Hello dear Happy Eaters!
I don’t know whether some of you remember me, but I was active on this forum a few years ago.
It helped me find balance and I was in a really good place with food (no restrictions/ no obsession/ no binges) and exercise (barely any exercise) for years!
Everything was going well, I got marrie in September 2021 and a few weeks later I got pregnant. We were super happy! But then, the pregnancy started messing with my head. I started gaining weight despite eating to my hunger cues as usual and it freaked me out! It was like I could not trust my body anymore. Clothes started feeling tight and my body image went downhill as my belly started growing.
I am currently 7 months in (due at the end of May) and it’s getting harder and harder to accept myself with this huge belly. I also went back to weighing myself every couple of days and the number on the scale keeps going up, up, up (obviously).
I want to be 100% transparent: I have not gained that much weight objectively (5-6kg in 7 months, which I think is like 11-13 lbs). My gynecologist keeps telling me that I could be gaining more and it would still be really healthy. I was also thin (not underweight but slim) to begin with so maybe I’m supposed to gain more. I am not restricting per se, in that I always eat something if I‘m hungry because I don’t want the baby to suffer from my craziness, but I am definitely focusing a lot more on what I eat and also not really allowing myself as many “fun foods“ as I was before.
So I guess I was not as much of a “happy eater” as I thought! Or rather, I was a happy eater because I was still maintaining a figure that I liked.
So this brings me here: is there anyone who experienced something similar during pregnancy? I know I should not be focusing on my body but I can’t help it. I am afraid to look at myself in the mirror and I can seem to find a way to accept this new body
I have been doing really well in my food freeedom journey.
As I have been trying to conceive and preparing for IVF I wanted to be as healthy as possible so I had to make changes to my nutrition. On the surface I was eating so “clean” so I should have been the picture of health but in reality I was not. My hormones levels were low and I was always tired.
Also, a bit TMI, but I have had chronic diarrhea for I don’t know how long. This was due to the huge amounts of vegetables I was eating. I still had this “food rule” that I should eat lots of vegetables to fill myself up, and I was convincing myself it was healthy even though my digestion was clearly disagreeing.
Over the past few months, I have decreased my veggies intake (no more than 150g cooked veggies per meal, which is like 1/4 of what I was eating before) and increased my intake of everything else. I make an actual effort to eat a starch at every meal (which I wasn’t doing before because I was afraid of starchy carbs) and lots of protein and fat. I have never felt better, my digestion has improved tremendously and I have more energy. I don’t know how much weight I have gained but I am trying not to care.
I read something the other day “if you have to restrict in order to maintain this body then it’s not your body”. It really resonated with me.