Diastasis

I love to read my cousin Bethany's blog! She has a gift for keeping things interesting and to the point. I always get excited when I see she's made a new post! So I knew I wanted her to make a post for the Challenge, and that regardless of the subject, it'd be intriguing and informative! And she delivered! I'm so excited to go for the extra point and try the video! Anyway, here's what she has to say:

All through high school wherever I decided I needed to firm up my belly, I would do crunches. In college I discovered the plank, and added that to the abs routine. But even at my lowest weight, when I was working out for an hour 6 days a week, I still had a little belly pooch. I thought I just wasn't working hard enough or eating clean enough.

After I had my baby, I had more than a little pooch to deal with, and I couldn't wait to start working my core. But pregnancy and a c section had left me so weak I couldn't even sit up in bed, much less do 100 crunches! So I did what anyone would do, I asked Google! I searched for postpartum workouts, and what I found was surprising. Crunches weren't going to help me, in fact, they could make my pooch worse!

The more research I did, the more amazed I was. Diastisis recti, where the right and left halves of the Rectus Abdominis muscle spread apart, affects 90% of women during and after pregnancy, but I had never heard of it! Shouldn't my doctor have talked to me about this?? Shouldn't it have been mentioned in all the books I read??

And before you ladies that have never had babies let your eyes glaze over, keep reading! This affects you too!

It turns out that sit ups, crunches, planks and similar exercises pull your abdominal muscles apart. So while you are getting stronger, you're not helping your belly get any flatter. And if you do have a separation, those exercises are doing way more harm than good!! (If you want to find out if you have diastisis recti there's a good video that explains how to do a self check here.)

I'm not a personal trainer or exercise physiologist, and I don't have all the answers for what exercises are good or bad, but I've found that anything that requires you to pull your core muscles in (like Pilates) is going to give you a slimmer middle than something that makes you push your core out (like crunches). You also want exercises that focus on your transverse abdominous, a muscle that wraps around your middle and acts like a girdle, and not just your "six pack".

My challenge for you this week is to go to this link and do the workout. It's less than 10 minutes, and you can do it in whatever you're wearing now.

If you want a bigger challenge, measure your waist today, then do the video every day for two weeks, and see how much smaller you get! I personally lost 3/4 of an inch from my waist in two weeks, doing it 5 days a week, and without dieting or losing any weight!

If you want more information about diastisis recti, the whole website is really awesome, and has a ton of information about diastisis recti and tummy safe exercises. You have to be a member to see most of the workout videos, but all of the information is free.