When I look in the mirror now, I’m starting to feel a little better about how I look.  Then I step on the scale or look at a photograph and feel completely discouraged.  Despite my best efforts, I’m still only losing a pound or (maybe) two a week.  I’m running about 4-6 miles a week (at roughly a 9 minute 40 second pace), swimming once a week, and then doing weights, pilates, or dancing two or three times a week and yet I’m not losing more than about a pound a week.  My diet is pretty good and I’m breastfeeding, so the weight is supposed to just be falling off, right?  Wrong!  Sure, I’ve now lost 37 pounds, which I guess is a good thing, but that still means I have 18 pounds more to lose to get to be where I was pre-pregnancy, which is about 10 pounds higher than I’d ultimately like to be.  Assertions abound that women lose all the weight after having a baby in the hospital, but this turns out to be mere fallacy.

I blame Hollywood for these unrealistic expectations of weight loss.  Take, for example, Kendra (that Playboy idiot) and Kourtney Kardashian.  Both gave birth in December, about 6-8 weeks before I did.  They never seemed to gain all that much weight (maybe 30 pounds) and then within six weeks of delivery were taking pictures in bikinis on the covers of major celebrity news publications.  Heidi Klum did the Victoria’s Secret fashion show seven weeks post-partum.  Other women like Nicole Richie, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Garner, and Gwyneth Paltrow seem to emerge from the hospital sans any baby weight at all.  How do they do it?  Well, the answer is simple: they can afford to.  First, they don’t gain much weight at all because they can practically pay someone to stand there and fetch them a salad whenever they want (and tell them that they aren’t really craving hamburgers and french fries when the hormones clamor for junk food).  When you can pay for a personal trainer, yoga instructor, expensive home gym, and pilates equipment, there’s no excuse to skip a workout.  When you don’t have to work 40+ hour weeks at a normal office job, you have the lifestyle flexibility to get to the gym during your pregnancy, and you can devote that spare time and energy at the end of the day to the gym.  When you have a maid, housekeeper, personal chef, business manager, personal assistant, and stylist, you have the luxury of free time, since other people spend their days doing your chores; thus, planning healthy meals and workouts is much simpler.  Then, once these women have their babies, they hide out in seclusion for six weeks with their personal trainers and a macrobiotic celebrity chef and “magically” lose the weight through breastfeeding alone, so they say.  They all say they lost it breastfeeding, but we know that’s a load of crap.  The body doesn’t make enough breastmilk for the child to survive if they’re cutting calories and over-exercising, which I would think you would have to do to lose 100% of your weight in a period of time when your physical activity is limited by doctors’ orders (there’s a reason for that six-week check up, after all).  Salma Hayek, who is one smart woman, said this to Oprah:

[My] pregnancy was really difficult for me. I thought, ‘As soon as this baby is out, I’m just going to lose all the weight superfast because I’m going to breastfeed, and everybody tells you if you breastfeed, [the weight] is going to come off.’  It’s a lie; It’s not true. I’m going to say something. Except for a couple of exceptions, the only reason people lose weight like that when they’re breastfeeding — it’s because they’re not eating and they’re breastfeeding. And this is not good for the baby.

I concur, Salma, it’s not good for the baby (nor is it good for milk supply).  So I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, trying to feel good about how I look despite the slow results.  I can look at my super healthy, beautiful son and feel good about the choices I’ve made.  But I blame Hollywood for these unrealistic expectations of moms and how they’re supposed to look and how fast that weight is supposed to fall off.  It’s because of this that I’ve been asked half a dozen times when I’m due, despite carrying an obvious newborn around with me.  So for now, 37 pounds down, at least 18 to go, with bathing suit season just a few weeks away.