The Ultimate Food + Body Love

Or how pregnancy's been my greatest teacher and made me surrender to my crazy cravings...

The Ultimate Food + Body Love

 

As you might have seen on social media, my little bump is growing… I AM PREGNANT!

Niko and I are so freaking happy. We will be welcoming a baby boy into this world in February 2016. Just thinking about it, I have a HUGE smile on my face right now…

It’s been 5.5 months (already!). I meant to tell you this way earlier but the first few months were tougher than I thought they would be.

So instead of screaming the news to the world and posting pictures of my growing belly, I felt the urge to turn inside, slow down, cocoon, and take care of myself.

Even if I can’t complain because I am well and I have a super healthy pregnancy, I can tick quite a few boxes: nausea, morning sickness, fatigue, headaches, cramps, food aversions, cravings, starting to laugh or to cry like a crazy woman for no apparent reason (I never thought that would happen to me!).

That’s also probably why, so far, pregnancy has been my greatest teacher ever!

Due to bulimia, pregnancy was not something I felt ready for until not so long ago. How the hell could I manage to create a baby if I wasn’t even capable of nourishing myself probably, right? Not to mention the huge body changes that scared the hell out of me…

But when I got pregnant, I felt totally ready for it. I knew the time has come. I am also sure your body responds to these signals very well and pretty quickly too.

I’ll never forget that early morning when I took a pregnancy test and saw the + sign telling me I was 2-3 weeks pregnant. I was shaking and ran to the bedroom to tell Niko. It’s difficult to explain the kind of feelings you’re experiencing in that moment, trying to realise what was happening, that this is magical and about to change your life, that there is no turning back… But wait a minute… is it real? OMG!

I had been free from bulimia and food issues for years and felt better than ever before. Yet, those first few months taught me a lot!

I was so sick that I had a really hard time to eat normally. The only things that were appealing to me were things I didn’t consider that good for me: fries, sweet pop-corn, milk, burgers, pastas, cheeses, ice cream, pizzas, etc. Basically anything that had a mild taste and was easy to eat.

To complete the picture, I also had strong food aversions for things I enjoyed on a regular basis: salmon (and almost all kind of fish), veggies (even avocados), dark chocolate, nuts and seeds, etc. It was impossible for me to eat anything withย a strong or pronounced taste. I couldn’t even think about it.

I was so sick that I had no choice but to surrender to what my body was telling me. I had breakfast with pop-corn and plain crackers and ate gluten-free pastas or burgers and fries for lunch and dinner for weeks (yes, I know!!!).

That stayed with me until about a month ago, my 18th week of pregnancy. Not to mention that this sickness made exercise almost impossible for me for about 3 months.

So, imagine eating pastas, sweet-pop-corn, ice-cream and burgers without being able to exercise for about 3 months… Even-though I was not stuffing myself, you bet worries and questions would start to sneak in, even in the most stable woman’s head.

And guess what? My body knew what it needed.

Maybe I needed sugar for energy, maybe I needed burgers for iron and ice cream for calcium… I can’t tell you for sure but to my surprise, I didn’t put on weight before my 19th week of pregnancy, when my eating patterns went back to “almost normal”.

That proves something very important to me: your body always knows best! If you listen to your body signals, even if that seems completely crazy, you’ll be ok. If you want fries or ice-cream, there’s probably a good reason for it. Maybe your body is just screaming for energy.

That also proves that the number on the scale doesn’t reflect what’s happening in your body!

You can eat crap and not exercise, if your body needs energy – if you’re creating a baby, training for an iron man, fighting an illness, etc – the number on the scale will stay the same. On the opposite, you can eat healthy foods and exercise, if your body doesn’t need energy or can’t process your food properly for a certain period of time, the number on the scale might change.

And we will all experience both of these situations at different moments in our life.

Should we stress out when that happens? Or should we keep eating crap and not exercise if the number on the scale doesn’t change?

Of course not!

Because nothing is permanent. We are all constantly changing and the best food + body love action you could do for yourself is to embrace that and adapt as peacefully as you can instead of judging or beating yourself up.

Gracefully adapting and listening to your body is indeed the ultimate food and body love step you could ever take.

 

I’d love to hear from you too! Let me know…

Have you ever experienced this kind of situation?

What is your own ultimate food and body love step?

Share your thoughts and insights in the comments below and let’s help each other out…

 

xox

Pauline

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