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| Yes | 87% | 155 votes | Total: 178 votes | |
| No | 13% | 23 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesWhen becoming a parent there are so many things on our minds. We are busy thinking about feeding routines, trying to catch sleep, preparing the house for the sudden surge of visitors the last thing we really want to think about is what we look like and how much weight we have put on over the last nine months.
Despite weight and fitness being the last things on our minds it's always something we just can't help but think about whether it be due to the media portraying so many 'perfect' looking people or whether it be our friend enquiring how we "Only managed to put on two stone? Amazing!"
Weight loss and being fit and healthy is a huge part of society these days. You can't read a magazine without an article about how to look trim, how to lose a dress size in ten days and the like, jump out at you. Pregnancy and parenting magazines also promote weight loss.
There are now exercise classes you can take your newborn baby too. The mere fact that these exercise classes exist alone shows that women are body conscious and wanting to get their prepregnancy figures back as soon as possible.
The pressure to lose weight is on all of our shoulders and even though I hate the fact that it toys with my mind I have to admit that I have been watching my weight and trying to diet since giving birth.
The want to wear nice clothes and walk around the park proudly with my baby is great. I don't want to look back at my baby's newborn photos and see myself looking larger than life on them all. I want to look back and think how good I look and sadly, I judge how good I look by how slim I look and which clothes I can fit in.
The fact that celebrities are seen in super amazing clothes and with super flat stomachs just weeks after giving birth is extremely pressurising. What a lot of people don't consider though is how happy they are? Who are looking after their babies? Are they breast feeding? What pressures have they gone through to get that slim so fast?
One of the first things you are told when talking about breast feeding is that 'it burns up to 500 calories a day' with midwives saying this as a positive it shows just how society thinks- in terms of controlling what we eat now. Instead of voicing it as 'breast feeding can be very tiring as it uses a lot of energy' they promote the fact it can help you lose weight. Surely this is yet again a subtle way of putting the message across to new mums/expectant mums that regaining our pre-pregnancy weight is what we are aiming for.
There are enough pressures when you bring a newborn baby home, it is a shame that we feel that we are less than perfect if we have put on weight after having been through a gruelling 9 months.
Society is trying to find a 'perfect' 'super mum' and we are always trying to better ourselves even when there are more important things to worry about- your new baby. Maybe we should stop being so body conscious but is that possible with the way the world is now and how the media is portraying people?
Better role models for new mums are a must I believe. We can't all be like Victoria Beckham and Paula Radcliffe.
Learn more about this author, Laura Marshall.
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No
I think if a woman feels pressured to lose weight quickly that is partially their own insecurities and a need to have society view them in a positive light. It is the same reason women get breast implants, liposuction, nose jobs etc. because they think it is somehow going to improve their quality of life. If a woman is truly confident in herself and loves herself she will not feel pressured to do anything.
After my pregnancy I did nothing to try and lose weight, although I was nursing which burns a lot of calories. During my pregnancy I gained about twenty pounds which is around normal, and pretty much is gone once you deliver the baby so there is not much weight you have to lose later that. If you overeat during pregnancy because you believe you are eating "for two" than yes there may be more weight to lose.
I personally loved my body when I was pregnant because of the curves and because it made me feel like a woman, and I knew what my body was carrying inside it was the most beautiful gift in the world. Weight really should have little or nothing to do with the birthing experience. Maybe for some women it is an ego thing as they see covers of magazines every day about how some celebrity or other managed to lose the weight quickly.
They feel that they need to "keep up" or something with these celebrities and their lifestyles, but that is just not the case. The pressure that women might feel is pretty much brought upon themselves, whether it is from family members, society or their own personal self-evaluations.
It also may have to do with what body sizes we in America find attractive. While in some countries, more full figured women are found to be attractive, for some reason here in America we find bony and underweight women to be portrayed as the standard of beauty that all women have to obtain. I have been on the smaller side and I have to say that when I did gain some weight, not only was my boyfriend at the time a lot happier, but I noticed that the overall attention I received from men increased dramatically.
My boyfriend at the time later told me he hated it when I was skinny as it was like cuddling a bag of bones! So to all the women out there I would say that you should enjoy your pregnancy and love your body for what it is-something that creates life. Women who embrace that do not feel pressure to lose weight as they are not trapped by societal norms and values but do what makes them happy, which is what we all should be doing.
Learn more about this author, Alexandra Tooley.
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