In the age of injections and BBLs, we’re practically conditioned to categorize our bodies and define ourselves by the value of our shape. There are some silhouettes society deems desirable, like peach shaped bums and full lips, or others society criticizes, like mom butts.
Mom butts are a post-pregnancy phenomenon, a shape your bum takes the mold of while entering the miracle of motherhood. Let’s uncover all there is to know about mom butts, from reclaiming your sexy to building a stronger booty.
What Is a Mom Butt?
A mom butt refers to the shape the buttocks typically takes during and after pregnancy. It’s known to be larger, saggier or flatter than before, due to several factors, including belly expansion and hormonal weight gain, as well as skeletal and postural changes.
During pregnancy, it’s common to overstretch the muscles that support your posture or spend more time seated. This can lead to the glute muscles being less activated, causing muscle loss and weakness.
Your body also releases relaxin hormones during pregnancy, relaxing the muscles and ligaments near your pelvis. While this is excellent for birth preparation, it can also cause your muscles to stretch and widen, potentially altering the shape of your butt.
It’s important to note that there’s absolutely nothing cosmetically nor aesthetically wrong with a mom butt. While carrying excess fat may lend to more risk of obesity, diabetes or heart disease, losing baby weight fast is a pressure new moms have no business carrying.
How to Tone Your Mom Butt
Your mom butt is proof that you brought the miracle of life into this planet, and what else could be more worth celebrating? However, there’s no harm in wanting to strengthen or tone your body, and you can do it all while loving yourself radically and unconditionally.
Because mom butts are a product of weight gain and deteriorated muscle, you would basically follow any standard strength training regime to sculpt your body, with an emphasis on glute-focused exercises.
Nutrition
One of the most important factors to any aesthetic overhaul is nutrition. Building muscle means needing to feed the body as much lean protein as possible, so incorporating foods like white meat or fish, low fat cottage cheese, eggs, plain greek yogurt and beans can do wonders for toning.
Similarly, you’ll want to incorporate high fiber foods like whole grains, vegetables, fruits and nuts while limiting processed foods, refined carbs, alcohol and sugar. It’s crucial to follow a healthy and balanced meal plan that provides an adequate amount of nutrition and calories, especially when breastfeeding.
Exercise
Sometimes, finding the time to work out while navigating life as a mom is a miracle in itself. However, if you want to shed the excess fat and build muscle in your glutes, certain exercises will have to be incorporated.
As you may have guessed, weighted squats and lunges will do wonders for sculpting your backside. Adding in dumbbells to strength training exercises like hip thrusts, glute bridges and deadlifts will plump the bum in no time.
Ultimately, doing at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise is the real key here. If all you can manage is a daily neighborhood stroll, something is better than nothing and small change will always gradually build towards big change.
Love Yourself
Not all of us have celebrity trainers, access to cosmetic touch ups or even the luxury of time to go to the gym. If you’ve got a mom butt and find yourself feeling insecure about it, gift yourself compassion and grace by remembering that your mom butt is a product of being a divine feminine warrior. Plus, as trends continue to change and cosmetic surgery reversal surges in popularity, it’s always more cost effective to love the body you’re in.