Changing the conversation :: Morning Edition's Flattening The Mummy Tummy
Honest Update: in this article I really nail home this whole point about spreading the positive and not leading from a place of hurt and anger. I’ve learned that a lot of that comes because of my whiteness and my discomfort with conflict and confrontation. It’s called emotional bypassing. Spiritual bypassing. - that whole, “love and light” thing and how it doesn’t actually relieve any suffering, I think it’s really important that we know when we’re hurt, and we express that - even when and especially when we’re angry. We must work together to honor anger and communicate anger. Anger is a valid emotion. When we ask someone to change their tone so that we can hear them better, that’s called tone policing. It also can create a co-dependent behavior pattern: “when you feel this way and express that to me, now I feel this way. Therefore, me feeling this way is your fault.” Rachel Ricketts has taught me a lot about anger in the past few years and for that I am so grateful.
On August 7, at 8:17am, my mother sent me an article via email saying, "K, I thought you might find this of interest, M"
The article was from that morning's Morning Edition on NPR and is titled Flattening The 'Mummy Tummy' With 1 Exercise, 10 Minutes A Day. Such click-bait material - not the kind of stuff that my mom generally sends my way. So I clicked.
I sent mom a long email about how it had so much good information that was so clouded by body shaming. She replied, "knew this would be your response and I totally agree. How do you get "them" to "change the conversation?" Perhaps a letter to the editor???" My mother is famous for her letters to the editors.
So yeah, I want us to change the conversation. "They" can't do it without "us."
To begin, it's a great article full of great information for anyone who is has ever experienced diastasis recti. "Diastasis recti is a separation between the left and right side of the rectus abdominis muscle. This muscle covers the front surface of the belly area." - medlineplus.org Pregnant women, especially women who have been pregnant multiple times, often experience this as having a baby puts of lot of pressure on your abdomen. Diastasis Recti also affects a lot of other people who haven't experienced pregnancy.
Secondly, the title of this article, and quite a bit of the content is heavy with body shaming. Part of me wanted to repost the article so you can read it for yourself, but I'm not going to do that because I don't want to share a lot of that content.
So what I'm going to do instead, is share some of the relevant information from the article so that we can all learn a little bit more about what diastasis recti is and how to heal it. I am also going to is share with you what I wrote to NPR's Morning Edition team as well as the writer herself.
Before I do that though, it's important that you understand that I'm not angry with the writer. The writer, and Morning Edition, is not intentionally trying to body shame women. They are trying to educate all of us, men included, and teach us how to heal our bodies. So in my response, my intent is to be kind. Not pissed. My email back to my mom was pissed because it was coming from a place of initial hurt because I spent such a long time hating my body and it's because I would read articles like this and turn them all sorts of upside down in my brain. I don't want other girls or women or boys or men to experience hating their body, so yeah, I'm hurting remembering the way I would have responded to an article like this. But my goal is to change the conversation, and keep an open dialogue, not shame the writer for feeling uncomfortable in her own body and expressing frustration with that in a way that I personally don't find to be productive because I don't believe many people can't sift through an article that is laced with body shaming.
Great Information From the Article:
*please note, I am seriously cutting and pasting. I didn't write any of the following information on my own. None of it.*
**I went to a school where we had to write an honor code on every single thing we turned in. This girl is not going to plagiarize**
It turns out [it] actually has a medical term: diastasis recti, which refers to a separation of the abdominal muscles.
And it's quite common. Last year, a study from Norway reported about a third of moms end up with diastasis recti a year after giving birth.
"This is such a ubiquitous issue," says Dr. Geeta Sharma, an OB-GYN at Weill Cornell Medical Center-New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Diastasis recti can cause [a] big issue for new moms: lower back pain.
"People can start feeling some back pain because the core is weakened," Sharma says.
In rare occasions, the tissue in the abdomen isn't just stretched, but it is also torn a bit. This can cause a hernia, Sharma says.
"If there's a defect in a layer of tissue called the linea alba, then the bowel can poke through," Sharma says. "That's going to be more dangerous."
A hernia may require surgery. "So I will refer patients to a general surgeon to have a C.T. scan if there's really a true concern about a hernia," Sharma says.
Diastasis recti arises during pregnancy because the growing fetus pushes the abdominal muscles apart — specifically the rectus abdominal muscles.
"These are the muscles that give you a 'six pack,' " says Dr. Linda Brubaker, an OB-GYN at the University of California, San Diego. "People think these muscles go horizontal across the belly. But they actually go vertical from head to toe."
The rectus abdominal muscles should be right next to each other, on either side of the belly button, Brubaker says. "There shouldn't be much of gap between them."
But during pregnancy a gap opens up between the muscles, right around the belly button. Sometimes that gap closes on its own, but other times it stays open.
That leaves a spot in the belly where there's very little muscle to hold in your stomach and other organs, a spot that can be one to two inches wide. That lets the organs and overlying tissue bulge out.
Women have to get those abdominal muscles to realign. And that's where the exercises come into play.
If you search online for ways to fix diastasis recti, you'll turn up a deluge of exercise routines, all claiming to help coax the abdominal muscles back together.
But the quality of much of that information isn't good, Brubaker says. "Some of it is actually potentially harmful."
Even some exercises aimed at strengthening the abdomen can exacerbate diastasis recti, says Keller, including simple crunches.
"You have to be very careful," she says. "For example, please don't ever again in your life do crossover crunches or bicycle crunches. They splay your abs apart in so many ways."
That said, there are a few exercise programs for diastasis recti that many doctors and physical therapists support. These include the Tupler Technique, Keller's Dia Method and the MuTu System in the U.K.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also recommends abdominal exercises for the perinatal period. But the organization's guidelines don't provide details — such which exercises work best, or how often women should do them and for how long.
Plus, ACOG focuses more on preventing diastasis than fixing the problem; it recommends strengthening the abdomen before and during pregnancy.
"The best way is prevention," says Dr. Raul Artal, an OB-GYN at St. Louis University, who helped ACOG write its exercise guidelines for the perinatal period. "The best way to do that is to exercise during pregnancy."
"There's a general knowledge that exercise is going to help," Sharma says. "But no one has really tested them in a standardized way."
"We did a pilot study to see if the method is helpful for women," Sharma says.
The study was small — just 63 women. But the results were quite promising. After 12 weeks of doing Keller's exercise — 10 minutes a day — all the women had fixed their diastasis recti, Sharma and Keller reported at ACOG's annual meeting few years ago.
"We had patients that were even one year out from giving birth, and they still had such great benefit from the exercises," Sharma says. "We love to see that there is something we can do to help women."
"The exercise is a very small, very intense movement. That's almost imperceptible," Keller says. "OK. We're going to do another set."
Sitting on the floor cross-legged, with our hands on our bellies, we all take a big breath. "Let the belly fully expand," Keller says.
And then as we exhale, we suck in our belly muscles — as far back as they'll go, toward the spine. "Now we're going to stay here near the spine. Hold this position," she says.
Then we take tiny breaths. With each exhale, we push our stomachs back further and further.
You can do the exercise in several different positions, Keller says: sitting crossed-legged, sitting on your knees, standing with knees slightly bent, on all fours or laying on your side in the fetal position.
The key is to be sure your back is flat. And that you do the exercise 10 minutes each day, changing positions every two minutes or so. For the rest of the time, your belly is pulled all the way back into the spine.
"The fingertips on the bellybutton are really important for this reason," she says. "So you know that you're squeezing tight, tighter with the belly, and you're never bulging the bellybutton forward."
And here's what I wrote to NPR:
Good morning Michaeleen,
This message is in regards to “Flattening the ‘Mommy Tummy’ with 1 Exercise, 10 Minutes a Day.”
I am a local Health and Fitness professional in Nashville, TN. I have a lot of women who come in and out of my gym and I want to bring to your attention a few points in this article that are so important to be mindful of.
This article has so much relevant information in it for mothers, soon to be mothers, and really anyone. I look forward to sharing the portion of this article that specifically speaks to the healing of diastasic recti. Had this article focused on healing the muscle damage after child birth, or even the best practices in preventing diastasic recti, instead of suggesting to mothers that they need to “flatten their tummies," "lose inches around their waist," and talk about their “jelly bellies,” I would have felt so excited to share it with women in my life.
I really appreciate the way you are speaking to this on Twitter. I’m afraid your passion for it not “just being a cosmetic issue,” is not recognized in this article, as mostly, it is presented that the main issue is cosmetic, and a secondary issue is back pain.
The way we talk about bodies is so important. Congratulations on having a baby! And you’re right, what you’re calling your mommy pooch isn’t a valiant badge of giving birth - what is a valiant badge is how you are showing up every single day for your child. It’s when you show up for soccer games, or recitals, or tough conversations or the way you empower your kid to have fun. A valiant badge is the way you love your child - it’s in who you are as a mother, not at all what your body looks like. I also really feel you in being bothered by "the pooch” - it really sounds like something you don’t love about your body and I hear that from so many women in my life. However, in your second paragraph, you report that the pooch has been causing you back pain. But as the article goes on, you mention that the reason for the “pooch" is diastasic recti, a separation of your abdomen muscles. Ergo, the reason for your back pain has nothing to do with the shape of your stomach and actually has everything to do with your lack of core strength that most women experience after child birth.
This article is filled with great information, and then minimizing that great information, is body shaming.
“This is our fourth week of class, and we've been doing this same exercise on our own every day for at least 10 minutes. So it's judgement day. Time to see if we've flattened our bellies.” This vocabulary makes it sound like our reason for being strong in our bodies is to be judged to see just how flat our bellies can become. The power of a woman is so much more than that, as you obviously know, and it is so upsetting to see articles like this, from a science perspective, that seriously damage the way we think about strength and exercise and our self-worth. “One woman had amazing results. "Oh my goodness, you lost nearly four inches from your belly circumference," Keller exclaims. "That's amazing!”” Shouldn’t the success be measured by the strengthened core, the healing of her diastasis recti, the lessening of back pain and that this woman probably feels so much more confident in her body because she can move with less pain?
This last paragraph: "And I am quite happy with the results. My abs are definitely firmer. And regularly doing this exercise brought a bonus benefit: My lower back pain has almost completely gone away.” Of course your core is more firm because you’ve been doing 10 minutes of core exercises per day for the past 4 weeks. Our bodies are extremely adaptable and also crave movement. Imagine if women did that before, during, and after their pregnancies. Imagine what it would feel like if there was never a judgment day. Imagine what it would feel like if no-one (in day-to-day life or the media) ever pointed out your "mommy tummy” or “pooch” and instead told you that they too have had to learn some new things about their body now that they’ve had a baby, that they too had diastasic recti after giving birth and these were some great exercises that really helped heal that, and they too had to buy some new clothes that actually fit them, or they too feel like they have no idea how to fit in self-care on a day to day basis because what they’re doing the most of is trying to keep a new life alive.
Mindful movement heals our bodies. It’s science - it’s absolute hard science that our bodies were made for movement - and movement doesn’t just affect the way we look. It affects the way we feel, what we think, how we are in this world, what we know we can do, the way we love. Movement directly affects our brains and makes us happier. It makes us happier in the first 60 seconds that we get our heart rates up. The harm, fear, and shame that comes from just doing movement to look a certain way often lasts us a lifetime. My 90 year old grandmother, who has recently suffered from colon cancer, breast cancer and a hip replacement within 10 months of my grandfather, her husband of 65 years, passing away, was asked by her doctor to gain 10 pounds. She said to me, “honey, I’ve been trying to lose weight all my life. I don’t know how to eat to gain weight.” And oh my gosh that is not how I want to live my life - always trying to lose weight. And that’s not why I want to exercise either, to lose weight or to look a certain way. I want to exercise because it makes me feel absolutely alive - because the neurons that begin to fire in my brain that make me happy and smart and alert, are constantly wiring together as I consistently exercise and I want to continue that. I want to create new neurological pathways, not get skinny and flat.
I am not a mother, but as a 13 year old girl, I would have read an article like this, measured my waist, and tried to lose 4 inches around it in 4 weeks.
As science professionals, it is so important to present the science in a way that is clear and not clouded by opinion or body shaming. Who is more at risk for body shaming than a new mother? Or really any person who’s body is changing.
My PLEA is that we are more conscious in writing about the body. That we speak to the science of lack of abdominal strength causing back pain and how to help yourself heal.
And Michaeleen, your experience as a new mother is so important and can help so many. In fact, even in this article, expressing that having this “mommy pooch” and that is bothers you, allows other women to go, “me too!” and that in itself is healing, knowing someone else is in your same shoes. But please please be conscious of how you are sharing.
There is a film called Embrace that I think is lovely. It’s on Netflix.
Thank you for reading and thank you for sharing your experience.
Happy Sweating,
Kate Moore
Changing the conversation happens when we speak up.
Changing the conversation happens when we are kind and come from a space of listening and understanding.
Changing the conversation happens when we don't shame others just because we feel shame.
I am not my body. You are not your body. We are not our bodies.
My other PLEA goes out to those of us who are really fighting for authenticity and strength in our mind, bodies, spirits and communities. Please continue fighting FOR what you believe in, instead of AGAINST what you don't. Be part of a positive conversation, not a negative one. Instead of posting, "booo NPR you really fucked this one up." Post, "Hey NPR, thank you so much for sharing this story, it's brought up a few things for me that I'd like to share regarding the article..." Instead of following social media accounts that you dislike just to see what's out there and then bitching about them, don't engage with it at all. If you see something you don't like, instead of hating on it, just love on an account that you love!
