Those of us who have given birth to little angels (and the occasional demon!) know that a poochie tummy can be the most difficult thing to lose. Even with dieting, exercise and ten sets of crunches a day, that puffy tummy remains, causing great angst at beachgoing time.
But personal trainer and childbirth educator Julie Tupler has come up with her own technique called, of course, the Tupler Technique, that offers women a groundbreaking set of abdominal exercises focusing on the diastasis, which is the separation of tummy muscles that occurs after childbirth and often never goes back to its original state. Lose Your Mummy Tummy explains all about how the abdominal muscles separate and do not fully close, even after years of exercising, in a vast majority of women (98%!!!). Unfortunately, diastasis cannot be “cured” with typical ab workouts.
Tupler and co-writer Jodie Gould present a program of exercises focused on closing the diastasis, and the exercises are described in detail, with accompanying photographs, resulting in a daily program that can be done for either fifteen or thirty minutes in the privacy of your own home. In addition to a flat stomach, the exercises promise to give you a smaller waistline, a stronger core, more energy and better posture, as well as prepare you physically for another pregnancy. There are special instructions for those who have had C-sections, episiotomies and other physical traumas.
The instructions are quite simple and easy to follow, and the book also contains plenty of info and advice on everything from how to properly get in and out of a car, how to hold your baby, the best way to lift heavy objects, eliminating back pain, protecting against injury, and plenty of additional exercises for other body parts that involve the ab muscles to some extent. The key is to breathe and hold the correct ab muscles at all times in order to close the diastasis and prevent it from opening even further by doing exercises and household chores incorrectly.
I found this book simple and beneficial, including the exercises for arms, legs and even the feet. The workouts are described in detail so they can be followed with little fuss, and the science behind the Tupler Technique seems sound. I tried many of the exercises and realized that I had, for the last three years, been doing crunches and ab work that has been detrimental to the very muscles I was trying to help. No wonder I still have my mummy tummy! Diastasis, as the authors tell us, is a whole different ball game when it comes to effective ab workouts and this book is the only one I know of that focuses on that specific problem.
Lose Your Mummy Tummy is a great resource for any woman seeking to flatten her stomach after childbirth, even if it has been years since she has welcomed that little bundle of joy into her life.