Top 3 Self Care Priorities For Moms After Giving Birth

Finally, baby (ies) have arrived! It’s one of those moments we’ll never forget yet barely remember. Leaving the hospital, the first sleepless night...they’ll be ingrained in your memory and yet at the same time, be somewhat a blur. Your whole schedule goes out the window and your priorities change as your life and routine revolves around this little human being welcomed into your world.

Here are three things that can help guide your priorities and time in the early days of baby’s arrival.

Nourish

You’ll be so focused on making sure your baby gets enough nourishment that it’s going to be easy to forget about yourself. You may not realize how important nutrition is, especially if your thought process connects eating less to losing baby weight. However, your tissues need nutrients to heal. You’re going to be getting less sleep, so good nutrition will also be important to support your immune system. Hydration and nutrition will also support you breastfeeding mamas.

Here are a couple of tips to make nourishing your body a bit easier:

• On the hardest days, forget “meals” and aim for more frequent snacks. Things like trail mix, instant oatmeal, yogurt squeezers, pre-made PB&jJ sandwiches, and fruit are all easy, nutritious snacks to keep stocked. Naturebox has a nice selection of snacks that you can have delivered to your doorstep. (Use code: ACTIVEMOM for 30% off your first order)

• If you’re fortunate to have friends and family support you, meals might not be as challenging, but still isn’t something you’re going to have the energy to put a lot of thought into. When you are able to cook or someone cooks for you, try batch cooking and freezing meals. This way you’ll have access to a quick and nutritious meal to warm up and enjoy. Bonus, if you start on this before the baby is born!

Connect

It’s easy to feel disconnected from your body when transitioning from pregnancy to postpartum. This happens even if you were consistent with prenatal exercise , due to anatomical changes, hormone adjustments, delivery, breastfeeding, etc. It’s totally normal. One of the best ways to start to connect with your body again is through breathing that begins to engage your deep core muscles, including pelvic floor. You can do this on your own or find a pelvic floor exercise app that guides you. It may seem like too simple of an action to make a difference, but proper breathing and beginning to coordinate your breath with pelvic floor and core contractions can lay the foundation for rebuilding your core when you’re ready to return to fitness. Intentional breathing exercises can also help your diaphragm and thoracic spine be less restricted, allowing for better posture and respiration.

Walks and stretching low back and chest muscles are also a nice way to connect with muscles that have been impacted by pregnancy. Remember, progressing gradually is the key and healing is the most important thing right now so if you’re feeling pain, excessive fatigue, or increased bleeding then you’re probably pushing yourself too much. 

Rest

“Sleep when baby sleeps”. Very easy to say to people, less easy to do when you’re the one with the baby and a feeling the pressure to get things done when you have the chance. However, in the early days of welcoming baby home, this couldn’t be more important. Give your body a chance to heal and your mind a chance to rest. And when people ask what they can do to help, here are some ideas:

• hold baby while you take a 20 minute nap

• clean bottles or breastfeeding equipment

• wash the dishes/clothes

• bring healthy meals

• gift a house cleaning service

All of these things are bold requests, but if you have a support network to help you rest….take advantage.

And with that I’ll say, welcome to the world of motherhood, where children become a top priority, but where taking care of yourself shouldn’t fall too far down the list.

Fitness Consistency During a Pandemic: Plan Your Workouts Like You Plan Your Meals

This year has been all about tips and tricks to stay motivated and consistent with your workouts. I’m here to offer you a new strategy, and although it won’t work for everyone, it will give you a chance to shift your perspective. The reason for writing this, came from a question I got about “how to stay motivated with fitness during a pandemic”. My first thought was don’t rely on motivation. My second thought was to give yourself some grace. And then my mind went to the way we meal plan.

Indulge me...Consider your last family dinner. Did you find a recipe? Make a shopping list? Have to go to the store and then prepare a multi-step meal? Or maybe dinner was an old family favorite, made with pantry staples? If it was takeout, was it a go-to favorite, or did you scroll Grubhub searching a bit for a new spot? Maybe it was a combination meal where you bought some veggies already prepared, but fixed the main dish?

My point is that, no matter how you got that meal, the outcome was the same. You wanted a meal, and then you made it happen. My other point is that I bet you don’t always reach that outcome the same way. My assumption is that some weeks you have extra time and feel extra motivated, and those weeks you might take more time in selecting recipes and actually going to the store. Other weeks you might be short on time and do a combination of grocery delivery, meals that require no recipes, and maybe some take out.

Are you still following? Well, if you’re struggling to stay consistent with workouts, maybe you take that same approach. Maybe instead of having the same expectation for yourself each week and failing, you plan your workouts like you plan your meals. The only time I would say, the approach might not be effective is similar to if you have serious fitness goals and all you eat is takeout. That just doesn’t work. But, if your goals are a bit more flexible, then similar to how you eat, a varying weekly approach might be just what you need to stay consistent with fitness during a pandemic.

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So, how do you plan your workouts like you do your meals? 

Weeks that you’re short on time and energy (weeks you’re favoring take out): These are days where your workouts should be the most convenient and less intense. If walking is easiest for you, plan to do that. If jumping in your regular virtual class is best, that’s your move. Whatever it is, it should take minimal planning or thought. It also should energize you and not exhaust you, so monitor the intensity that gives you that best boost.

Note: maybe one day during this busy week you have a little extra time, so like you would search for a new take out spot, maybe this is when you add a bit of a twist to your convenient workouts. Try a new walking route or a new virtual class. Keep it convenient, but with a little bit more effort.

Weeks that you’re feeling super motivated (weeks you're searching for new recipes and taking the time to go to the store): These are the days you want to be more ambitious with your workouts. Perhaps you’re finding a new fitness studio to try or you’re adding an extra workout in that week. Maybe these are the days you’re increasing your training volume with more sets, reps or resistance. Take the overall motivation you’re feeling and roll it into fitness.

The last note is that if you operate better with more of a schedule…meaning you do your grocery shopping on the same day each week, or plan meals out ahead of time, or perhaps sticks with Meatless Mondays, Taco Tuesdays and so on…you’d probably have more success and consistency if you approached fitness that same way. You could pick one day to plan your workouts for the week (or have someone do it for you) and just stick to the script. This means you don’t even have to stay motivated, you just follow your plan. 

I’m hoping you found this perspective interesting and some of you may find it a helpful strategy. I think at the very least it allows us all to realize that fitness is a lifestyle and you look beyond the short term. One day or one week isn’t going to throw off a lifestyle. By planning workouts like you do your meal, it allows you to manage the ups and downs of life during a pandemic, with a bit more flexibility and acceptance of uncertainty. If you’re on a motivation rollercoaster and feeling inconsistent in your workouts, I’d say stop resisting and see what happens if you treat your workouts like you do your meals.

What Happens When You Give Up Weekday Wine? (Four Steps to Healthier Habits)

There’s always been this culture around moms and wine. In 2020 the culture for everyone became quarantine wine. Mom wine and quarantine wine have become part of the evening ritual for many. However before we discuss your commitment to give up week day wine, I’ll make my first point, which is: your reason for drinking wine probably isn’t as general and broad as, “it’s just what moms or people in a pandemic do”. So keep that in mind as you continue reading.

This article isn’t an opinion piece on drinking culture and really has not much to do with alcohol at all. It’s more about why we have certain habits and what happens when we try to change them. Many moms choose wine as an easy way to relax, have some me time, and escape from all the roles they maintain. Same with quarantine, what became a way to stay entertained for a couple of weeks of quarantine, turned into a routine or way to deal with stress as moved into a year of the pandemic.

Now let’s get back to the catchy headline; no drinking during the week (which is something I’ve heard from many clients as 2021 got underway). Many of you decided to drink less because you want to lose weight, improve sleep, or because you feel like this habit of daily wine has been going on too long. So what happens when you cut back on wine? I’ll give you my personal story.

I decided after the holidays that because I wasn’t moving as much, and things felt a little less festive that there was no need to keep wine in the house. Meaning I’d be eliminating the after dinner wine I would sometimes enjoy. I chose to do this because I wanted to be more conscious about unnecessary calories during more sedentary winter months. It was actually very easy for me not to buy, but what I realized is that I’d then buy occasional sweets instead (which is not something I normally do). I even bought juice, which I NEVER do. Why is this significant? Because I was basically replacing wine with something else and that something else just happened to be high in sugar. My replacement was not going to help me with my goal of watching calories. So although wine was easy for me to give up, I hadn’t addressed why I liked wine after dinner in the first place. I was just giving up one cultural habit for another...trading evening wine for evening sweets.

It was time to dig deeper and you should too. If you want to give something up, you have to figure out why you’re doing it in the first place. I came to the conclusion that wine wasn’t a stress reliever, it wasn’t an escape, it wasn’t an addiction, it wasn’t social. Wine was something I did at the end of the night that signified transition. It was where my day ended and evening began. I was in the habit of doing something to mark the change in time and maybe even give myself permission to drop most of my to-do list. When I gave up wine, I still subconsciously needed a transition and that became a sweet treat.

Once I acknowledged my need and the role the wine was playing, I was able to find a replacement I was happy with to signify that transition. This may sound cliche, but now my habit is to start to brew tea as I’m putting my daughter to bed, so that after I say goodnight I can grab my tea and take 5 minutes transitioning to evening mode. Now my replacement didn’t have to be beverage related. It could have been a workout or a bath or calling a friend or writing in a journal or finishing my last email for the day. I chose tea because it would accomplish my low cal goal and help with sleep (Trader Joe’s Well Rested tea). But the point is, if you're attempting to give up wine during the week, or change any other habit, you should first:

• Identify why you’re giving up wine/habit

• Identify the reason you’re drinking wine/or that particular habit

• Find a direct replacement that is healthy and will accomplish the same thing

• Assess whether that replacement has other benefits to solidify your decision

As I said, this article isn’t really about alcohol. If you want to give up hours of binge watching tv, you need to determine why you watch it in the first place and what you’ll do instead….or you’ll find yourself three hours in on the next Netflix trend this weekend.

Happy habit breaking!

Mom Posture: Why Are My Shoulders Rounded?

Catch a side view of yourself in the mirror and you might notice that your ears are slightly forward of your shoulders or that your neck is curved. It may look like you’re slouching even when standing tall, or that you have a “winged scapula”. During exercise, you might notice your shoulders shrug during pushing or pulling. You may have experienced a shoulder injury from instability, or suffer from headaches. You might even feel your breathing is inefficient.

Well guess what? There is a name for that. It’s called Upper Cross Syndrome due to the X you can draw between tight and lengthened muscles in your upper body. And although it’s common among moms, we can’t just blame the kids (although heavier breasts from pregnancy or breastfeeding can contribute). Upper Cross Syndrome affects anyone that is spending extended periods of time with your head forward (think phones and computers). Put simply there is increased stress on your neck and shoulders, which can cause some muscles to be too tight and some muscles to be weak and lengthened.

The good news is that it can be improved or corrected. Here are some starting points:

• Daily Life: Determine the positions during the day that are causing your upper cross syndrome and then reduce time in those positions. Feeding the baby? Change up the position. Working on your computer? Use a chair with good lumbar support, ensure the proper height of the keyboard, and take movement breaks. Moms, the daily stuff really adds up, so these small changes can have a huge impact! *Side note, consider your bra. If it’s not supportive, your breast can be pulling you forward.

• Lengthen: Free up the shortened muscles that are pulling you forward. Muscles like the upper trapezius, levator scapulae, and pecs (upper back and chest) can be lengthened through dynamic and static stretching, as well as using tools like a tennis ball or foam roller. A doorway chest stretch and some upper back foam rolling is a great place to start. Stretches like ear to shoulder while also tilting your chin toward your shoulder are helpful as well.

• Strengthen: Your rhomboids, serratus anterior, and lower traps (mid back), as well as your neck flexors, are probably lengthened and weak. Exercises such as standing or floor Y-raises, and chin tucks are a simple place to start.

So what do you say mama, are you ready to address what has always just been called poor posture? Find a program that works for you!