on this blog. Then I saw a fantastic article in the Globe and Mail about the pressure to lose baby weight for professional ballet dancers. Of course! Why in the world hasn't anyone discussed this before?

Two ballerinas from a Toronto dance company discuss the business of being a pregnant and a ballerina:

"Being a ballerina is all about fighting your body, fighting the effects of time. It's about being preternaturally young and beautiful. You have these 20-year-olds nipping at your heels all the time. And being pregnant is about surrender to your body. You're going to gain 40 pounds. You have to deal with it. You have to accept it."

This is such an fascinating body narrative; to be ballet dancers, women are constantly in the pursuit of perfection, almost to excess. In a sense, to be a ballerina is to engage in a sort of feminine protest against the meanings and the shape of a typically feminine body (curves, breasts). As Bordo argues in obsessively pursuing slenderness and hollowness, women come to embody the 'masculine' values of the public sphere (e.g. a body that is always controlled, contained). The ballerina embodied this intersection in almost a 'battle' between male and female sides of self.

On the other hand, pregnancy is a time of constant, uncontrollable bodily change and is a bodily state striking in its inscription of extreme femininity. Self-management in pregnancy becomes more elusive, the more hotly it is pursued. Whereas a ballerina posseses a body in defiant protest of conventionally feminine body shapes, pregnant bodies not only resist cultural norms of slenderness, they constantly threaten to erupt and challenge normative femininity. As a ballerina's body is coded as a rebellion against the maternal, domestic femininity; pregnancy is the embodiment of reproduction and the maternal.

Pregnancy for a ballerina is a major career decision. "It's pretty traumatic. You worry if you will get your body back. It is your instrument for your art." The dancers in the interview reveal that that they purposely had to wait until the 'end' of their careers to fall pregnant (age 37 or 38) essentially because the 'damage' done is irreversible.

"The end of the [ballet] career happens to coincide with the end of your reproductive career. By the time you are 40, most people have finished their classical ballet careers, and most women are not having babies past 40. It's a decision all ballerinas have to make."

And we thought being a celebrity was hard work.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071112.wlhampson12/BNStory/lifeMain/home

Jennifer Garner: on losing baby weight (yawn)

You would think that considering Jen Garner's daughter Violet is not 22 months old, journalists would be sick of asking her questions about how she lost her baby weight. But low and behold, in the Herald Sun Sunday magazine, Garner says she didn't feel the need to lose her baby weight quickly (which contradicts various other reports around the time that she was actually losing the weight). She says:

'I went back to work on Alias very soon after giving birth, but I didn't lose the weight quickly. I can see why women look at Hollywood and wonder how they do it, because I couldn't until I finished on Alias. I was a working mum- of course I didn't have time'.

She also says that since becoming a mother, her days of waking up at 3:30 to work out are long gone.

'I barely recognise that woman. These days, pilates makes me happy and I do five or six workouts a week. I love a basic workout and do it in the mornings to get it over with, but I'll gladly cancel if Viole has been up in the night. I try to be kind to myself when it comes to eating and staying in shape'.

Pilates. BAH! Seriously, pilates is such a cop out. She has a trainer. Like every other actress in Hollywood. Get over yourself. She gets paid to look amazing. I'm really over the 'I'm just a normal woman' routine. Why is she 'super woman' just because she has the luxury of hanging out with her baby all day? Most women would kill for that if they didn't have to have a full-time job with being a mother that cannot afford a nanny!

As if to prove the point, she goes on to say:

'I do eat chocolate. I keep really good chocolate in the house and take bites of it several times a day. Although, it times of crisis, there's nothing wrong with plain old M & Ms'.

Now, if this was Britney Spears, she would be accused of being a bad mother for eating chocolate, for being 'fat' and for not working out enough. Interesting how some celebrities are praised for being 'normal' and seemingly undisciplined whereas others like Spears are criticised for not being disciplined enough.

Source: Sunday magazine, 30 September, pp. 16-18.

Shanna Moakler: 'I'm not even close to my pre pregnancy weight'

Here's an entry from Shanna Moakler's MySpace blog about losing baby weight (she hasn't yet), stretch marks and c-sections:

On her weight gain:
I've already addressed my "weight" some what, but I have to say and I guess I really cant say it enough, I'm not even close to my pre pregnancy weight, I've had 3 c-sections...(Atiana was breached) even so I would most likely have tried to have a "C" anyway...its just what feels right to ME! I had my first daughter very young and it was easy to bounce back...the other 2 not so easy..either way I always end up at 160!!! I can start at 115, 125, or 130...I'm gonna end up at 160 at 9 months! With that....I truly feel my weight doesn't even begin to drop no matter how hard I exercise, no matter how much I "portion" my food until 9 months after...( I don't know how this effects breast feeding mamas they say that really does help get you back faster...) I dont feel my body comes even close to being normal for a good 2 yrs after each baby! I dont beat myself up about it....because I had a BABY!!

On losing weight:
I didn't eat entire pies or pig out on junk...I gave life and no one can ever or should make a woman feel bad about her body when she just had a baby. I think it's vile when people pick on woman after given birth and highly unrealistic to expect woman to get right back to their pre pregnancy shape in 3 months...yes it does happen....but it's rare in my eyes. like I have said before most hollywood moms that you see have A LOT of help!! Trainers, nutrionists, plastic surgeons, lipo dissolve, chefs, and the time to work their little butts of! Nevermind the NOT so healthy ways of going about it..and a lot you see its their FIRST baby!!. Even so I do try everything I can to get back ( healthy of course!) , I have yet to have any plastic surgery..but I would love to one day have another baby and I can promise you I'm gonna get it all done after that one!! lol! but for now...after giving birth I get a post partum corset and I wear it for like 2 months straight!! It helps and C-section mamas its a must have!

On her food:
I do exercise 3 times a week (cardio,weights) and I do power yoga on the off days..I have my food delivered so its portioned correctly and I allow myself every sunday to eat whatever I want!!!!!! and yes i to fall off the wagon on this schedule...but I do the best I can do.... and I'm lucky...my papa likes my body just the way it is!

On stretch marks:
STRETCH MARKS- yes I have them! They aren't that bad, but they are there...it really to me is about heredity and gaining weight gradually...woman your gonna get fat or gain at LEAST 20lbs...( and to me those are the lucky ones) its better to gain it at a pace then just POP and get horrible stretch marks, they say there really is no lotion or oil that can help but I do it everyday anyway!! ( palmers coco oil) and of course you can get your marks lazered..and it does help..but they will never go away :( I highly advise getting pregnancy massages as much as possible and if you are on a budget then put that daddy to work!

Source:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=36420362

Nancy O'Dell drops her baby weight in 9 weeks

According to People, Access Hollywood's Nancy O'Dell has dropped her baby weight in only 9 weeks (shedding 24 of 30 lbs).

On her weight loss: "Breastfeeding is the best diet," she says. Plus, she adds, "I want to eat healthy for her, so it's easy to say no to pizza."

On working out 4 weeks after the birth: "I called up my friend Lisa Rinna and said, 'I want your body, who is your trainer?'" she says.

Source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20052059,00.html