The alarm sets off – the sound a mother always dreads to hear. Another day arrived preceded by another night of sleep deprivation. Reluctantly, though swiftly, I turned off the alarm while making sure the baby is still asleep. I sheepishly dragged myself to freshen up and make wudu for fajr. The quiet attempt to take an exit out of the room felt like walking over a minefield, one wrong step and the game is over. Alhamdulillah I somehow managed to go into the other room to pray in peace. So I started my prayer, and then soon after went for ruku’. I suddenly felt my back getting locked combined with a sharp pain! My heart sank instantly. The pain is coming back, the pain of my herniated disc. I end up in minimum of three days’ complete bed rest when it happens. Alhamdulillah I had my mom with me at that time, but I couldn’t expect her to do all the chores! How will I do my work or take care of the kids?! My heart thumped fast out of anxiety. What do I do now?!
Fast forward nine months since that day and my mom had gone back to Bangladesh, without any help now I carry both my kids at the same time when needed even though they are getting big, Alhamdulillah. I can execute the chores of my house with a lot of ease compared to before, even the ones which I had my husband do for me due to the intensity of the task. I still manage to go through a day feeling energized even if I didn’t have a decent night’s sleep. With all the heavy lifting, not once since that day has the sharp pain in my lower back come back! What a huge mercy from Allah. A herniated disc is a lifetime problem, not even surgery can guarantee you full recovery and it is one of the most common problems many people face, and I happen to be one of them. I started my journey of this illness from 4 months postpartum. You might be thinking, “Well, it’s easier said than done.” Or I might have had it easy to do all these due to some reason. Let me ask you this question being a mother, which mother in the entire world has it easy? Even if some have helping hands, it still gets difficult for them at some point. Not to mention, once a mother, trying to take care of yourself seems far fetched. Hence, that aspect of easiness goes out of the window.
Without further ado, let me tell you how it all began…going back to that dreadful day of pain. After realizing the intensity of the pain, I broke my salah, took a chair and then prayed sitting. SubhanAllah how weak we are and how within moments we get incapable of doing the simplest of things, which we often take for granted. After salah, I broke down in tears asking Allah to help me get through this. It can’t go on like this for me; I needed to take some sort of initiation to mend myself for good. Soon after, I googled the physio exercises on herniated disc, found a few useful exercise videos and started doing them slowly. My back pain didn’t go away but it was under control with the exercises. I avoided heavy lifting and fortunately, my mom was with me, so I could afford that break. A week went by, I finally found full relief of the back pain, though I still avoided heavy lifting or bending. My baby weight was dragging me down. I had babies back to back, so I accumulated weight from both the pregnancies put together. I was never this heavy in my entire life hence my body was not good at coping with the weight. It also explained my back pain. How do I get myself out of this? I felt depressed, low and weak not good feelings for a mother to have as it affects the grooming of a child.
One day, I came across a post of a sister in a mother’s group where she explained how she managed her fitness postpartum. She has been the person who started the fitness journey since her teen years but in her first pregnancy she gained a lot of weight. A lot of people told her that’s the norm but she refused to give in. She started eating clean again and trained hard. Soon after, she swiftly went back to her pre-pregnancy form. I was awed by her achievement and I said to myself ‘I want that! This can be done!’ So I contacted her and shared my situation. She empathized and assured me that I am not highly overweight, I can very much achieve my goals. I asked her to guide me and she did. She gave me the general guidelines to follow, the motivation and the push I needed. And that is when it all began. I gradually started to eat clean. Though I had my sugar slip ups, it was ok, I just made sure to keep on going without stopping. Then I started researching on low impact workout routines which won’t strain my back. I found good routines and started following them. SubhanAllah, I started feeling the changes almost immediately! Though my weight scale was not shifting any faster, but my body strength and energy had heaps of improvement. Finally, some results! Well, I felt the results rather than seeing them because looking slim and having taut belly was not my aim at that moment. This is where we set the problem for ourselves. Eating clean and doing workouts has become more about achieving that good-looking physique we would like for ourselves. Being healthy and strong is the main factor here and the looks is just the complementary part of it. This is why many have strayed or given up not being able to cope with those so-called quick fix crash diets. These might somewhat work to reduce weight but definitely not help you gain lean muscle for strength and agility.
“I don’t want to be masculine by gaining muscle!” some say. Now hold your horses, you don’t have to get buffed when you strength train yourself and there are various ways to strength train. You can use weights or you can use your body weight. The yogis in yoga have to build their upper body strength to carry out the poses but do you see them buffed or masculine? I think not, they look quite graceful yet strong. Hence, doing workouts to lose body fat has to do with combination of few forms of exercises, like incorporating cardio intervals and total body moves for extra cardiovascular work & a higher calorie burn or body weight with only HIIT (High intensity Interval Training) exercises, etc.
You might feel overwhelmed by all these terminologies; so was I. I was lost at times but I kept on doing research on what works best for me and Alhamdulillah today I am down by 16 kilos and stronger than my pre-pregnancy form. There are no shortcuts and quick fixes. A body that takes so many years to accumulate the weight, can’t be expected to get rid of the junk within a week or a month as some bogus diet plans claim. It takes effort and consistency. All best things in life require these two elements. I am the last person to be consistent let me assure you that. Never in my life did I do this and yet Allah got me this far. It is achievable, very much achievable by anyone.
I am neither a fitness instructor nor a nutritionist, just a regular mom. But I would like to pass on a few tips that worked for me and it might help you as well when you decide to take on this wonderful and rejuvenating journey of fitness.
- Work on your flexibility: Search videos on how to stretch your muscles because flexible muscle is the key essence to your well-being and good posture. Moreover, if you have back pain like I did or shoulder pain, etc, try doing stretch exercises on those painful areas initially. That’s where you’ll first start feeling all the goodness. While at it, consult with your doctor before taking up this journey.
- Eat clean: Counting calories or working on macros etc seems com- plicated for me hence I don’t do that. I try finding what’s Low GI car- bohydrate and what’s not, what are the good sources of protein, good fat and fibre and I go ahead with those. There are lots of resources out there on eating healthy and making them taste good at the same time. Just to let you know, the cravings will not go away that easily and this is the battle of nafs you will have to face. I found fasting very helpful which calms down the bad cravings. 70% of fitness depends on good nutrition and the rest 30% is on exercise.
- Find a group: There are lots of others who are in your shoes facing the same postpartum difficulties. Make a group together and share each of your experiences and achievements; this will keep you motivated for sure by seeing what others are doing. Taking on this journey of fitness alone never goes far, it didn’t for me atleast.
- Do your training on a treadmill or epileptic trainer: Get your heart rate up and get your body used to the intensity slowly by working out on these for a few days before going into the free hand exercises. As your body is not used to the intensity, starting with any of these trainers will help to get your system started. If you don’t have any of these, keep on doing the stretches and search up low impact warm up routines and do them. It should work fine.
- Find a good workout routine that works for you: I started with a YouTube channel called Fitness Blender, their low impact workouts helped me build my foundation. You need to plan out your workout routine atleast 3 days a week, dividing them with one day of upper body workout, one day of lower body and then another day of total body or separate abs workout. I am still using Fitness Blender as others didn’t work for me as much.
- Before doing the workouts, make sure your posture is right: When you are doing the workouts, with the correct form or posture you are safe from any injury, otherwise bad posture can get you injured. So look at yourself in a mirror when doing those workouts at first and then maintain your form.
- Invest on resources: You might be doing only body weightworkouts, but trust me, in order to build upper body strength you do need to use some weight. For starters 1-3 kg weight dumbbells works well and also invest on a good exercise mat or else you might hurt your back when doing the workouts laying down.
- It is highly recommended to not look at the scales much because it will move on a slow pace, so in order to avoid disheartening yourself avoid doing that for the first few weeks.
Good health is one of the most crucial blessings Allah has bestowed upon us. It helps us carry out the effort of doing good deeds! Allah loves strong believers more than the weak ones, both in terms of iman and health and these are inter-related. When you are weak in health, your iman weakens too, as your body doesn’t support doing those acts of worship to its fullest potential and vice versa. We must make the most out of good health while we have it rather than taking it for granted. Ibn Abbas (radiAllahu anhu) narrates, that the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “There are two blessings which many people lose, they are health and free time for doing good.” [Sahih Bukhari]
Lastly, I would like to remind myself and others that, taking care of our health is one of the most due sadaqah we owe to ourselves. We want to be mothers who will lead an ummah through their children. But if we lose our energy and strength to do so, then what future can we see for ourselves and in the upbringing of our children? Rabbatul Bayt we are, hence staying strong in both Iman and physique is highly called for my sisters.
