Why "Bouncing Back" After Baby Hurts Christian Moms + What to Do Instead (with Laura Lindahl)

Written By Natalie Portman

Hey sweet mama! If you've ever felt the pressure to "bounce back" after having a baby—whether from social media, well-meaning family members, or that inner voice telling you that you should look like you did before—this conversation is for you. I'm sitting down with Laura Lindahl, a certified pre and postnatal coach who transformed her own relationship with fitness and faith, to talk about why bounce back culture is actually harmful to Christian moms and what we can do instead. This isn't just about exercise—it's about finding freedom, grace, and true strength in Christ during one of the most transformative seasons of our lives.

🎧 Listen to the Episode

From Fitness Obsession to Faith-Filled Freedom

Laura's story will hit home for so many of us. She describes her pre-motherhood relationship with health and fitness as "superficial"—everything centered around how she looked and what others thought. Growing up in a household where exercise was tied to weight loss and appearance, she naturally absorbed those values. Even with a bachelor's degree in exercise science, she found herself trapped in cycles of over-exercising, under-eating, and constantly chasing the next goal.

But here's what struck me most about Laura's journey: no matter how successful she became as a trainer, no matter how many goals her clients reached, the goalposts kept moving. Sound familiar? Whether it's fitness, parenting, or any other area of life, we can find ourselves climbing what Laura calls "the wrong ladder"—working hard but ultimately feeling empty because we're seeking satisfaction in something other than Christ.

The turning point came when Laura was literally flat on her back after a deadlift gone wrong, and she felt God saying, "You've left me. You've left your first love and you're striving for lesser things." That moment of physical vulnerability became a spiritual awakening that changed everything.

What Is Bounce Back Culture (And Why It's Harmful)

Laura defines bounce back culture as "the pressure that is put on moms overtly or covertly" to return their bodies to pre-pregnancy state—and fast. This pressure can come from others ("You don't look like you used to") or from within ourselves when we compare our postpartum journey to someone else's.

Here's why bounce back culture is particularly harmful for Christian moms:

Hormonally, it's dangerous. Laura explains that when we're in those first 6-12 months postpartum, we're on a hormone rollercoaster. Trying to lose weight quickly is like "taking your seatbelt off" during that ride. Our bodies need adequate sleep, nutrition (especially if breastfeeding), and time to heal—not restriction and intense exercise.

Biblically, it contradicts grace. Romans 8:1 tells us "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." That means you can give your body the timeline it needs without guilt or shame. You're not failing if your journey looks different from someone else's.

Spiritually, it misses the point. When we focus solely on external appearance and quick results, we're missing the incredible transformation that just occurred. Your body grew a human being, delivered that baby, and (for many) is now nourishing that child. That's not something to rush past—it's something to honor.

Building Strength FROM Acceptance, Not FOR Acceptance

This shift in mindset is revolutionary. Instead of exercising to earn acceptance or approval, we can approach health and fitness from a place of already being fully loved and accepted by God.

Laura shares a quote from Tim Keller that I found so helpful: there are two types of people—those "wound up too tight" who need to learn grace, and those "wound down too loose" who need to learn discipline. Your approach to postpartum health will look different based on your personality and wiring.

For the driven, perfectionist mama (calling all my Enneagram Ones and Threes!): You might need to learn that working out twice a week instead of seven times is not failure—it's wisdom. You're fully accepted by Christ whether you hit your workout goals or not.

For the mama who struggles with motivation: You're also fully accepted by Christ, and you can ask God for discipline to steward your body well, knowing it's the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The beautiful thing is that both types of mamas need the same foundation: being fully satisfied in Christ. When we remember that in Him we lack nothing, we can approach health as worship rather than striving.

Practical First Steps for Stuck Mamas

If you're feeling overwhelmed or disconnected from your body, Laura offers this encouraging truth: trust that your body is designed to build. Whether you built a baby or you're building strength, our bodies are hardwired for growth and adaptation.

Start with the easiest possible step. Maybe that's a five-minute walk, buying a five-pound dumbbell for squats, or simply getting outside with your baby. Don't set the bar at "marathon runner" when you're starting from the couch—that gap feels impossible and keeps us from taking any action at all.

Stop weighing yourself if you're in a cycle of daily weigh-ins that leave you frustrated. Instead, focus on building muscle, which gives you more energy, makes daily tasks feel lighter, and helps you show up more patiently for your family.

Remember Zechariah 4:10: "Do not despise small beginnings." When you judge yourself for taking a small step, you're actually diminishing the growth and future impact of where you're headed.

The Battle Is Bigger Than You Think

One thing Laura said that really convicted me: "It's no surprise that the enemy wants to attack our image, especially as women, because our image carries a lot of beauty, and beauty is a characteristic of God."

When we're constantly critical of our appearance or feeling shame about our postpartum bodies, we're not just struggling with vanity—we're in a spiritual battle. The enemy wants to throw shade on the image of God that we carry as women.

But here's the good news: when we partner with God in this battle instead of fighting alone, we stand with the God of angel armies. We're so much more powerful in that position than when we're striving for health, acceptance, or love on our own.

How Motherhood Changed Everything

Laura's perspective on fitness and faith transformed even more deeply when she became a mom to her son Boaz. She learned to work out in new rhythms, shifting from hour-long sessions to 25-minute workouts. She developed more empathy for other moms and learned to keep fitness "in the box it was meant to be in"—as a tool to empower our bodies to serve the kingdom, not as our identity.

As she puts it: "You don't have to be the quote-unquote 'fit mom.' You can look average and still be incredibly healthy."

Motherhood also deepened her understanding of God's heart for us. Watching her toddler run to her with arms outstretched saying "Mama, come see me" became a beautiful picture of how we can approach our heavenly Father—simply wanting to be seen and loved.

A Season for Everything

I love how this conversation reminded me that female bodies are designed for seasons. Just like we have monthly cycles, our lives have rhythms of rest, growth, and harvest. Every day doesn't have to be a personal record day. Every season doesn't have to look the same.

This is especially freeing for those of us who are competitive by nature. I shared how I've learned to go to my body pump class not to compete with the women around me, but simply to steward my body as an act of worship. That shift from competition to stewardship changes everything.

📖 Scripture for Your Heart

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." – Romans 8:1 (ESV)

This powerful verse strikes at the heart of bounce back culture's lies. When Laura talks about the pressure moms feel to return their bodies to pre-pregnancy state within unrealistic timelines, she's addressing the condemnation that creeps in when we don't measure up to cultural standards or our own expectations. Romans 8:1 reminds us that in Christ, there is no condemnation—not for taking longer to heal, not for needing more rest, not for having a body that looks different after growing and birthing a child. This verse liberates us from the "shoulds" that bounce back culture imposes: you should lose the baby weight by six weeks, you should have energy for intense workouts, you should look like the mom on Instagram. Paul's words in Romans 8 declare that God's acceptance of us isn't based on how quickly we recover or how well we perform physically. Because we are in Christ, we can extend grace to our bodies and give them the timeline they need to heal without guilt or shame weighing us down.

🙏 A Prayer for Your Birth Journey

Father, thank You for the incredible design of our bodies and the miracle of new life. Help us to see our postpartum bodies not as something to fix, but as something to honor. Give us wisdom to steward our health in ways that bring You glory, not in ways that seek approval from others. Help us trust Your timeline for our healing and growth. Remind us daily that our worth comes from being Your beloved daughters, not from how quickly we "bounce back." In Jesus' name, amen.

📎Resources & Links Mentioned

💪 Laura's 3-Day Core Restore Plan: Free postpartum recovery guide with exercise demos and diastasis recti assessment 

🩷 True Strength Collective: Laura's online coaching for moms 

🎧 Strong After Birth Podcast: Postpartum strength training and body image encouragement

✨ Christian Mama Birth Prep Library: Free birth prep tools, worship playlists & more 

💛 Work with Me 1:1 - Personalized pregnancy and birth support that integrates faith and evidence-based care, including virtual coaching, doula support, and comprehensive childbirth education

📣 Let’s Stay Connected

If this episode encouraged you:

Meet Your Host —

Natalie Portman is a certified birth doula and childbirth educator in Jacksonville, FL. She equips Christian women to experience peaceful, faith-filled births through virtual and in-person support. Her heart is to help mamas trust God's design for birth and motherhood while finding practical tools for every step of the journey.

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📄 Full Episode Transcript

Natalie: Hey friends, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm really looking forward to today's conversation because we're talking about something that so many moms wrestle with—our bodies after birth, the pressure to bounce back, and how to approach health in a way that's rooted in grace, not guilt.

I'm joined today by Laura Lindahl. She's a Christian mom, certified pre and postnatal coach, exercise physiologist, and Christian body image coach. She's also the host of the Strong After Birth podcast and the founder of True Strength Collective. Laura helps women rebuild strength physically, emotionally, and spiritually after birth. And her heart is all about helping moms reject shame, move joyfully, and find true confidence in Christ.

Laura, thank you so much for being here today.

Laura: Yeah, of course. I mean, Natalie, you can follow me around wherever I go and just proclaim that—that would be great. I love it. I'm so excited to be on the show, Natalie. I'm excited to be here.

Natalie: I'm so excited that you're here, and I know just so many women are gonna relate to this, especially if this is their first pregnancy and they don't know what to expect going into that postpartum season. So I'm really excited that you're gonna just speak some truth and love of Jesus into this season.

So let's get started. I wanna hear a little bit more about your story. Can you take us back to what your relationship with health and fitness looked like before motherhood, and then how that began to shift once you invited the Lord into that?

Laura: I think in a word I could summarize it as superficial—that everything when it came to health was about how I looked. It was about how men saw me. It was about how I saw myself. It was even about how other women saw me and the acceptance that I got when I walked into a room. I really started getting into fitness even at a very young age. My mom tried every diet under the sun, was an avid runner. My dad was an avid runner, did the Boston Marathon, all sorts of things, but it was always centered around weight loss. It was always centered around burning calories. And so I naturally—that was what I was watered with. So that's what I grew into.

And God was never really talked about when it came to our health. It was just kind of like, we go to church and these are the things that we do on Sunday, but this is how we exercise Monday through Friday. And they're not at all correlated. So in a word, like I said, it was very surface level. It was me just taking care of my health. It didn't have anything to do with God or my emotional and spiritual health. It was just a thing you do to kind of look better. And so that's really the roots of where it started.

I got my bachelor's in exercise science, and that is where a lot of those roots just got watered with Miracle-Gro and it turned into a lot of over-exercising, undereating. I was going from diet to diet. I was exercising like probably seven to ten times a week and undereating drastically at the same time. I was starting to get engaged, and so it turned into sweating for the wedding and over-training, and it really just continued to snowball. I got to a point where I felt extremely burnt out in college. I got to a point where I just felt extremely distant from the Lord, and my relationship with everything just felt heavy. Grades felt heavy, doing work felt heavy, going to church felt heavy, relationships felt heavy.

And it wasn't until I got to a load—a snowball that I could no longer carry—that landed me almost flat on my back, literally, after doing like a 315 deadlift at the gym after I had graduated. I started training at a big box gym, and I looked over at this platform and this girl was lifting heavier than me, and my little ego inside me was like, "You can lift heavier than that." So I did. And the next day it just felt like God was saying, "You've left me. You've left your first love and you're striving for lesser things and deadlifts." I probably could have snapped my back, but God was gracious and he was merciful even in his rebuke.

And it was at that point that I really just started to investigate and look at the clients who were coming to me. They came to me because they felt uncomfortable in their bodies. They came to me because they wanted to fit into a dress again, wanted to fit into their jeans again, wanted to feel like themselves again. And we got there. I was a very successful trainer. I was one of the top-rated trainers at the gym. I was running a nutrition business. But I got to a point where I realized no matter how much weight they lost, no matter how many goals they reached, the goalposts kept moving. They were never thin enough. They were never strong enough. They were never satisfied enough. And I started seeing this theme in my clients, and then it became evident that, oh crap, I see that theme in me—that I had been chasing lesser things, that I had been trying to be satisfied in something else outside of Christ.

About that time there was a message at our church on John 15, where Jesus is speaking to his disciples and he's encouraging them to abide in me as I abide in my Father. And they used the analogy of a vine being intertwined into a stand, like a grape vine is intertwined into a stand or into a net, and you can see how much better the vine grows when it's intertwined on that because it has structure, it has dependency. And in the same way, I had no abiding. I was abiding in myself. I was abiding in what culture said about my body to be true, and it really left me feeling so high and dry and so unsatisfied that I had to keep striving for something more. So I'm grateful that God kind of pulled the rug out from underneath me, as it were, that day.

And a couple months later, I stepped away from the gym and started True Strength Collective, which is my full-time online health and fitness business that I run for women and moms. At the time it was just primarily for women who struggle with body image. And then about three years later, we got pregnant with our first and only son now, Boaz. He's two—so sweet. And that was just a whole new awakening to the next step in the journey that God had for me in body image and health. And it was through that that he helped me realize he was just calling me deeper. He was calling me deeper into a dependence with him on how my body looked. He was calling me deeper into a dependence on him for health and to know that health is abiding in him.

And so that's where we are now. Now I primarily train moms who are postpartum and/or going through pregnancy, and I help them to develop a better relationship with their body, a better relationship with health, so that they can joyfully live into an empowered motherhood and feel good in their God-given bodies and use fitness as a form of worship. So yeah, that's how we got here.

Natalie: Oh Laura, I just cannot handle how beautiful that is because, like you're saying, it's totally counter-cultural to have that mindset of I am not working out, I am not eating certain things just for the sake of image—like it's only about the way I look for my approval, like for myself or approval of what others think about me. But it's truly what I eat and how I move my body and all of these things are a form of worship to the Lord, that we get to steward the body he's given us so that we can accomplish the mission that is so much greater than just looking at ourselves in the mirror and being happy with the way we look.

The other thing that's really insane about it and what you were touching on with, you know, seeing that theme of clients who—it was never good enough. You know, they would reach their goal, but it still wasn't satisfying. And it reminds me so much of how we take certain things and we take a good thing like health and fitness and eating right, and all those things, and we turn a good thing into a God thing and we wonder why it's letting us down and we wonder why it's so disappointing in the end.

And there really is true freedom in seeing the beauty of—just like our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice and it's a joy to be able to grow a baby even though it's difficult, to give birth to a baby, to serve that baby, to go on adventures and live this beautiful life and to live out the great commission. Like those are beautiful things. But fitness and all those things are just a means to that end. And I think it's so easy to lose sight of that because our culture is hyper-focused on just the image.

And you know, the other crazy thing too is Paul talks about how he doesn't care what you guys think. He's like, "I don't care what you guys think about me. I don't even care what I think about me." And I think that's so powerful. He goes, "I only think about what the Lord thinks about me." And that's a hard place. You know, I'm Enneagram One. I am a perfectionist. I am very driven. And when I don't meet my own goals, even if no one else cares what I'm doing, if I don't meet my own goals, oh man, I am so hard on myself.

And so for me that was a relief to hear Paul say, "I don't care what you guys think about me. I don't even care what I think about me. I really only care about what the Lord thinks about me." And what does the Lord say about us as his daughters? He is enthralled with our beauty. He went to the cross and died for us. He loves us deeply and endlessly, not by anything we have done, and there's nothing we could do to earn his love more, or for him to take away his love from us. Like that's the reality. And I get so hung up in that myself where, you know, I just—I even want to just focus on what I think about me. And like you're saying, that's not abiding, that's self-dependency, self-worship. But like John 15 says, we need to abide in the vine. We need structure. We need something to rest our life onto—we cannot do that on our own. So I love all of those things that you were drawing out. It's just so beautiful and so needed that we hear that, and that we remind ourselves over and over and over again of that beautiful truth. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Laura: It's no surprise to me that the enemy wants to attack our image, especially as women, because our image obviously as women carries a lot of beauty, and beauty is a characteristic of God. And as image bearers, we carry that image wherever we go. And so it's no wonder to me that he would just want to throw shade on the image of God in women, whether that is through the fitness industry saying, "Your body isn't fit enough," or maybe it's other people saying, "Oh wow, she bounced back. What happened to you?" or even through ourselves where we can throw that shade and somehow as if we could diminish the image and beauty of our glorious God through our bodies.

And so if your audience is finding themselves in that place, I also want you to know you're in a battle that's greater than yourself. And that part of that battle is yes, your flesh, but I think that there are greater things at stake here, like God's glory and the aspect that the enemy wants to diminish that as much as he can. So when we take a step back and say, "This isn't just me versus the enemy, or me versus my flesh," it's you with God. And when we are with God in that battle, which I wasn't—with God, I was by myself—when it's us with God, we stand with the God of angel armies. And we're so much more powerful in that position than when we are trying to strive for our health on our own or strive for a size on our own, or acceptance or love, or any other thing that we can strive for.

Natalie: Amen. Yeah, I love that. And then you kind of touched on that bounce back culture. So you know, from your experience, especially in the work that you do, why do you think that this message is so harmful? And what truth do you wish every mom knew instead?

Laura: Well, if I could start with defining what bounce back culture is, at least how I define it: Bounce back culture is the pressure that is put on moms overtly or covertly. Whether it's someone literally saying, "Hey, you don't look like you used to," or maybe it's just your own internal pressure of seeing what somebody else did in their postpartum journey versus what your body is doing in its postpartum journey. And it's a feeling of insufficiency and/or pressure that moms experience, I'd say around three, six, nine months with the pressure increasing the longer you are postpartum. And so that's what bounce back pressure is.

I think that it comes from a lot of fitness industry marketing. I actually put together a whole podcast episode on this, like debunking lies of the fitness industry, and how they determine what words to use, how to target our psychology and our weak points and our desires. But they really use a lot of marketing that's based on that desire—we want to feel like ourselves in a season where we are serving everyone else outside of ourselves, right? So it makes sense that the enemy would kind of take that avenue.

But here's where bounce back goes bad: Bounce back goes bad when we determine that faster is better, that our body has to look like somebody else's. That's where bounce back goes bad. I'm not saying that it's bad to wanna feel like yourself again. I'm also not saying that it's bad to want to lose fat. We can look from a health perspective—yeah, it's probably more advantageous for you to have more muscle and less body fat on your body. But that does not mean that faster equals better. That does not mean that you have to do it and it's gonna look like somebody else.

And so we can start to parse through why bounce back can be so deceptive and so devious. Hormonally for us, when we are especially in those first like six to nine to twelve months postpartum, we are literally going through a hormone rollercoaster. When we try to lose fat or lose weight quickly postpartum, and we try to quote-unquote bounce back hormonally, you are taking a rollercoaster ride and you're taking your seatbelt off. Because the seatbelt of trying to get more sleep, the seatbelt of trying to eat enough calories, especially if you're breastfeeding—those things can help our hormones. It's still gonna be a rollercoaster. Your body's doing a lot of change that happened in nine months, and you can't expect nine months of change to be undone in six weeks. It's just such a big myth, and it's such a devious pressure to put on ourselves.

And so we have to approach it safely and we have to approach it in a way that allows our body's natural healing timeline to happen. And I think bounce back culture tries to condense that and it tries to put an extra pressure and a timeline—like a "should be"—on top of that. And I think biblically we can see that Romans 8:1 tells us there is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. That means that you can give your body the timeline that it needs. That doesn't mean that you don't do anything for your health, and those—even the first six weeks, there are many things we can talk about today. What are some things we can do in the first six weeks to help our health? But we refuse to agree with the world that says if you don't bounce back in a certain way, that doesn't mean you're unhealthy. That doesn't mean that you're a bad mom. It doesn't mean that so-and-so is doing it better than you are. It just means your body has a different healing timeline.

Natalie: Yeah, I love that you defined what it is and kind of drew out some of the roots of that. And I have seen that in my life, but kind of in the opposite. So by the grace of God, like I really do feel like it was just genetics or whatever. I mean, I'm five-ten, so I'm tall too, but like for me, baby weight—all that came off immediately without trying. And I ended up being skinnier after I had kids than before I had kids, which I feel like for most women, that is obviously not at all their story.

And I remember I posted a picture of me by the pool with my two-month-old—this is when I had Ellie. And all the comments on there were like, "Oh my gosh, talk about bounce back," like all this feedback. And I remember I contemplated kind of taking it down because it made me so uncomfortable because I knew that that kind of mentality—how pervasive it is in our culture. And then whenever I was in a bad place mentally, I would go back—this is so bad, this just shows how sinful I am—I would go back and I would be like, "I need some encouragement, so I'm gonna read all the comments of people that were talking about like, 'Oh wow, Natalie, you look so good after just having a baby.'" And I'm like, ugh. Like, that's so icky. Like that's so icky that that was how my heart—like I could tell that it was wrong. Like I could tell that there was a problem with this bounce back culture.

But at the same time, because I happened to be on the having-the-better-side of that coin, I was like, "Oh cool, so I'm gonna kinda build myself up in this regard." And so, sorry, real talk here. You know, like that just kind of—is one of those things where the more I am in this space, and I'm sure you as well, the more you're in this space and you just see how deep that lie goes. Just from, you know, from the start of sin and all the things, but also just our culture that again is just so hyper-focused on just the way we look. How easy it is to just naturally fall into that mindset. And as believers, we have to be very, very intentional to bring that to the Lord, to take that thought captive, to take that value system and toss it away. Because we're so prone to it.

Even if that's not your story of having a struggle to bounce back, but say you do bounce back quickly and it being a form of pride or like a just like, "Ugh, look at all these people struggling and look at me over here. I'm doing so much better than these people for these reasons." And where, you know, I very much feel like obviously I do exercise, I eat really clean, but at the same time, the Lord has had to work in me to be like, "And Natalie, none of that is because of you. Like, it is things out of your control that things are the way they are."

But I really do feel like that's the Lord's grace that I haven't had that struggle and that the Lord has been working on me to steward eating and exercise as a way of worshiping the Lord instead of it being a form of self-worship, which I know I can be very prone to, and I know a lot of women can be very prone to.

So I wanna change gears a little bit here. So you talk about building strength from a place of acceptance instead of for acceptance. I love that powerful shift there. So what does that actually look like for you in the day-to-day of motherhood, especially when we're tired and we're just completely stretched thin, or we're just feeling completely disconnected from our bodies?

Laura: There's a quote by Tim Keller that I absolutely love, and he says there are two types of people in the world, which is such a general statement. But he says there are people who are either wound up too tight or people who are wound down too loose. And for those of us who are wound up too tight, we need to learn grace, and for those of us who are wound down too loose, we need to learn discipline.

I start with that because I think that it's a helpful perspective that this answer is going to vary based on where you land. There are personalities like an Enneagram One or an Enneagram Three—we are highly driven people and we need to learn grace for ourselves and for our bodies and for our health. And then if somebody lands on the other side of that, say maybe an Enneagram Four, Enneagram Nine, right? Different personalities are going to need different things. So I can't speak to this on every avenue for every person, but I'm gonna trust the Holy Spirit's in the room and he can speak for you.

But when it comes to training from a place of acceptance, it can look very different based on the individual. So let's say you are the mom who works out or had worked out before kids like five, six, seven times a week. Very disciplined, very regimented, and then kids come along and you're like, "I can only work out twice a week. I'm failing." For that person, it's knowing that twice a week is good enough and that you are fully accepted by Christ in that.

On the flip side of that, for the mom who maybe struggled to exercise or struggled to build strength or struggles to get up off the couch before kids and then kids came along and you say, "I want to be a good example for my kids. I want to show them how they can exercise, but I have such a hard time doing it. I feel really guilty." They are also fully accepted by Christ and fully forgiven, right? And they need to learn, "Give me discipline to love my body well, and to see it as the home of the Holy Spirit, as you see it, and give me the discipline to move forward from that."

So both sides of the spectrum need acceptance, but it's going to look very, very different. Now how it plays forward for me personally is knowing if I lift—strength train—three times a week, that's great. And I don't need to give myself strain or stress for not doing that. And I think that that's the biggest shift that we can make is to be fully satisfied in Christ, to remind ourselves in him we lack nothing. Hallelujah, all I have is Christ applies whether we are struggling to get up off the couch or struggling to let ourselves rest after a long day. So that's kind of where I would approach it, just with some practical examples. Does that make sense?

Natalie: Yeah, because it is funny just how your personality can kind of—why you're wired to kind of fall one way or the other on the pendulum of that kind of striving. And again, like not just striving, but the reasons why you're striving can be really different. That's why I really have loved the Enneagram. I was listening to your podcast earlier and you talk a lot about the Enneagram, and I was like, "Oh, I need to speak more about the Enneagram on the podcast because it is so helpful." I'll put some—I'll put some books that I recommend. Do you listen to, or do you know about Suzanne Stabile? What's the name of her Instagram account? She's on Instagram, right?

Laura: Enneagram Journey? Yeah, I think so. Her podcast is Enneagram Journey. I think her podcast is something similar or Instagram is something similar.

Natalie: But yeah, her stuff is amazing and she's a believer as well, which is also why I like her perspective on things. But she has a couple books and there's like a three-part book series that helps you kind of understand the Enneagram. So I'll put those books in the show notes because I think they're just really helpful to kind of tap into. 'Cause it is good to understand kind of your wiring because I think the Lord has given us certain traits and desires and drives and motives. And if we can tap into that, we can better honor the way the Lord has designed us instead of just always feeling like a failure if we don't measure up to other people that we see that are seemingly effortlessly succeeding in certain things. So I love that you mentioned that.

So if there is a mom that's listening and she kind of feels stuck in her situation, she's exhausted or discouraged by her postpartum body and she doesn't really know where to start, what is one step that she could take today to move forward in her health journey and just let it be a way to steward her body and honor the Lord?

Laura: I think the first thing that comes to mind is trust—that's trusting the Lord and his design for your body that it is designed to grow. It is hardwired to build, whether you're building a baby or building strength. Our bodies are hardwired to build. And so I think there's an aspect of trusting the Lord's design for your body, and I want to instill in that trust that the first step needs to be the easiest step.

So whether that first step for you is starting to go for a walk or that first step for you is buying a five-pound dumbbell and starting to do some squats, or whatever that first step is, it has to be the easiest because we often set the bar so high for ourselves, and we see people lifting a barbell, or we see people running marathons and we think to ourselves, "If I'm not there, I'm like at zero miles an hour and they're a hundred miles an hour, and there's a huge gap and it's really intimidating." If we stay at—if we keep our goal of a hundred miles an hour, we're gonna feel like we could never reach it. So we never take the first step.

When we trust that our bodies are meant to build, meant to build strength, meant to build endurance, and they are adaptive, then we can move forward and say, "Great. So it's only up from here. I can get started with the most simple, easy step, and then move forward from there." Another thing I would recommend as a mindset shift is to stop weighing yourself. If you've found yourself in a cycle of weighing yourself every day, getting frustrated that all of these things aren't working, stop weighing yourself and start focusing on just building muscle.

I think one of the best things that women can do for their health postpartum is to focus on building muscle. 'Cause when we have more muscle on our bodies as women, not only do we have more energy because our body tends to store more glucose as glycogen in our muscles—so you literally carry around more energy with you, which what mom doesn't need that, right? We carry more energy, but also life feels lighter, so we can reduce stress on our system. We can show up more presently for our spouse. We can be more patient with our kids when we're strong. I think it's a beautiful thing that when we have this dependency on the Lord to say, "God, give me full trust that my body will grow if I show up once a week, 25 minutes, strength training." Or if it's just once a week going for a walk or starting maybe a five-minute daily walk. I don't know what that first step is for you, but having the trust to know that we can move forward and then obey—like God does command us to care for our bodies like they're a temple of the Holy Spirit because they are. But when we partner with God and we say, "God, I trust that you have designed this body to build," I can then obey what you have to say for me and for my body. And that first step is also in some ways the hardest because you're changing trajectory.

Natalie: And like you're saying, I love that you said set the bar low so that it's achievable, and then be so thankful that you were able to take that first step instead of being like, "Oh, but I wish I was all the way over there." No, like, just start with that first little baby step. When I interviewed Crystal Doiron, she's a therapist, and she was talking about how, you know, even babies, like when they're learning to walk, they stumble and they fall, but guess what? They get right back up and they keep going.

And my son is definitely in that stage. He's 15 months. He's been walking for like a couple of months now. And I watch him and I think, "I'm so proud of him for, you know, when he falls down or he gets a little wobbly and he falls on his little bottom and then he just finds a wall or something to kind of crawl up on." You know, I'm like, "I can take a lesson out of Daniel's little book there and apply that to myself and apply that grace to myself that even if you start something and it didn't go as smooth as you wanted it to, or you kind of stumbled and you fell and you kind of got off the bandwagon so to speak, that there's grace in that, that the Lord is still proud of your obedience in that and to just continue on, even if it does not look like a perfect—you stand up, you take some steps, then you start walking, then you start running." You know, we don't have to all be in that stage immediately.

Laura: That reminds me there's a verse, I think in Zechariah 4, maybe 4:10—it says, "Do not despise small beginnings." And it's where the children of Israel are trying to rebuild the temple and they're saying, "How can we do this? It's so much work to do." It's like, "No, don't despise small beginnings." When you judge yourself for that small step, you're diminishing the growth and the future projection of where you want to be. And I think in the same way, we can just take that same position and remember those small beginnings can have great impacts in the long run.

Natalie: I love that you said that, that it is truly a transformative experience. I mean, anyone who's had a baby knows you are not the same. You are not the same after you've had that baby in your mind, in your body, in your spirit, socially, emotionally—everything changes. So to honor that, I actually remember my sister—my younger sister had a baby before me and she told me after she had her son, she goes, "I have learned to appreciate my body in a different way because of all that it just did. The fact that it grew a baby, it gave birth to a baby, and now I'm nursing this baby." And that really struck a chord with me and that stuck with me.

So after I had my baby girl, even though you know, you still look like six months pregnant after you have a baby and you've had that baby, you kind of still have a belly. But I remember looking at myself and being like, "I am so proud of what my body did. The fact that my body grew this baby, I gave birth to this baby and now I'm nursing this baby—like my body was able to do all that. Like that is insane to me." And I had this appreciation for my body that I had never had before that point. So it is really very imperative to honor that transformation that's happened. Even if the way you physically look on the outside is different, it is still a transformation and it is still something that the Lord absolutely designed for whenever he created this whole process of childbearing and what that postpartum season looks like.

Laura: That's so good.

Natalie: So final question here. How has becoming a mom changed the way you see fitness, faith, and your identity in Christ? And what has the Lord been teaching you lately in this season of toddler life and potty training, all the things?

Laura: One thing is that parenting is never over. Parenting for us is just beginning, right? But I think parenting as God parents us is never over. And gosh, I've just been—so many times of just the beautiful pictures of the gospel with our son that he'll, you know, he'll run up to me just his goofy little wide-legged run with his arms up in the air, big eyes, his curls bouncing and just says, "Mama, come see me." And it's just such a beautiful picture of us just wanting the Father to see us. He just wants us to be seen and I'm just reminded as I read through the Psalms. 'Cause the Psalms have been a great—if there's a mom listening who's just been struggling in the Word, I just wanna encourage you to just read a psalm a day. It's so life-giving. It's so simple. It can be done in less than five minutes, with the exception of Psalm 119.

I'm reading about the Psalms of Ascent where it says, you know, "I look to the Lord and the Lord saw me." And so I think just knowing that God sees us has just been a beautiful lesson. And I think also learning how to work out in new rhythms, learning how to shift from hour-long workouts to 25-minute workouts and to have more grace for other moms that before I couldn't understand. I could try to empathize with, but now when a mom says, "Hey, you know, my kid woke up early and I couldn't get my workout in this morning," to have empathy and compassion. And then it gets me really excited because now I'm like, "Oh yeah, I've been there. It sucks. Here's some things that might help."

And so I think that it has really helped me as a coach to become more empathetic, to become more creative, and to really just kind of keep fitness in the box that it was meant to be in—that it's a tool to empower our bodies to have energy to serve the kingdom. That's it. It doesn't have to be this huge thing. You don't have to be the quote-unquote "fit mom." You can look average and still be incredibly healthy. So I think in a lot of ways it has softened me. It's slowed me down. It's helped me walk with the Lord in a rhythm of daily dependence to just looking to him, to parent me as I parent my son, and just ask me, "Okay, God, what does stewarding my health look like today? Based on where my hormones are at, based on where my energy is at, how can I build strength? Is today a walking day?" And just seeking the Lord in that way I think has been such a good place to be in. And it's just been good. It's been sweet.

Natalie: That's beautiful. The verse came to mind about, "For everything there is a season," and how that really does pertain to specifically a female body and how the Lord designed us to literally have a cycle. Like the fact that we have a cycle also speaks to the fact that every day, you know, if we were to kind of have it be like a farming analogy, every day is not harvest day. There's the resting and the waiting, there's the watering, and then there's the growth. And I feel like when we get into the mentality that every single day I need to be setting personal records, every single day I need to be stronger than I was yesterday, that kind of mentality is not realistic and it's not even healthy.

I've been really into, and I've mentioned this book a couple times on the podcast, but "In the Flow," and she talks about how when your hormones are even out of whack, she recommends doing exercise no more than 30 minutes a session. Because past that 30-minute mark you're probably taxing your body a little bit too much. And that has given me some freedom to be like, "Okay, so I don't need to do an intense hour workout every time I work out. I can do a 30-minute workout and be like, 'And I'm so glad I did that.'" And even just that little shift is so helpful to me. 'Cause I also am very competitive. So I go to my body pump class and I see all these ladies around me. Many of whom are much older than me and they're lifting much heavier than me and all the things. And my competitive side is like, "Hmm, you need to be lifting heavier too, Natalie." And then the other side of me is like, "You know what? That's good for them. But I am not here to compete against anybody else. I am here to just steward my body, to just move my body in a way that is just honoring the Lord, that is getting me stronger, but it's not a competition against me, against anybody else. And, you know, not even me against myself in a way, you know what I mean?" Going back to the just, you know, "I don't even care what I think. I really do want to just care what the Lord thinks about me." Which obviously is easier said than done, but...

This was just such a pleasure having you here, imparting your wisdom and just helping mamas realize just the truth of why we strive in this way, that, you know, there really is a deep root there that we do wanna be beautiful. We want others to regard us as beautiful. We want to see ourselves as beautiful. But the beautiful thing is we are already beautiful in the Lord's sight. And when we get to come alongside that truth, that's where we get to abide. That's where we get to grow. And that's something that is not only just growing us, but we're going up the ladder—up the right ladder. You know? I think that's the other kind of trick of the fitness, bounce back, all that kind of cultural stuff is, yeah, you're striving, you're doing all the things, but you get to the top and you realize, "Oh my goodness. I was climbing up the wrong ladder."

All of this was for nothing. And when we get to look at the way the Lord has designed stewarding our body and just everything he's given us, it's climbing up the correct ladder and we get to the top and it is fulfilling because it's Jesus that we gain. It's nothing else. It's just the Lord and His glory that we gain.

Climbing up the correct ladder. So thank you so much for coming on today, sharing your wisdom, sharing your heart, and your story. If someone wants to connect with you, if they feel like they would love to, you know, begin postpartum coaching with you, how can they get in contact with you?

Laura: You can find me on Instagram at True Strength Collective. You can also follow along the podcast where I give a ton of postpartum advice, strength training, tips for women in that postpartum period and through pregnancy. That podcast is called The Strong After Birth Podcast, and then as a freebie for your listeners for listening to the episode, I also have a three-day core restore plan that can help women, especially in that early postpartum period, reconnect to their core and just taking that first step in a really guided, simple way with exercise demonstrations. We have a diastasis recti assessment, all sorts of things that are just really valuable in that first phase where we're just looking to something, we're looking to Google or YouTube to try to find something. So I just give you some really simple practical tips in that guide. So make sure you guys download that 'cause it's an awesome resource to check out—the three-day Core Restore. And then I think we can put that in the show notes.

Natalie: Absolutely. Yeah, I'll definitely put that in there. Wonderful. Thank you Laura, so much for your time and I'm just so excited for all the Lord is doing in your life and through your ministry, through True Strength Collective. Thank you so much.

Laura: Thank you.

Natalie Portman
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