Big belly energy

telling diet culture to kiss my big pregnant ass.

I was cozy in my bed the other morning, scrolling on Instagram as I do, willfully knowing that it is the absolute worst fucking place for me to start my day, and I saw a post on my explore page about how to “control weight gain during pregnancy.” Just reading the words off the poorly designed infographic made me want to spit red hot, molten lava fire all over my room. I clicked on the post and then got even more enraged as I started to read the caption …

Unfortunately, It.Is.Too.Late for me to unsee this post, but what it did do, was awaken the beast in me that loooooooves to talk shit on the internet, or in this case, inform and encourage people on the internet - so, lets. fucking. go.

When I opened the comments on this post, I was hoping to see a bunch of backlash, words like “damaging,” "unhinged," and “shameful,” in reference to the suggestion that pregnant people should be “doing something” about their NECESSARY weight gain. Instead, I was met with a bunch of commenters requesting this person’s “guide” to “controlling” pregnancy weight gain. Listen, I am not naive, ok? I understand that women’s bodies have been policed for centuries and that it is engrained in us from a very early age that we are not supposed to be “fat.” While I know that movements like body positivity, body neutrality, and fat activism have gained (no pun intended) a lot of attention and support over the last few years, we have also taken like 700 steps back with the public’s obsession with weight loss drugs like Ozempic. I mean, who am I kidding? The public’s obsession with being “thin” never really went away, and it probably never will. We have, however, entered into an era where people are a lot more comfortable discussing their relationship with their bodies in a public, no bullshit, overshare-y, type of way. I am not here to shame you for wanting to look a certain way, as someone who will be in recovery forever from body dysmorphia and disordered eating - I GET IT. The never ending waltz we dance with our bodies as women in this society is, needless to say, exhausting.

Then. You get pregnant. And suddenly, you’re faced with a whole new set of choreography when it comes to navigating your relationship with your body. You watch your belly grow at lightning speed. You shove all of your clothes that no longer fit into storage boxes under the bed. You buy ten new bras to squeeze your massive milk jugs in. You wonder if the fourth ice cream cone this week is going a little too far. A whole new hell breaks loose in your brain when it comes to your body. Some of this is your own voice that has sadly been trained by a body obsessed society, but a lot of it is the voice of these weirdos on social media who are talking to you about “piling” on the pounds and finding a solution for it NOW as if you are the star of an action movie with limited time to defuse a bomb that is waiting to explode. Well, news flash: my body is not a bomb. And neither is yours. It doesn’t need to be defused. IT’S GROWING A FUCKING HUMAN BEING FROM SCRATCH! It needs to get bigger, expand, and take up space. To literally keep me and my growing child alive! Now. It is really easy to say all of this, but to live it is another thing. So while I can see this dumb Instagram post and rationally understand it’s wrong, the sick part of my brain that has been infected by a skinny obsessed society to think I can’t get “fat,” clicks on the link in bio and tiptoes down the weight loss hall wondering if maybe there is a solution in there for me. I catch a glimpse of myself in some scary diet culture fun house mirror lining the hall, and suddenly I come to my senses and I run in the other fucking direction - AKA: blocking this absolute weirdo and any other creator who is trying to tell me Its.Not.Too.Late. to get ahead of my pregnancy weight gain.

One of the things that always scared me the most about the idea of getting pregnant was not the fact that I’d have to push a human out of a small region of my body or the lack of sleep I would be up against once said human arrived on earth - it was weight gain and watching my body change. It was the idea that I would need to “bounce back” once baby was here. Being a public figure means having eyes on you, and (over)sharing about your life and your experiences means people have the ability to comment on said life and experiences. Before I announced I was pregnant, I was pretty dead set on not showing my face or body on social media until I was ready to share the news because I was worried people might think I was gaining weight. Yep. Sad. I know. But also, can you blame me? Like I said before, this fear is part my own and part the voice of the body-shaming police state I have lived in for my entire 37 years as an adult woman. When my band, Best Coast, first started gaining success in 2010, people commented on my body and my appearance all the time. I wasn’t pretty enough. Wasn’t skinny enough. My boobs were nice, but why were they so far apart? No woman is safe from this judgment! So, of course, I was worried that people might be wondering why my face looked a little puffier than usual. On my own beautiful babymoon in Hawaii, I walked around self-consciously on the beach in a bathing suit, playing the game of “fat or pregnant?” in my mind. Let me remind you (and me!), I am growing a fucking human being inside of my body; the last thing that should be on my mind is do I look fat???!!!

New accessory for a growing belly…

All of my opinions aside, there is legit evidence-based data that shows that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to weight gain in pregnancy. The “rules” of pregnancy weight gain look to the antiquated BMI (body mass index) as a guide for how much weight a pregnant person should gain. On this episode of Mom Genes, a podcast hosted by a licensed therapist and a registered dietician, co-hosts Rachel Coleman and Tina LaBoy debunk the myths around pregnancy weight gain. They speak to another registered dietician on the episode, Lynette Broom, who happens to be pregnant at the time of recording. The three of them break down the topic of pregnancy weight gain in a very digestible way, and I cannot recommend listening to this episode enough if you yourself are currently pregnant, someone close to you is pregnant, or you are wanting to get pregnant. It opened my eyes to a lot of the truths around pregnancy weight gain and helped me sort of let go of my obsession around it. Of course, the difficulty I face in accepting my new and changing pregnant body is not something that one single podcast episode can fix, but listening to experts talk about it in a compassionate and respectful way sure does help.

In the episode, they emphasize finding a care team that will support you if you think focusing on weight during pregnancy will take you down to spiral town. I have been very fortunate to work with two wonderful midwives throughout my pregnancy who have barely even brought up the idea of my weight during any of our appointments. When I first met with them to see if they were the right team for me, I told them very openly how I have struggled with disordered eating and body dysmorphia for many years of my life, and that being weighed constantly and there being a big emphasis on my weight was really going to harm my mental health and my recovery. ZERO questions were asked, and they told me, “Okay!” and since then, I have not stepped on a scale once. One thing I am working towards in my own recovery is being able to see the number on a scale and not allowing it to dictate how I feel about myself, but at this moment in time, I am not there yet, and that’s ok. So, continuing to avoid that information helps me stay on a clear path towards progress, especially during a time when I know my body weight is bound to be more than I am used to. If you are working with a doctor or a midwife who is putting a lot of emphasis on your weight and shaming you for “gaining too much too quickly,” advocate for yourself! Or talk to a doula or someone who is willing to advocate for you. Pregnancy is hard enough as it is! We don’t need to add the burden of feeling like we are doing something wrong by literally expanding as life expands inside of us! What is happening to our bodies is the stuff of miracles, and it should be treated as such, not as a problem that needs a solution.

Sometimes Instagram shows me lovely things like this poem.

I have tried to stay as active as possible during this pregnancy, and I’ll admit, in the beginning I was fixated on doing so to “get ahead of” the weight gain I was inevitably going to experience, but once I hit about week 10 of pregnancy and I couldn’t do pilates anymore without feeling like I was going to pass out, I knew I needed to succumb to the couch and the potato chips and popsicles that did not make me feel like projectile vomiting all over the reformer. While I do think exercise and movement are really important and helpful tools in the pregnancy toolbox, the reason I do it is because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel strong as hell when I am doing squats in my prenatal yoga class and I can feel my growing baby moving around inside of me. It feels incredible to stand firmly on my two legs that carry me and this bébé around. There are some days where I am just too exhausted to workout, and while I can faintly see the mirage of the body-shaming police wagging their finger at me in the distance on those days, I honor my body by allowing myself to rest, and I tell the cop in my brain to fuck right off (ACAB).

Even though I have worked (and continue to work!) really hard to have a pretty good grasp on my sanity when it comes to my body-related issues, I still refer to myself as a potato on some days. I browse the colorful chip aisle of the grocery store and wonder if my fellow shoppers are judging me, and I say things like, “God, it’s so nice to finally allow myself to eat whatever I want,” as if I am never allowed to eat whatever I want. I’m a human woman! And while a little part of me dies inside every time I fall prey to another poison diet culture trap, I know that my true self is proud of the belly I am carrying around. My true self is fascinated by the fact that my growing daughter inside of me can hear the horrible music that the prenatal YouTube Pilates teacher includes in her videos. My true self is never going to see a post suggesting I need to lose weight “while I still can” during my pregnancy and suddenly subscribe to some unqualified ladies diet and exercise plan. And my true self will speak out on this difficult topic so that other people’s true selves will also have space to shine and grow. It can feel shameful to be experiencing one of the biggest blessings in life while also wishing you didn’t have to buy XL pants. We are not perfect people (cue Hoobastank), and it’s always progress over perfection every damn day. Being pregnant is W I L D. It’s normal to feel like an Aphrodite Goddess superhero and a bloated burrito belly at the same time. It’s called being human!

The belly loves the chip aisle.

There are days where I have never felt more confident and free, and there are days where I fear I will never see my own two feet again. And both of these are valid. Both of these feelings belong to me, and they are a product of a world that tells me I can have it all, but I can’t have TOO much! As I sit here and write this, my two thighs, that have essentially merged into one, are straddling the blue yoga ball that is keeping my back comfortable because my office chair no longer does. Those are the same thighs and the same back that will carry me through the rest of this pregnancy and help me bring my baby into this world. Whether or not they look like legs or big juicy hot dogs doesn’t matter at the moment, in fact, it never did. I see photos of myself from the BP days (before pregnant), and I cannot believe how banging my body looked!!! The same body that in those baby free moments I was judging and critiquing. The same body that I was trying to learn to love on a daily basis. That body helped me make a goddamn fucking human being with the person I love! That body is a wonderland (sorry, I had to.) No, but seriously, our bodies are always perfect, no matter what kind of shape they are in. They provide us with a place to live in this one, mystical life that we get here on earth. Shout out to our bodies. Big. Small. Pregnant. Not pregnant. Infertile. Male. Female. Trans. Non-Binary. Fat. Skinny. Covered in cellulite. It.Is.Not.Too.Late to choose to love whatever body we are currently in. It.Is.Not.Too.Late to kill the body cop in our brain and continue to kill him every time he plays whac-a-mole with us.

Thank you to my body. For all that it does. All that it helps me achieve. And all that it helps me grow. I promise to love you now, as you are, and later, as you are.

Despite what Josie thinks, she is not part of my body.

xoxo, Bethany in a bigger body.