The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
Some housekeeping; Bloating during the period, the FODMAP diet and deadlifting postpartum
I'm changing things around a bit at the podcast so a bit of housekeeping to start the episode with
This week I'm answering some great questions that I've had.
You might have heard me talk about bloating and the impact on diastasis recti before.
A great question this week was to do with bloating around your period and whether this also affects diastasis recti recovery.
Then I talk a bit about the FODMAP diet as a solution for people who have issues with IBS/bloating etc. I personally think there's a better solution for this group of people and that's journalling.
And, finally, I'm talking heavy lifting/deadlifts postpartum. Why when I say "You can do whatever you want" I actually mean it!
Just a reminder that HPNB now only has 5 billing cycles!
So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!
BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.
Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!
And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)
Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.
Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic
Playing us out this week "My Roots" by Cira Grandi
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, peter Lapp. That, as always, will be me. This is the podcast for the 13th of April 2025. And the reason I said the date before the music, even though I don't have a guest on is because I'm changing things around a little bit. I've done 300 odd of these episodes and, to be honest, I do one a week. I did two a week for a while and I'm tired. People I have so much stuff happening with with changes are making to HP and B, and the podcast will change a little bit in that I will do a new one once every two weeks and the alternating week I will do one from the vault. I get a lot of emails, a lot of questions from people and I love them all and I still respond to them all individually. But I've covered quite a lot of this ground already on the podcast. I don't really see the need to take another two, three, four hours Cause, believe it or not, this crappy little podcast does take a bit of time. To spend that much time on the podcast when I have one sitting there that I can just use right, obviously, work on the sound quality a bit and all that type of stuff. So that's what we're going to do. So for today's episode. Next week will be a completely new thing again, again. And for today's episode, I'm talking about bloating, uh, during the period um, um, bloating around your period, whether that affects diastasis recovery. Talk a bit about the FODMAP diet and deadlifting postpartum. Um, because I had questions about well, two out of three, to be honest, but I always get a question asking about lifting heavy things, postpartum and all that type of stuff. Anyways, peter at healthy postnatalbodycom, if you have any questions, any comments at all, let me know. That's what I'm here for, right, right? So, without further ado, here's your bit of music. Then we go into the episode about bloating and the FODMAP diet and all that sort of fun stuff. Right, see you next week. Bye-bye, hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with little old me.
Speaker 1:This is the podcast for the 3rd of December 2023. You know we're in December, it is dark. I'm recording this on a Friday afternoon at approximately 4.20pm and it's pitch black outside. There is no light anywhere anymore, and you know this is the way of the world now. It's pitch black everywhere and cold. It is so cold. On the plus side. I'm here with Bob, kitty and Lola, but is sleeping in the other room. So all is well in our world. I hope you're well. I am once again. I'm doing more listener emails because you know that's what I do when I don't have a guest on.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about the things that you asked about, peter at HealthyPostnatalBuddycom. By the way, if you have any questions, any comments, maybe you know if you want to give the podcast a little five-star review on Apple, it'd be appreciated. By the way, you know I keep forgetting to ask that stuff. If you're one of the people listening and say, ah, I don't mind this guy too much, then by all means leave a little five star review, maybe even, uh, even a little review type of viewer. Yay, well done, pete, sort of thing in that. Um, just so other people can find it easier apple keeps pushing, spotify and all those platforms keep pushing, uh, the podcast period, bloating. That's, jen, there's a nice segue. Um, that's what I'm talking about for the first part.
Speaker 1:Today I had a question from somebody that said pete, you talk, talk a lot about I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the email anymore, because I'm a jackass that said Pete, you talk a lot about bloating and I still have diastasis recti and you talk about how bloating interferes with that. What about period bloating? I have diastasis recti and my bloating is pretty bad during my period. Will that interfere with my diastasis recovery? And that's an excellent question because I do tend to bang on a little bit about bloating and diet and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:Again, for most of you listening you'll have heard me say this before, but just in case you're you're new to the podcast uh, dinosaur director is essentially caused by internal pressure and bloating is, you know, an increase in internal pleasure. Uh, pressure even. Uh, my english isn't great today, by the way. I have no idea what's happening, but I'm literally. It took me literally like eight or nine takes to do the intro and I'm not doing this again. We're just going to plow ahead. There will be no editing, we're just going to stick with it and you know the transcribing software and people will just have to struggle trying to figure out what I actually said. I hope you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So diastasis recti is caused by internal pressure. So not just necessarily being pregnant, but bloating and all that sort of stuff is part of that, as I always say and what I say, that if you are experiencing, like food type bloating whilst you have diastasis recti, in an ideal world you'll change your diet in such a way that you'll bloat less. Right, not possible for everybody, but you know, wherever you can, you do that and it will help speed your diastasis recti recovery up. Right, that is like a one-on-one makes two type situation. Of course, period bloating there's very little you can do about now, right? If you always experience bloating during your period, then that is just what it is.
Speaker 1:Um, most people, most women that I come across, of course, don't bloat for 30 days when it's, uh, period related, right? And this is kind of what the difference is between food bloating and period bloating. Period bloating is relatively temporary and that's for maybe five days as a push. It can be a little bit longer, but what I find with most food-related bloating that people complain about is that it is much more frequent than almost every day, because the reaction to the everyday foodstuffs that are causing the bloating is usually what the problem is, and quite often it's things like onions and all that sort of stuff that can cause it.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that, and again, this is specific to you, right? This is all. So onions don't cause bloating in everybody. I'm not saying telling people to stay away from onions. I'm just saying that if it's something like onions or garlic or apples that cause the bloating, or carbohydrates, refined sugars, that cause bloating and carbohydrates, refined sugars that cause bloating and you're used to having those things every single day, then you're basically bloating 30 days out of the month, whereas and that is obviously easily adjustable whereas period bloating is for a few days and then everything kind of goes back to normal a little bit. So don't worry too much about it. That is not enough to really push any diastasis recovery uh, or interfere with any diastasis rectal recovery.
Speaker 1:And of course, you can still do your exercises during when you're bloated. Anyways, right, you can still. There is no reason why you can't do uh, unless you have crippling period pains, but there's no reason why you can't do those exercises. I always tell people who are on the HPMB program, the Healthy Postnatal Bodycom program, that in an ideal world you would just do the home routine. If you don't have the energy to do the strength session that week of those few days, then you just do the home routine. It's like seven minutes, usually relatively gentle exercises, but that just keeps everything going and that makes a huge difference. So when you come out at the end of it of your period and the bloating is gone, you'll have still made some progress and that's a wonderful place to be out, right? Um, so that's the difference between food bloating and period bloating.
Speaker 1:Food bloating is a much more permanent uh thing for most people. I think it's it's permanent is the wrong word uh, it's a much more regular thing, for it happens more frequently, right, regularly. I regularly get emails from people, from women, that say in the morning I wake up with a flat tummy and by the evening it's completely round, swollen, and now look, three, four, five, six months pregnant again. And yeah, that can happen. And if that's caused by foodstuffs, then it's trying to find out what causes. That is a very valuable thing to do and actually I was going to talk about the FODMAP diet later on, but I think we'll do it now. You'll come across the FODMAP diet A lot of people are talking about now.
Speaker 1:Basically, you cut out a whole bunch of foods that can cause bloating and IBS and all that sort of stuff and then slowly but surely, you reintroduce them again, one by one. I'm not a huge fan of that diet? I think it's. It's it works for for medicine reasons? I for um, for medical reasons, I get it. If you have to do the diet for medical reasons, that's a different thing. If you're just trying to find out which item is causing you trouble, it's a terribly restrictive and stupid diet to go on because you're basically cutting everything out and then you're slowly reintroducing things bit by bit, whereas I'm a much bigger fan of cutting out.
Speaker 1:Actually, just keep doing what you're doing and keeping a food journal and write down what you had and the reaction it caused, and takes about a minute. So on three based on three meals. That's three, three minutes a day. You just journal but what you ate and whether that caused any bloating or not, and that allows you then to narrow down what can actually be the problems. If you find that you bloat after chili and you bloat after pasta, you bloat after I don't know shepherd's pie, you bloat after chinese food, that's, then you can say, okay, what do all these things have in common, right? And then you can say, okay, all of them contain onion. Well, maybe I should cut out onion.
Speaker 1:That, to me, is a much more sensible approach than, say, I'm cutting out onion, I'm cutting out corn, I'm cutting out dairy, I'm cutting out eggs, I'm cutting everything out that could potentially be an irritant, and then I'll slowly try reintroducing one at a time again. So I'll introduce some onion, oh no, this is fine and that takes a long time, but you can just sort it out in a week or two, right, you can narrow down what causes that type of thing within a week or two just by journaling and keeping accurate track of, uh, of the food you eat and the reaction you have to the foods. So this is not like a my fitness pal food logging type thing that I, that I tell people to do, uh, not at all. There's no calorie counting, there's no portion counting, not saying I had two bowls of spaghetti and that caused this reaction. Uh, or. But just say I had a glass of milk, so I had milk, fine, right. And if after milk you were fine, um, and then if I say in the morning you have your cereal, you have your, you know, you have your wheat to bix in the morning, if you eatabix and that comes with milk, and you find you're fine after that, and then in the afternoon you go to Caffe Nero or a Christmas market or something, you have a hot chocolate and all of a sudden the bloat is back. Then hot milk could well be something, especially if you then could also say oh, I have the same reaction after a cappuccino. The same reaction after a cappuccino or or a latte, that type of stuff. Uh, warm milk tends to bloat anyways. Right, everybody bloats, after all chocolate, by the way. That is completely normal, but it's that is.
Speaker 1:That is the way I would go about it, I think, cutting out a whole bunch of foods in the hope that you can then reintroduce things slowly but surely. And maybe you're okay with a little bit of onion, maybe you're not okay with too much onion, oh. But then, on that day that you just increased onion intake, you also upped the dairy intake or the egg intake a little bit, and now you're confused about which one of the two. So you cut out eggs, but you find you're still bloating. And then you're like I'm just on the FODMAP diet and on the day I introduced eggs again, I started bloating. Yeah, but it was actually caused by an increase in onions or whatever it is. It just you know it's a messy way of doing it, it's very restrictive.
Speaker 1:And who was it again from the Wits and Waits podcast that I had on, because I love that saying Let me just Philip, philip, was it Philip? Wits and Waits? See, now I'm in jackass because I can't remember Wits and Waits, wits and Waits podcast. I can't find it because I'm such a dingus and, yes, you're going to have to listen to me. Google this. It's podcast, right? So I do want to give a shout out Philip Pape I knew it was Philip, something, philip Pape, like he was saying, and definitely check out his podcastpe. Like he was saying, and definitely check out his podcast. By the way, he was saying it's about creating an atmosphere of abundance, right, what he does, body composition and all that sort of stuff and diet advice.
Speaker 1:And I really like that approach because almost everything that we do in the health and fitness world is restrictive in one way or another. It tends to be don't do this, don't do that, don't do that, don't do X, don't do Y, don't do Z, whereas a much healthier approach is saying no, do this, do that, do that. So, for instance, when it comes to postpartum training, I don't tell you not to do anything. If you can perform an exercise correctly, you can do that exercise, it is not going to hurt. So, instead of saying no planks, no crunches, now you can do all the planks and all the crunches in the world.
Speaker 1:Whether the crunches will help you get closer towards your goal is a completely different matter. But if you like doing crunches and you perform them well, as in your body knows what to do, you use the right muscles at the right time and all that sort of stuff, and you exhale through the exercise, as I always say, there is no reason at all why you can't do crunches. You love doing crunches, you do crunches. Who cares? It's not going to make your diastasis worse.
Speaker 1:Also, if you're pregnant, by the way, I had this question from someone who used to train with somebody else and is now training with me, who is very early on in the pregnancy journey. Then she was asking whether she could do crunches because you know it might squeeze the baby, and that is. You know. I don't know what some, some personal trainers are telling their clients. But no, that is not how crunches work. That's also not how babies sit and all that sort of stuff. And if you're early on, babies are so tiny anyways, but they don't sit in your rib cage, right. So babies don't get squeezed by crunches. That doesn't mean you should be doing crunches. Babies, early postpartum, don't get squeezed by by, uh, by doing crunches and all that sort of stuff. That is just not how that's how that works. But postpartum especially, there's no reason why you can't do crunches. They just don't necessarily help heal your diastasis recti, all that. Well, now I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1:Uh, if you're part of the healthy postnatal body program, there are crunches in the hpmb program, um, but they tend not to be the standard crunches, right, we do bicycle crunches, we do crossover crunches, so mainly abdominal, um, oblique work, rather than straight up crunches. There's some toe reach crunches in there. I know they're in there for the top two, basically top two abs, because they're just nice to get in there. But they come after, I want to say after leg raises and after some oblique stuff again. So our TVA work right, so we don't do a hundred of them, but they won't hurt you, I mean, if you are a member of the HPNB program, and I won't keep banging on about that, but it's just, if I remember, by the time you get to those crunches, to those crunches, they're not a problem for you anymore. Right, you'll be completely fine to do them. They're in the program, is in an order for a reason.
Speaker 1:Um, so there isn't a single exercise and it's the same with deadlifts. Like I said, I was asked about deadlifting postpartum and this was from, uh, someone who's an athlete, right? Um, they sent an email asking when they could do deadlifts again and they told me they weigh 65 kg at the moment and their personal best for deadlifts is around about the 120 kg mark and she'd like to increase that Now. She doesn't deadlift for a living, by the way, but you know she's strong. That's what I'm saying. If you are deadlifting almost twice your body weight, you're doing nicely, right? The equivalent of that for me is lifting 190. 190 kg I weigh about 92, 93 kg, and so you know, when you think 130 or 120, 130 doesn't sound that impressive, it is. If you're 60, 65 kg, that is really really good going. Like I said, this person is really strong. But she asked if she could do deadlifts.
Speaker 1:So we had a little Zoom call and we just saw that everything is moving fine and you know how to perform the exercise and therefore, yeah, you can do whatever you want. You can't screw this up If your body knows how to do an exercise such as a deadlift or a squat or whatever, and you don't brace during that movement, so you don't hold your breath. That's fundamentally what I mean with bracing right and you teach your body to when you exhale on the effort, so on the deadlift, that's on the way up, inhale on the way down and exhale on the way up, and that means your core tightens as you do because you're using the core breath right. I'm making several assumptions here. You're using the core breath, as you'll find out on our YouTube channel. And the other is the first thing that the first email you get, the first exercise you see when you're, when you do the program, but it's like I said, it's also on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1:If you're not a member, if you exhale actually like that through the motion, you can't injure yourself, at least not by a size of rectal right, and if your form is good, you will never injure yourself during a deadlift. Deadlifts is one of the safest exercises in the world to do for people who know how to do them Right the world to do for people who know how to do them Right. It is really really difficult to injure yourself doing the deadlift if you execute the deadlift well and that, to be fair, that kind of goes for most exercises. But it's much easier to injure yourself running or walking or anything like that than it is to do it during a deadlift, and this goes for any big lift. If you are athletically inclined or you like lifting really heavy things, you know, then go and do that. Just make sure your body is ready for it.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the worst pieces of advice I think women, generally speaking, are given postpartum is don't lift anything. That's terrible advice. First of all, it's not practical because, generally speaking, are given postpartum is don't lift anything. That's terrible advice. First of all, it's not practical because you know you have to lift stuff in your day-to-day life. But also, lifting weights is the single fastest way for you to recover postpartum, for you to get stronger postpartum. There isn't anything else. Running isn't gonna do it, cardio isn't gonna do it.
Speaker 1:Trx style training it's not really likely to do it. You have to resist. You'd have to do resistance stuff which even on the and that can be balance and it can be kettlebells and it can. It can be all that stuff and, to be fair, it can be TRX as well, just not the way most people use a TRX, but it's um. Then it can be body weight training, but you have to have some sort of resistance element in it, otherwise the, the muscles simply won't recover, won't get stronger and won't start functioning well.
Speaker 1:Right, it always comes back to the. In the beginning, you, we work on on the rehab element a little bit, and then we immediately jump into strength and conditioning. Right, that is what any good postpartum program is. Is is like first four to six weeks, right, we're working on the rehab element, and after that we do the strength and conditioning bit. We strengthen everything up. And by strengthening everything up, I mean that should technically be part of rehab.
Speaker 1:But if you look at quite a few postpartum programs, they ignore that bit, and physios tend to do that as well. They tend to really focus on range of motion and all that sort of stuff. And then you know, if you have a sore shoulder and you go see a physio, they'll focus on range of motion, make sure you can move pain-free, and all that sort of stuff. And then they see you on your merry way saying, oh, you're good to go, where's the best way to then? The next step would then should that that be? Go and strengthen those muscles up so that you'll be protected in the future from preventing future injuries. Right, the best way to prevent any injury is always by having strong muscles. And you know if it's a head injury, wear a helmet. But you know that that really is. Is is the the go-to? So dead lifting heavy yes, you're fine. Squirting heavy yes, you're fine.
Speaker 1:Fencing I had a fencing client who likes to fence and Vanessa likes to. I mean, does it again at a fairly high level? Yeah, it's completely safe. Fencing isn't even as high impact as I thought it was, to be honest, because of the agility with which they move and it's astonishing when you see it. It's much more similar to dancing than it is to I don't know gymnastics or anything like that. You know, impact-wise I mean, and movement-wise, kung fu, kickboxing you can do all that sort of stuff postpartum. You just have to make sure that you've done that rehab stage first and then strengthen things up a little bit. Right, kickboxing by itself, again, would not get the muscle stronger, but all the conditioning stuff you tend to get with it would. So you know, you do any sort of postpartum recovery program and then you go focus on the strength element and after that you shouldn't get injured again, you can do whatever you want. And then you go focus on the strength element and after that you shouldn't get injured again, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1:The goal of any postpartum program, any rehab program and I know I've said this before, so apologies if I bore people with this is to get you fixed and get you out the door. You shouldn't have to pay year after year after year for a post-mortem recovery program. It's not that interesting and it doesn't take that long. As I always say, I give the first three months of the first 13 weeks actually four months. You get to see the first four months of the program if you sign up for HPMP and you get that for free. And if you then hang around, you can hang around and focus on other areas. But that is not so much necessarily the pure diet, science of recovery, early stages of postpartum recovery, sort of stuff. That is much more of the.
Speaker 1:I want to work on my legs, I want to work on my core, I want to work on my posture, I want to work on my back and I want to tone up and all that sort of stuff. You can also do that by yourself in a completely safe manner. If you've completed the first 13 weeks of the program properly, you don't need to stick around. And I make that very, very clear when I send out the emails, or when the system sends out the emails that tells you that your program is coming to an end. Did your free trial is coming to an end? Listen, if you want to stick around, great. But if not, go have fun at the gym, go do what you want to do.
Speaker 1:You should at that stage be completely and utterly ready to do whatever it is you want to do.
Speaker 1:If you find you're not, then you can always just pause, stop the program there, pause the program whatever you do, cancel the subscription and then start up again later and you or just run that that last month for for a little bit longer. But most people and by most I mean 90 95 percent of people find we did a survey on this. We did a survey on this saying most people had no dinosaurs recta issues anymore after a certain amount of time. I can't remember what it was. I think it was 13 weeks or four months or something like that. It's on the MASSIC website, the M-I-S-S-I-C website, because I did one for them to show the efficacy and effectiveness of the program and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, there you go. You do an early rehabby bit, then strengthen the muscles up which you can do by yourself as well and then you're completely free to do whatever it is you want, whether you deadlift twice your body weight or whether you're a tennis player, kickboxer, whatever it is, just go, do your thing.
Speaker 1:Whether you like to run, you go and run. It really doesn't matter that much. Right? I think that's covered everything. I think I'm 26 minutes in. We're flying through this thing. So there we are. That, my friends, is it for this week. I'm completely done. I'm completely pooped as well, to be honest. We're going for a walk on the beach tomorrow to recharge the batteries a little bit. Like I said, it's coming up to December. It is December now. It's coming up to Christmas, so there will be one or two from default episodes. I have a beautiful episode. It's two hours long. There's somebody's postpartum depression journey and there's an interview with the social worker after that, or social worker whatever, the therapist, whatever who helped her recover after that. But I'm getting that ready now, waiting on approval and all that sort of stuff. That might be a January sort of thing. Several guests lined up, but peter at healthyposthatalbodycom, if you have any questions yourself, right, you take care of yourself, have a tremendous week and I'll check in on you next week, right?
Speaker 2:Bye now, baby.
Speaker 2:There ain't no sense in waiting. Yeah, we don't know if we got the time. Oh, I'm just a country girl in a real big world. You can catch me on 65 Driving to the mountain top. I don't make no stops. Yeah, this town was once all that I knew. I'll never forget my roots. I'll never forget my roots. Maybe I'll end up in the city Underneath all the flashing lights. Maybe I'll be in a new country. Oh, and I go to sleep at night.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm just a country girl in a real big world. You can catch me on 65 driving to the mountain top. I don't make no stops. Yeah, this town was once all that I knew. I'll never forget my roots. I'll never forget my roots. I'll never forget my roots. I'll never forget my roots roots. There's nothing you can make me do to ever forget my roots. Oh, I'm just a country girl in a real big world. You can catch me on 65 driving to the mountain top. I don't make no stops. Yeah, this town was once all that I knew. I'll never forget my roots. I'll never forget my roots.