Post pregnancy fitness / weight loss?

[Disclaimer : appreciate this is an emotive subject and this is 100% coming from the position of wanting to help support my wife / signpost her to the correct resources, not dictating what she should be doing “better”. Please don’t Linch me!]

Is losing weight / gaining fitness post pregnancy  particularly different for women than for us blokes that haven’t gone under a massive physiological change and hormone onslaught? I presume it is!

The reason I ask is we now have an 18 month old son and for the first time feel like we have a routine and feel like we have some spare energy that we can use for exercise / we’re not just in firefighting mode. Around 6 weeks ago my wife stated she wanted to regain fitness & lose weight. (Pre pregnancy in 2019 she did an Ironman so was pretty bloody fit).

I got on the bandwagon too as I’ve put on circa 15kg over the past 2 1/2 years too so I’ve got chub I could do with losing.  So for the last 6 weeks I’ve been doing a couple of turbo sessions a week and laying off the snacks.

My wife on the other hand has been doing a mixture of online body combat classes in the morning, going to the gym for classes and walks with her mum pals after bed time – probably doing something active 4 days out of 5 during the week – a good chunk more than me.

Problem is, she’s got the end of term balls etc coming up and she’s having to buy new outfits for. Today she said she’s not losing weight and if anything she feels like she’s putting weight on. I’m doing the usual “It’ll take time”, “you’re doing / looking great” “slow and steady is the best way” etc but I can see it’s getting her down. Definitely not helped my me putting my foot in it this week saying I’ve lost 3kg this month. Bugger!

Question being really, have you / your partners been in a similar position and found something that worked? Tempted to suggest she goes to a PT if she thinks it would help, but not sure if post pregnancy specialist PT’s are a thing as against general gym PT folk… Just looking for some advice on how I a better support my wife / sign post her to resources etc please!

Thanks {and ducks for cover}

You mention changes in her fitness regime, but how about in her eating habits/diet?

I have been trying to lose weight (47 year old man) for most of this year. I exercise at least 3 times a week – hour or so on the turbo on Mon & Friday, try and squeeze a proper ride in as well and recently been getting back into running.

The effect it has had on my weight has been…..hmmmmm, virtually zero as I am struggling to adjust my eating habits.

Also – if your Wife is doing a lot of body combat & high impact type classes, she might be building a bit of muscle back up, so potentially won’t be losing weight but will be toning up due to more muscle.

Good on her though & good on your for supporting her!

probably better off here rather than asking a load of blokes about post pregnancy

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/weight_loss_chat

Losing weight is probably 80% about diet and 20% about exercise.

Good luck with letting your wife know she needs to change her eating habits btw.

I’m guessing that anyone that’s achieved an Ironman Triathlon doesn’t usually need help with losing weight and getting fit.

This sounds like a ‘pregnancy’ question – so I am woefully underqualified. As will be many of our Forum colleagues.

I’m a bloke and my Wife has never been preggers.

Get thee (or your Wife) over to Mumsnet.

I’ll just give my usual, completely non-scientific, advice – if you want to lose weight, run.

Weight is a very easy thing to measure. Muscle weighs more than fat, if I go to the gym more, I get heavier and my jeans are tighter round the legs!

Becoming slimmer, more toned should be the target.

(Again, don’t flame me if you’re a stay at home dad etc – not everyone’s life looks like the following, but it’s pretty common). I’d suggest you look at what the new routine is like. Often it ends up that women’s routines are really stacked without any flex (nursery drop, work, gym class, nursery pickup, tea, bedtime), whereas men have a routine that’s a bit more ‘leave the house to go out to work, come back later’. Add in a move from pre-baby full time work to part time hours (when often the new part time hours are just part time pay for nearly as much actual responsibility as before!) and women’s routines can be very compressed and inflexible with lots of deadlines in a day. That is pretty damn tiring, and can make it tough to fit exercise in – and can also mean you’re eating to keep energy up.

If you can make it so that there are a couple of days a week when your wife really only has to think about herself and you take on the logistics of child/laundry/tea that might help her have the energy capacity to exercise at times that feel good, rather than when there’s an available break in the schedule.

But also, I have never got back to pre-kids size! There’s a bit of learning to be happy and healthy in how you are.

My wife got back to pre pregnancy weight but has struggled to have the energy to exercise to get back to fitness.

There is no way if have the mental strength to get back to my previous weight if it was me who had been pregnant.

Respect to anyone who manages it!

My cousin’s ran marathons and was still complaining about being over weight. ” You can’t outrun a bad diet” is a something that gives me trouble.

I want a massive ride with a sugary reward. This is incompatible with wright loss. My wife has a diet that is lower in calories and sugar than mine that’s why she has managed the weight loss.

Years ago there was an article about this in singletrack magazine. The conclusion was that people couldn’t find an extra couple of hours to exercise in a week. This was bike journalists who in my imagination spend all day riding (I appreciate this isn’t true).

Good luck.

There’s a reason there is such an industry around diets and weight loss. I think.ita because there is no easy answer. We are evolved not to loose weight. We are evolved to eat sugary fatty stuff because previously it ensured our ancestors survival.

Less calories in and similar exercise, I can’t manage it.

I know he can be a bit Marmite, but pre-baby my partner found Joe Wicks great, really tasty meals that you definitely don’t feel like you’re calorie counting, it’s just properly focusing on the balance of protein, carbs and fats. I just ate them too as they were delicious. There are also loads that you can batch cook which is a massive bonus if you’re short on time and also stops you reaching for easy junk.

That meal plan (I don’t really like the term ‘diet’ as it always sounds like you’re punishing yourself), combined with the HIIT workouts were excellent and she was able to fit those in as and when. His aim was also definitely not around losing weight, but toning up and losing inches – you take ‘before’ pics then check-ins every so often and she was able to really see the difference which is key (even though she absolutely hated taking pics of herself), checking in on scales every while is depressing as it doesn’t reflect changes to body composition. She’s just getting back into things now we’ve had a little one but it’s something she found really worked for her.

Easy subject to get flamed on… so here’s our experience. Obvs won’t be a one size fits all, but given that the OP’s wife has a decent baseline fitness…it might/maybe help..?

We rode together for fun pre-kids and also did some team 24hrs/ fun stuff. I also raced a bit of xc. So at the birth of child 1, Mrs Yak got a  frame, bits and built a new trail bike. Knowing that we were not going to be riding together much she wanted to improve her mechanical knowledge. So awesome new bike = lots of motivation to ride. Child 2, new xc bike = lots of motivation to ride a long way. Then 12 and 24hr solo races started and after a bit, some podiums and wins happened. Also xc races with some success. I was also racing – less successful. Then she got a coach and got much better.

So the tips are, your wife builds 1 new bike per child and races stuff. But this was the old heady days of 24hr camping races with kids everywhere. 24/12 was more like a start of summer camping festival with a handy bike race in the middle.  You need to be an decent kiddie environment to be at races all the time. I haven’t done them, but are the bigger uk camping enduros like that now?

The reason I ask is we now have an 18 month old son and for the first time feel like we have a routine and feel like we have some spare energy

I need to know why it took something like 16 years before I found this ‘spare energy’! (Probably the second and third child… 😀 )

As @Keva says, weight loss is far more about eating/drinking less than exercise.

Also, fwiw, whatever route you and your wife choose for non-baby time activities, remember it has to be fulfilling and good for the head. If Ironmans do it for her, then she should get back to a bit of swim/bike/run not some other random exercise classes/PT stuff if that is not relevant. The frocks will eventually fit. Making the frocks fit as a goal seems less relevant that a sport/activity that is more fulfilling for your wife imo.

Stay at home dad; my weight didn’t change but I caught every cold that he did and lived on less sleep.

I was in a tri-club for 20 or so years, all the ladies including Madame Edukator got back to race weight sooner or later, some took longer than others.

I was doing most of the shopping at the time and was perhaps a little more vigilant about not putting sugary crap in the trolley but other than that left her to it. She was determined to re-win an event with a 1600m climb and knew what needed.

I think if you find a good PT it can definitely help with goal setting and some realistic targets. I expect your wife has quite high expectations after doing the sort of training and intensity required for Ironman. The difficult part is finding a good one, maybe you can get a recommendation. I have just had surgery and will get spend a couple of months with a PT for the same reason once I am cleared to exercise.

Honestly, anything more than superficial weight loss takes years. It requires acceptance of spending long portions of most days feeling a low level hunger and not quite feeling satisfied by what you’ve eaten so far that day. You should be going to bed not hungry, but not really ‘satisfied’ either.

The sad reality is that 90% of weigh loss fails either to lose it in the first place or to keep it off for more than a year or two.

I speak from experience. If you’d asked me mid last year when id shifted about 12kg I’d have said actually weight loss is pretty easy once you have it figured out, but actually it’s keeping the mentality for a long time that is the hard part.

A month or two or progress or no progress is virtually meaningless either way.