Here is the full transcript of personal trainer and author Tiffiny Hall’s talk titled “After Baby, Don’t Bounce Back. Bounce Forward!” at TEDxDocklands 2019 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Power of Mind Over Matter
Thank you. Let’s talk about mind over matter. For me, I was concerned that a change in matter would kill my business. I was terrified of getting pregnant. I thought this would be the end of everything that I loved, 20 years of hard work in building my business in the fitness industry.
When I finally fell pregnant, I was ecstatic, the best day ever, best moment, and everyone came to congratulate me and say, “Fantastic, we’re so excited for you.” But very quickly the conversation changed from congratulations to “Can you give me some baby weight loss tips? Can you tell me how to bounce back? I’ve just had a baby, I need to lose the weight.”
They started to ask me, “Are you concerned about losing your body? Are you concerned about losing your abs, and the impact of that on your business?” Well if I wasn’t scared then, I am really scared now.
A Fit and Active Lifestyle
So I was pretty fit. I was a gladiator, up in the air in aerial events, doing combat in the air with my angel wings. I was a coach on The Biggest Loser many years, transforming people to lose sometimes 50% of their body weight. I am a 6th Dan black belt Kukkiwon certified martial artist in Taekwondo, one of the highest ranking female martial artists in the world for my age.
I thought, “Jeez, pregnancy, I’ve got this.” I ain’t got this. No, I didn’t have it at all. My body took to pregnancy. At eight weeks, I had to announce that I was pregnant because I had such a big bump I could not hide it any longer. I was very ill, as many women are in their first trimester, very sick. But for me, the sickness didn’t pass.
Struggling with Pregnancy and Business
I expected that I would be able to continue to work, continue to film fitness videos and do what I loved, continue to exercise and inspire people, but I was so ill I couldn’t even drive. I couldn’t exercise. I had launched my business two months before I got pregnant, and I had two months worth of fitness videos and content to service my business in the can.
My business was starved of content, and it was dying. And to make matters worse, I was in and out of hospital for the whole nine months, so ill. It was the hardest time of my life. I put on 30 kilos, and the only thing that helped was this new food that I discovered, an exotic food some of you may have tried, called sausage rolls. And they taste delicious, especially when you’re pregnant, and particularly when you have three in a row.
So I was living on sausage rolls. Perhaps it was the salt content. I don’t know. And I have trained many women, all sorts of women, women who are at home with babies, celebrities, corporate women, and all of them had the same common fear, fear about their body changing in pregnancy.
The Arrival of Arnold
It wasn’t about raising a child and the responsibility there. It wasn’t about the labor and how that was, this was going to come out, or what was going to happen there. It was the fear of their body changing.
And I was fearful too. 11th of September, my baby was born. His name’s Arnold. Arnold came out with a shock of blonde hair and his daddy’s blue eyes, and he is just beautiful. And the whole nine months of being so sick, I didn’t care if my business never recovered. I had Arnold. Day five, I’m still in hospital here. I’m leaking from everywhere. My milk’s coming in. I’m feeling all the feels.
The hospital isn’t serving sausage rolls. I’m not coping. I haven’t slept for five days since the baby was delivered. And you know, you’re in a lot of pain, you’re uncomfortable. And I thought, I have thousands of members on my online fitness program who have supported me for nine months. I’m going to announce that Arnold’s here.
I took a picture, I put it up on Instagram. “Arnold’s here.” The messages that came back, “Congratulations, but we didn’t expect this from you.” All the messages were about my body, about a postpartum body, and how shocking it was to see a postpartum body. “You’re not bouncing back. You haven’t lost your baby weight yet.”
Navigating Motherhood and Priorities
No, I haven’t. I’ve got stitches still. I got home. I’m trying to navigate what you do with a newborn. My husband’s gone back to work. And I started to think, as the fog cleared, about the dangers of a bounce back.
I’m a trainer, an expert, one of the best in the world. I know what it takes to get physical transformation. It takes depletion and a deficit. More exercise, less calories, and time away from your baby. Was I willing to sacrifice that time away from my baby? Was I willing to sacrifice less calories, my milk supply?
Choosing Family and Recovery
My priorities were feeding the baby and looking after myself and preserving the relationship with exercise. I love exercise. It’s fun. I knew if I flogged myself, punished myself, deprived myself right now, that I would damage that special relationship. I chose not to bounce back. I chose Arnold. I chose our family.
I chose my relationship over myself in the fourth trimester. I chose healing and recovery and self-care. And that was hard, because I made the mistake five days after of checking my email. And on my email, there were already publicity requests for magazine shoots, bounce back photos, befores and afters. When is the first time we can book Tiffany?
The Mounting Pressure to Bounce Back
We can book the set, photographer, wardrobe.
When will she be ready for a bikini? And I’m thinking, not yet. I don’t want to bounce back, guys. And women were contacting me. “I want to lose my baby weight. I feel the pressure to bounce back. How are you going to do it? How fast are you going to do it?”
And the pressure was mounting and mounting and mounting, until one day I thought, I’m going to do something for me. My husband had been at work and I’d been at home with the baby, and anyone who’s got a newborn knows days are long. And it’s 3.30 in the afternoon and I thought, I’m going to treat myself. I’m going to do something really luxurious.
A Moment of Self-Care
I’m going to have a shower. So I feed the baby both sides, birth the baby, calm the baby, get the baby in the bassinet. Okay, I think this will work, Arnold. Okay, it’s going to work, Arnie. And I snapped this photo. To be honest, the pressure’s getting to me at this point.
“When are you going to film new fitness videos? When are you going to get out there? We’ve got requests, before and afters, your business is going to die, you put on weight,” the narrative’s building, it’s building, it’s building, and the pressure’s building, and I feel like I’m drowning.
My husband comes home from work and I show him the picture. “Took a shower today, shaved one leg, good doll, good doll. Took this photo,” and I said, “This isn’t someone who’s going to get her fitness business back.”
Embracing the Postpartum Body
It’s over. My body is broken, it was so weak, my pelvic floor, my core, everything, I could feel all my muscles. I thought, this is it. I don’t see how I’m going to find the time or even want to bounce back quickly to get back on camera. This is it. And Ed said, “Well, I think you’ve never looked more beautiful. Look at the guy in the background. Look at what your body did.”
And I thought, “Yeah, look at what my body did. Look at my beautiful son.” And with that confidence, I thought, “Okay, guys, you’re going to get your before and after,” and I put this out on Instagram. “Before, peak physical condition, I was training all day,” and I realised that’s extreme, but I wanted an extreme contrast to show what your body’s capable of, what matter can do.
Going Viral and Inspiring Change
Before and after. I put it out there, “There’s your before and after, I’m not bouncing back, deal with it.” And women contacted me. It went viral. TV, radio, podcast, everywhere. I was walking down the street, people would stop me, “Thank you so much for putting that picture out there.”
I’m thinking, when did a postpartum body become so shocking? I was so sick of seeing images during my pregnancy of celebrities posting flat stomachs and God knows what they were doing, four weeks after having a baby, before their safe six-week check. It really got to me, so I continued to put out postpartum photos of me with Arnold, look at him.
We had a little hiccup at six months, I broke my ankle. Try not weight-bearing and holding a baby, I got really strong on one leg. It was very hard at that time, but I didn’t give up.
Returning to Work in a New Body
I just kept going, consistent, consistent, slowly but surely, and the pressures kept mounting, but I kept saying, “Stop.” At eight weeks, I got back on camera, but in my new body. I talked to my members, we did some activations, we did some contractions and gentle stuff.
You know, this is where I’m at, you can come with me, but yeah, I don’t look like I used to. This is me 15 months postpartum. I chose to take it slow, and it’s not a sexy headline. Woman slowly, carefully takes her time to lose 30 kilos and prioritize self-care and healing and recovery and her milk supply and her baby, versus woman bounces back in three weeks and loses all of her baby weight. I get it, but I didn’t care.
Focusing on Fitness, Not Fat Loss
How did I do it? I ate energy foods, I stuck to a breastfeeding-friendly menu plan that was on my business. I shifted my mindset from exercise to simple movements, activations, contractions, connections, feedback through the pelvic floor, all of this. I took my time in building the foundation. I knew that if I didn’t build a foundation, then I would do something one day and I would get injured. I focused on the fit, not the fat loss.
I threw out scales. I said to my husband, “Here’s the scales,” and he went and hid them, or maybe he ran over them. I don’t know what he did, but I ditched the scales and I started to set myself little fitness goals.
Let’s try and do a push-up, one, on your knees. Let’s try and activate the T-zone. I took my time, and I focused on self-love and acceptance, saying, “Hey, your body’s amazing. Look at what you’ve done.” I know that if you hate yourself to change, it’s not going to last. Self-love, it is sustainable. I found experts.
I connected with them, not only with qualifications, but with experience, and I tried to trigger that parasympathetic nervous system as much as I could. As a mom, as a working mom even, you don’t get me time. There’s no time for me time, but I found me moments, a couple of deep breaths, putting my feet in the grass in the backyard, a bit of sunlight, listening to a meditation when I could sleep.
These were the moments that got me through. So, did I get my bikini body back? Well, it was all about the bikini body, wasn’t it?
Finding a Functional Body
“Are you going to get your bikini body back?” “Yeah, yeah.” Like, yeah, a few months ago, I put a bikini on and I went for a swim at the beach, and I was, yeah, in a bikini body, fine. But what was most important to me was finding my functional body, being able to do a flying sidekick again, working my pelvic floor so that I could do that.
A functional body was so important, and it was never about the bikini body for me. It was about having my baby body, and I love my baby body, and sure, I’ve got loose skin in my stomach. It will never be the same again. There’s nothing you can do about that. I’ve got wider hips. I’ve got stretch marks.
My body’s changed. But these are memories of my baby that I want to carry every day, and I love it, and I want women to take the pressure off. I don’t want them to feel like they have to bounce back fast.
Bouncing Forward, Not Back
Prioritize self-care and take your time. There is no pressure. This is me recently. We’re in one of the most beautiful locations in the world, Byron Bay, and we’re filming with the global movie star, Chris Hemsworth, and you can see that Arnold is very unimpressed by both those things. And this is the moment where I’ve just come off set filming fitness videos with Chris, and I realize I didn’t bounce back. I bounced forward.
I feel so much stronger, not just in my matter and my body, but in my mind. I prioritize self-care, and I feel amazing. So I want to leave you with a quote from my grandmother before she passed away.
She said, “Self-love, it’s like good bread. It needs to be baked fresh every single day.” And every single day, I get up early, the time of a baker, because that’s when Arnie gets up, and I put my apron on like a cape, and I start baking. Some days I nail it, and I get a fluffy baguette. Other days I burn the toast. But as the self-love rises, I start to feel a little bit better. And if you prioritize that self-love, then every day is what you bake it. Thank you.