Recently I found myself enthralled with season fifteen of America’s Next Top Model. I found it fascinating to watch the group of skinning and not necessarily very pretty model wannabes undergoing transformation after transformation. I found my self coveting some of the girls’ long hair made even longer with extensions. After cutting my hair short time and time again over the past two and half years, I am trying to grow it out again. As tempting as extensions would be, they are not for me and as awesome as it would be to lose the extra belly fat to resume my “teenage skinny,” pregnancy is not the time to lose weight or to even worry about losing weight.
Rather, pregnancy is a time to be another kind of model, not a necessarily tall (I would never make the cut at five foot three inches) or super skinny model, but a model of healthy pregnancy. We can be models of pregnancy by eating healthy, exercising regularly, and showing off our beautiful baby bump. With all these things combined, we can certainly be model pregnant women. We can be role models for not only other woman but for our communities of what a healthy pregnancy looks like and what it demands. Some people just don’t understand the importance of healthy eating (meaning consuming clean whole foods, not processed chemically produced foods). They don’t understand how damaging certain foods can be for both the mother and baby. They don’t understand why exercise is essential for an uncomplicated birth. With dedication to healthy eating and exercise that tones and lengthens the muscles, we can achieve a super model appearance (minus the super skinny midsection) We can be models of healthy, strong women that deliver healthy, strong babies. That’s much better than being a super model.