72. Rebuilding Your Relationship with Food Postpartum: Healing Beyond Bounce-Back Culture

Feeling disconnected from your body after having a baby? Struggling with food guilt, pressure to “bounce back,” or wondering how to nourish yourself in this new season?

In this solo episode of The Vibrantly You® Podcast, Caitlin shares a compassionate conversation about rebuilding your relationship with food postpartum and learning to trust your body again after pregnancy, birth, and the emotional journey into motherhood.

This episode is not about dieting, restriction, or fixing your body. It’s about understanding what is physiologically happening in the postpartum period, honoring your changing needs, and creating a more peaceful, supportive approach to nutrition.

In this episode, Caitlin covers:

• Why the pressure for postpartum weight loss and “bouncing back” can damage body trust 
•  What your body is actually going through hormonally and physically after birth 
•  How to practice intuitive nourishment in the early postpartum season 
•  Releasing control and learning to support your body instead 
•  Why creating rhythms works better than rigid food rules 
•  How TTC, pregnancy loss, infertility, pregnancy, and labor can impact your relationship with your body 
•  Baby steps to rebuild trust with food and yourself (because healing is not linear) 

This episode is for the mom who wants to feel grounded, nourished, and at peace in her body again.

Because postpartum nutrition isn’t about shrinking yourself. It’s about replenishing, healing, and creating the foundation for long-term wellness.

As a perinatal nutritionist, Caitlin brings both evidence-based insight and real compassion to this conversation so you can move forward with less pressure and more trust.

Tune in for more conversations on postpartum recovery, pregnancy nutrition, hormone health, motherhood wellness, and free resources for new moms from a pregnancy personal trainer and perinatal nutritionist helping you feel Vibrantly You®.

Postpartum Nutrition Guide: https://www.wholesomehuntressnutrition.com/product-page/nourish-to-flourish-postpartum-nutrition

Cycle Syncing Mini Course: https://stan.store/wholesomehuntressnutrition/p/cycle-syncing-mini-course

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only and not to diagnose or treat any conditions. Before beginning any type of fitness or nutrition program, it is your responsibility to consult with a medical professional.

Connect with us! 

• Instagram @vibrantlyyoupodcast
• Meg's Instagram @vibrantmamawellness
• Caitlin's Instagram @wholesomehuntressnutrition

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Vibrantly You podcast. We're your hosts Megan Martinow.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

And Caitlin Cipriano. In this podcast, we talk about fitness and nutrition on a motherhood journey. Whether you are trying to conceive, pregnant, postpartum, or beyond, you are welcome here.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Nothing is off-limits, and our goal is to support you in this important season of life so that you can feel vibrantly you. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. Please see the show notes for more details.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Hello, hi, and welcome back to the Vibrantly You podcast. Today is a solo episode with your co-host Caitlin Cipriano, your go-to for all things nutrition on your motherhood journey. The day's episode is really one that feels close to my heart and honestly one that I wish more women and moms were talking about in the open because there is so much conversation around what to eat during pregnancy, what supplements to take, how to support your body, like all the things, right? You could think about all of the things that are outside of nutrition in relationship to this too. But then once postpartum comes, it feels like you're just expected to figure it out. And again, this is why I'm saying this is not just with food, this is with so many other things during this phase, too. Um, you are figuring everything out on your own, um, but then somehow you're expected to just bounce back while you're doing it. And I want to say this right here at the very beginning, that you do not need to bounce back. And if your relationship with food or your body feels different right now, this is very common and you are not doing anything wrong. Okay, I want to start this conversation off uh with something that again is like very um very real and personal for me during my postpartum journeys. And it's like oh, how do I describe this? It's like that feeling or that moment when you are looking in the mirror or trying to get dressed, and you just like catch this glimpse of your body in a way that you didn't expect, and um it feels like this disconnect there. It's like this doesn't feel quite like me, or uh maybe even like I am not like I'm not even sure how to take care and honor this version of myself, and I think that is so nuanced and so intricate, especially in this season, that is challenging and so even layered on top of that piece. I see a lot of um moms experience food guilt and even shame, and they enter this cycle of am I eating the right things? Why am I craving this? Shouldn't I like be able to have more control? And I think that can feel really confusing, even if you've done this work before, like maybe you've worked on your relationship with food before. This can still come up, like this is what I personally experienced. I did a lot of work on my relationship with food and relationship with self before I had kids, and some of these things that I'm describing have still come up for me, and from time to time still come up for me, and sometimes it comes out of a place that you don't necessarily expect, and so I just want to hear you, help you feel seen, and know that I get I get that it I understand, and um, so I want people to know that postpartum is not a time maybe when your body is meant to be predictable, um, your hormones are shifting. Oh my gosh, your sleep is so often disrupted for many years. Yes, those newborn days are challenging and it you do get better, but even as having both a six and a two and a half year old, like sometimes your sleep is still disrupted, right? And that's hard uh for a lot of people, myself included. I love sleep, so um it can be that can be challenging, and um your nervous system is also adapting to this time, especially early on, your body is healing, and so from this physiological standpoint, your body is in this state where it's gonna prioritize like your safety and well-being, first and foremost. And so if we relate that to our nutrition to our food, your hunger cues might feel different, your cravings might feel stronger. Um, maybe having a more like rigid and structured routine might feel harder to maintain. And so, because of some of those factors that are influenced here, this isn't you like falling off track, falling off the bandwagon. Like, I like I hate when people say that, you know, like you have not fallen off. I guarantee if you're using that statement, you have not fallen off. Um, your body is doing what it is designed to do. And just like we look at, okay, how do I support myself during pregnancy? This is how do I support myself during postpartum? Because here is where I think uh things just start to feel hard. Like these uh maybe they're not even like your expectations, they're outside, you know, environment outside environmental expectations, but there can certainly be um personal inside pressure too. Um, and so some of these pressures are like get your body back, eat perfectly, lose weight quickly, have control again. And this is like where we're overriding that physiologically, what is going on in the body during this time frame. So because of those outside factors, we start to stop like maybe listening to our body intuitively, and we try to start like acting as manager instead, and we're just like questioning and judging, and um that's when the moment of like trust starts to break down when we do when we go through these uh spirals in our in our head, and so I want to talk about how we can rebuild that trust and rebuild that connection, not perfectly, not all at once, not all at once. Like this is um far from a linear journey, but we want to first off start by asking, okay, how can we shift this control to support? So we're really looking to reframe this to support. So instead of asking ourselves questions like, what should I cut out or what should I be stricter about? Try asking yourself, what would support me right now? And this, some examples, right? Like let's bring in some tangible pieces for nutrition support, but can we bring in some more grounding, warming meals? Can we try to in most of our meals um add in a great protein source and healthy fats and fiber to stabilize your blood sugar? Can we try to eat more regularly and more consistently, even on the days that feel the most chaotic? Because those pieces are about nourishment and again supporting our bodies with where they are at. It is not coming from a place of restriction. The second thing that I want to invite you to bring in is thinking about creating rhythms instead of roles. Postpartum like does not thrive thrive in my personal experience and listening to a lot of moms on really rigid structures. You can obviously have like time frames for things that really help you, but your body does obviously feel safe with some level of consistency there. Like there should be like some like routine and rhythms, but they do not need to be like again, hard and fast roles. So from a nutrition standpoint, thinking about like what are some anchoring meals that I can do regularly? What are like my simple go-to options for when I'm nursing the baby or giving the baby a bottle, and I need to grab something quick for a snack? Like, what are my go-to's? And like just some gentle predictability, and that could be as simple as being like asking your partner, like, hey, could you be like the go-to person for making dinners right now? And that takes like a little piece of capacity off of your plate. These types of like rhythm really help create safety without putting this big pressure on yourself. I want you to start practicing listening to your body during this time phase. You don't have to like perfectly read your hunger cues right now, but you can just like how Megan talks about with connecting, reconnecting to your core, we can also reconnect to our body intuitively and noticing things like when you feel a dip in energy, when do you start thinking about food? How do different types of meals make you feel? Like, how do they impact your energy level and digestive system symptoms? And like, are there things that you notice that you eat that then make your baby fussy? Like, all of these things are great to tune into, and it's not about like again being like perfect or getting it right, but it's about rebuilding your awareness. And then I want to talk about just allowing yourself to feel emotions that come up because so often it's not just about the food, and there can also be just this big shift in your identity. Um, and then not only just if you're a first-time mom, but there's shifts that happen um after you have had um multiple kids as well. Maybe there's this also like additional component of like, oh my gosh, like was did you have um you know a loss, a pregnancy loss before this? Did you go through an IVF journey? Um, you know, like there's this deep emotional layer that comes with things. Maybe you had a um, you know, a traumatic birth experience or um, you know, anything that didn't go the way maybe you expected for it to go. Like these are all massive changes, like your life has changed regardless of the nature of the outcome. Like these types of events completely alter us, and so of course, we're gonna experience changes in our relationship to our body because of this. Um, and part of this rebuilding phase is allowing yourself to again build trust and build peace and not feel like you're constantly trying to fix. We don't have to always be fixing, and so lastly, I want to say this there's gonna be days where as a mom you're eating out of convenience, you're grabbing what's click quick. Maybe it's not always balanced, right? Um, this doesn't undo anything, right? You didn't fall off the wagon. This is just part of the season. And well, yes, we want you to focus on nourishment. Um, your body doesn't need perfection in order to heal, it does need consistency, support, and compassion from yourself. And so if there's one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it's that you don't rebuild trust with your body by controlling it. You rebuild it by supporting it, by listening, by nourishing, by allowing things to feel simple and allowing your body to be on your side again. If this is something that you're navigating right now, this is exactly the kind of work I support women through. Um, I have a variety of resources and levels of those resources, you know, all the way from um guides and um mini courses and cycle syncing, um, all the way up through one on one coaching. So um, if you are looking for support, um, you can check out the show notes. That is a great place. And as always, I'm so glad you're here. Come back next week for an episode with Megan.