The Hardest Mile

6/22/08 Posted in News  |  0 Comments

By Adela Uchida

It took me more than 14 minutes to run the hardest mile I have ever run. It was late September of last year, just shy of six weeks after I’d had my baby daughter, Siobhan, by unplanned cesarean section. I stopped looking at the clock above the track after half a mile, so I will never know my exact time, but I will always remember how I thought my knees would buckle under all the pregnancy weight I was still carrying around. And at that point, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to shed the 40-plus pounds still clinging to me.

I wasn’t alone. Shelley Mielock, 35, and her husband, Doug, welcomed a daughter, Jessica, in early November. Mielock was already mom to Xander, 3, and Tyler, 15, and had gained 40 pounds with her third pregnancy. “I make running a priority,” she said. “I don’t have the cleanest house and it sometimes takes me days to put away clean laundry, but I always make time to run.” It’s a philosophy that has paid off — Mielock has lost all of her baby weight.

That is the key, according to Dr. Robert Seiler, D.O., who delivered my daughter at Ingham Regional Medical Center. “There are many obstacles to postpartum weight loss and physical fitness. A new baby brings sleepless nights, added relationship stress, and creates a huge — but very important — demand on a new mother’s time. The time that now is devoted to baby used to be for work, exercise, relaxation, and just living her own life,” he said. “However, the biggest obstacle to postpartum weight loss and physical fitness that I have noted is a woman’s pre-pregnancy lifestyle. In general, if a woman did not make physical fitness a priority in her life before she was pregnant, the same will be true after the birth of her baby.”

Admittedly, Mielock and I had the built-in advantage of being dedicated runners before either of us was pregnant. Mielock ran the Chicago Marathon in 2005; I ran the Detroit Free Press Marathon in 2006. For fun. I stopped running in my 26th week of pregnancy because of discomfort, and walked 2 or 3 miles a day, four or five times a week for the remainder of my pregnancy. But the athletic mother-to-be is more the exception than the rule. Dr. Seiler, an OB/GYN at Meridian Womens Health in Okemos, estimates just 10 percent of his patients exercise regularly during pregnancy, which means the other 90 percent have a tougher time losing the baby weight — and a tougher time coping with the demands of a new baby. “Exercise after having a baby has been shown to decrease the incidence of postpartum depression. This is true only if the exercise itself is stress-relieving and not stress-provoking. For instance, if a woman has to work extra hours to pay for
additional childcare so she can get to the gym, the workout may cause more stress than it alleviates,” he noted.

I started walking around my neighborhood with the baby in her stroller as soon as I felt able. I was running weeks later, although earlier than recommended for c-section patients. By the time I returned to the anchor desk in mid-November, I was running at least three times a week. These days, I’m up to five days a week and a weekly Pilates class, to tighten up stretched abdominal muscles. Mielock, a stay-at-home mom, gives her fitness routine equal importance. She said, “After a couple of weeks I was ready to get my body moving again and had to force myself to start out walking first instead of running.” The exercise helped both of us cope with interrupted sleep and shifting life priorities. Mielock puts it this way, “Obviously, running helps with the physical aspects after pregnancy but it also helped me with the lack of sleep. Exercise is the next best thing to sleep, and it helped me be able to focus only on myself for a half hour or hour out of
the day.”

Michigan State University professor and president-elect of the American College of Sports Medicine Jim Pivarnik, Ph.D. studies exercise and pregnancy.  He said it doesn’t take long to get back into shape in most cases, once a woman is given the all-clear to work out: “It depends a lot on how much she decreased her training toward the end of gestation. But a ballpark figure — I would say eight weeks. Four weeks to get back to full training for the average woman and another four weeks to regain her fitness.”

But new moms who don’t have a solid pre-pregnancy fitness track record are not out of luck. A Saint Louis University study finds that a structured, weekly group setting may be the right prescription for baby weight loss. In the study, about half of the 40 new mothers attended 12 weekly sessions focusing on diet, nutrition and physical activity. They got personalized recommendations, and lost, on average, 16 pounds. The other half got one hour-long session and lost just 3 pounds. The moms had babies between 6 weeks and 6 months old. They had all gained more then 33 pounds during pregnancy and were followed for a year

New moms don’t have to take a fitness class, train for a marathon or even run to drop the pregnancy pounds and tone up. The answer could be as simple as walking, and making the time to do it. “All women, pregnant or not, should attempt to change their lifestyles to accommodate at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day. Exercise should be a priority in the whole family so that no strings are attached to the time the woman devotes to exercise. Women who are successful in making this change will easily be able to achieve their weight loss and physical fitness goals,” said Dr. Seiler. Pivarnik agreed. “Certainly, those who have been athletic their entire lives or certainly very fit prior to pregnancy seem to bounce back sooner, which should not be a surprise, ” he explains. “Our research has shown that women feel time and social support — or lack thereof - to be the most important perceived barriers to returning to full activity. Interestingly, the
same perceived barriers appear to exist with all women, but the athletes do a better job of overcoming them.”

Fast forward to the 2008 Race For The Cure in late April — I was just six pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight and ran the race in 23 minutes and 59 seconds. That’s an average of 7 minutes, 44 seconds per mile for 3.2 miles. Mielock boasts an even bigger accomplishment — she finished in 25:53, but ran 11 miles the day before the race. “Like many people, I have moments of insecurity about my body.” she said. “Frankly, it’s never quite the same after you have kids! However, it has carried three babies, run numerous races — from 5K to marathon — and responds well to the physical demands I put on it. I’ve never been a fast runner, but I’m as fast as I’ve ever been.”