 A few things are definitely different. I don't know if my stomach skin will ever go back to the way that it was, if I'll always have that excess skin, and as a result, my belly button looks a little retired. It's a little sleepy, a little droopy. Used to be like, and now it's like, so I went and got it pierced. Kind of love that for myself. Interestingly though, I thought that getting it pierced would lift it up. That's not how gravity works, dummy. When you put a metal bar on droopy skin, it's only going to drip down more. But I don't care. I still love it and think it's so sexy. This video is brought to you by Squarespace. Create a stunning, cohesive brand that works for you where it matters the most. Make your message extremely clear and make your business extremely efficient, all with this one singular platform. I use Squarespace for my website. I use it for my mailing list. If I am ever going to sell merchandise, that's where I would do it. If I was ever going to have a membership's community, that's who I would do it through. It's a place that where you have ownership, but you don't have to do the heavy lifting in areas that you're not that strong at. For example, when it comes to design, when it comes to SEO management, when it comes to analytics. Truly, if you are an entrepreneur, if you are creative, or if you are someone who just likes efficiency and ease when it comes to your business and career. I highly suggest that you check out Squarespace and best of all, when and if you do, you can play around for absolute free. No credit cards required for two weeks and then if you like what you've built and you like what you see and you want to continue on, you can actually get 10% off the purchase of a website or a domain with Squarespace by going to squarespace.com slash Shanboody. Hi there, lovers and friends. In this video, I am going to talk about exactly what the title shared. Having my sexiest, strongest, boldest, baddest body ever after having two kids. That's going to include how I lost the baby weight and how I gained more muscle mass. I want to be very clear about something. This video is not a tutorial. This video is not meant to be advice. This is literally me just talking about my own lived experiences and what I've done for a couple of reasons. One, because I have been working with me andies and I've been posting some bad bitch shots on my gram as one does when they're in underwear and people have been asking about what did I do to get back to the space after having two babies. Second reason why I'm passionate about answering this question is because of the fact that I am a 38-year-old woman. A big reason, not a big reason, but an honest to goodness reason why I delayed childcare for so long is because I felt like there was a very big difference between the way that you looked and your life before kids and the way that you would look and your life after kids. I wasn't ready to let go of the body that I lived in and loved and the lifestyle that I lived in and loved. So I delayed for a very long time because I just always heard the story that your body is never the same, your breasts aren't the same, you're going to have marks you didn't have before. I mean I do have that but not in the way that most people do. Nonetheless, what I have found in my lived experience is that that hasn't been the case at all. I do not feel like my body had to pay a debt after pregnancy and furthermore I don't feel like that is as uncommon as people think that it is. Yes, I will admit that I'm a part of a minority who is blessed in that way and in my conversations with everyday people I do see that but also now that I'm more aware of postpartum life there are tons of moms that I see out there who have a similar lived experience and not everybody, I'm nine months postpartum for my second baby, not everybody gets into their bad body, whatever that means for them. Not everybody feels great in their body nine months later. I have some friends who, it took them four years but when they were ready to make those lifestyle changes and they were ready to really invest that kind of time and energy I did see the transformations and I think that's important to put out there for anybody who hasn't had children yet, who keeps this fear, who feels like this is an all or nothing conversation, it doesn't necessarily have to be. You absolutely have to remain curious to your own experiences because even if you do, the exact same things that I do, your results will probably be drastically different or the same as somebody else's but that isn't to say you won't be able to find your system and that's all that I want to encourage people. So with all those things in mind, if that feels like a decent enough disclaimer here, let's go into it and I want to talk just rawly and candidly about how I do, that's obnoxious. No, we'll keep it in because it's real because I do feel that way but I do know it's obnoxious so I want to say that for the record. One, I am an athlete, an athlete who competed internationally and who had a full scholarship so from the age nine to nineteen my body was conditioning itself every day to run at peak performance, literally I'm a runner. So that's a huge part of the genetics component as to why this was easier for me than it might have been for somebody who didn't have an athletic build, athletic genetics and wasn't living an athletic lifestyle and that lifestyle also informed a lot about my dietary needs and my workout needs. I've spent a long period of time getting to know what foods don't work and do work with my bodies as a virtue of being an athlete. So that is a huge strength that I had going into it. I will say another huge strength that I have is my core. Literally I have abs after two babies but when people ask me how I did it I'm always really weary of giving a quick answer because the real truth is I have been doing eight minutes of abs on YouTube since I was sixteen years old. In addition to my athletic past when I got pregnant because I was hyper conscious of not losing my muscle tone, not losing my athleticism I worked out a lot during my first pregnancy. I was extremely sick for the first trimester but second trimester and on damn near up until the day that I gave birth I was doing YouTube workouts and that's pretty much what I did all first pregnancy. I didn't have any personal trainers, I didn't have a gym membership. I would go running because that felt good for me up until third trimester and once my daughter was born my first daughter I used running as a way to put her to sleep and so that became part of my daily routine and anybody who runs knows the more that you do it the easier that it gets and so I actually came to really look forward to our daily runs together. Those don't happen anymore because I have two of them and there's no way that they would both be chilling in that care at the same time. I did still gain fifty pounds in my first pregnancy and I equate a lot of that to the first trimester and how much I used food to soothe and I'm not really ashamed of that obviously it worked out fine and I just didn't have any other tools. I tried everything for nauseousness, I tried everything to feel okay and even though eating didn't stop me from feeling sick it just provided a momentary distraction and that felt good for me. The other thing that I did after the first trimester though that I think allowed me to really turn things around is I realized that not only was eating takeout all the time and eating unhealthy foods not sustainable if I wanted to maintain my body but duh I'm growing a body inside of me and that is not the fuel that I want to kick my child's life off with so I had a friend of mine whom ate really well raw foods, whole foods, super foods and I said can I pay you to just buy extra groceries and make me a second plate so this was before I was really aware of meal delivery services and this was like an informal way of doing that. This is 2020 so it's pandemic times so once a week I would go over to a friend's house and she would drop off I think lunch breakfast lunch and dinner for me in jars and in packages and that's the way that I was able to keep on top of what I was eating. If you I really truly believe whatever you can do in terms of diet to get someone else to help you whether you are pregnant or you are postpartum your life is so crazy and you have so much going on and even if you intend to cook somebody gets sick something happens and the next thing you know you're hungry and you're strapped for time and it's just easiest to either pop something into the microwave that's not that healthy or just to order something and that's why these meal plan services even though they can be expensive are a really good investment. And secondly if you don't have the money because I believe like per day it can be like 50 bucks a day on some meal plan services that I've utilized and if you don't have that type of money try to look out for a friend of yours who already shops really healthy and already eats really healthy and see if you can work out a similar situation with them. Alright that was pregnancy one I found it very easy in full disclosure to get back into incredible shape after two months I felt really strong really sexy I definitely still had some separation of the abs that hadn't come back together and yeah maybe like I still have excess skin on my stomach but none of those things bothered me I really genuinely felt like I was sexier and stronger after having a baby that took me all the way up until a year and I felt like I was in the best shape of my life to be honest with you and then I found out I was pregnant with the second and this was a little heart wrenching to me because I wasn't planning on having a baby and two I just wasn't prepared for how hard it would be to be pregnant with a small child so that to be said during my second pregnancy I did not work out or eat well probably period I just really did not enjoy life I did not enjoy the experience of being pregnant and I felt not only unhappy in my body I felt so guilty for the kind of mom that I wasn't for my one-year-old who used to have a mom who had energy and you know a joy for life and a desire to get up and go and I had no go during that time but I will say this I put on 50 pounds in my first pregnancy and in my second pregnancy oh let me also just say from the first pregnancy I breastfed and I pump further more than in breastfeeding actually and I am a high producer when it comes to milk they say that you can burn up to 500 calories a day with breastfeeding and as somebody who produces anywhere from 30 at this point probably around 65 milliliters of breast milk every single day I do think that I'm on the higher end of things and so in both pregnancies afterwards I did see a drastic drop in weight and when you first start breastfeeding the milk the milk is a cholesterol which is fat fattier and it's more dense in color it's very yellow now that I'm eight months postpartum it's more like a like melted butter kind of color but in the beginning it looks like lemonade so that to be said in both pregnancies I did notice within the first three months that breastfeeding really made a difference I didn't have to do much it was just literally coming off of me the weight but after that there is like a period of time where it stops being as effective I do think it's because it stops being as dense I don't really know though so don't like quote me on that but anyways second pregnancy didn't gain as much weight and this is an honest reason not only why I lost the baby weight but why now I believe like I am trim this is not a positive thing but I got sick so frequently my daughter my oldest daughter is in daycare and was in daycare and brought back everything under the sun that's even more so the reason why I hated my second pregnancy so so much because in addition to growing a life I was fighting for my own covid norovirus hand foot and mouth disease every cold under the sun every flu under the sun she started going to daycare in the spring and we probably got sick 10 times before August came and my daughter was born and then of course thereafter now both of them are in daycare and that hasn't changed which we can do a different video on that because I gotta figure this shit out because it's not it is not sustainable how often we get sick but that's a natural appetite suppressant and so I'm not saying this in a positive way I'm just saying in full disclosure I gained less weight in my second pregnancy even though I worked out way less eight way worse and that is I think highly attributed to the fact that I got sick for example when I got covid I had lost 15 pounds which was a large amount of what I had put on during my really excessive eating period during the first trimester fast forward gave birth to my second baby and I did get the after giving birth weight loss as a result of breastfeeding and pumping but this time around I didn't have the free time to work out that I did I used to before and life is just a little bit more hectic obviously so I had to really double down on the meal prep service thing so I ended up using a service called zen foods during this time in the past couple of years I've become very obsessed with these meal delivery services one I have the financial means to do them two I can't cook and don't find joy in it so it's a very worthwhile investment and I've tried hello fresh every plate sakara life one called splendid spoon right now I'm doing thistle zen foods is one that I use for the longest amount of time and zen foods gives you everything breakfast lunch dinner snack and a dessert but the kicker was the working out thing I couldn't figure out so with my first born two months postpartum I had gotten right back into a shape that I truly loved that was not my experience with the second and I don't know if I attribute that to the fact that my body had done this two times and so things take a little bit longer or just my circumstances were totally different with Ryu like I said I used to run to put her to sleep there is no running to put one to sleep because the other one is at home more than likely and even then I was I went the maternity leave thing was all kind of janky I've talked about this before I didn't technically take one so I wasn't even able to like sneak out all the time to like go for a run because we had employees here at the house so I just wasn't working out and I tried everything I possibly could by myself I tried okay commit yourself to 20 minutes a day and then I'd fall asleep putting my oldest daughter to bed I'd say okay commit to five minutes every morning and then we'd wake up late and then by the time I got the kids out of the house for daycare I was already half an hour late for a meeting and so I just never was able to personally make the time to work out and I wasn't seeing the results in my body as a result of that and that's when I had to make the decision the first time in my life that I've done this I hired a personal trainer and that's really what took me over the edge to where I'm at now where I'm like this works I love it the system works and it's sustainable so two times a week we have somebody whom has a trailer with a gym at the back of the trailer we were actually driving along our street not that our street but a main street close to us and we saw the truck wrote the phone number down and that was it I worked out for half an hour two times a week it's nothing crazy and that is why I know I can commit to it so knowing that that trailer is going to pull up and whenever it does it's never a good time I'm never free and I always wish that he wasn't there but I go out there and I do it and afterwards I'm really really glad that it's done he also gave me this protein powder that's specific to postpartum moms and breast feeders that I found really helpful to I want to end this video with one of my favorite quotes from my dad and that is happiness is not getting what you want it's wanting what you have and regardless of where I was at body wise I always embraced and wanted what I had and was okay with what I was able to put out and that took some time and I'm so grateful for the journey of pregnancy for giving that to me especially during my second pregnancy when I didn't have much to give to the world but I still found ways to embrace myself and be okay with giving less and doing less but not feeling like less as a result of that so I hope that for you for your journey but moreover I hope that for you for your current state I think always operating from a place of self-love is the best way to approach betterment and that's what's worked for me and I'm really happy with where I'm at and speaking of all of these things when we're talking about betterment and we're talking about putting your best self out there we have to also talk about Squarespace the sponsor of this video a platform that I've been using for well over four years to organize my business and to clarify my brand and if you're looking for something similar right now you're doing a rebrand or relaunch or you're starting something brand new for the first time how exciting for you I highly suggest that you check out Squarespace and all you do is go to squarespace.com you can sign up for a free trial no credit cards required and then afterwards try to build an online store build a website look through their stunning templates and their designs check out how they organize analytics definitely check out their mailing lists they are the most affordable and one of the most stunning templates mailing lists that I have ever come across before and again there's so many other services that they offer it really is yours to discover and do it for free and if you enjoy the experience there that's when you can use squarespace.com slash sham booty to get 10% off the purchase of a website or a domain happy building and happy creating but hopefully happy you right now