Plus-Size Fertility

by Brette Sember for Elegant Plus Magazine

The decision to become a parent is an exciting one. You and your wonderful man are going to create new life together through the power of your love. It’s a heady feeling and one that definitely can bring you closer together. But if you’re a plus-size woman, you may worry about what kind of impact your weight will have on getting pregnant.

Schedule a Pre-Conception Physical

Make an appointment to see your gynecologist before you toss that birth control out the window. It is now recommended that all women have a pre-conception check up to discuss medications, lifestyle changes, and any possible stumbling blocks to conception that they might face. As a plus-sized woman, one of things your physician will likely discuss with you is weight. Being overweight can cause irregularities with your cycle and suppress ovulation. It’s likely that you’ll be encouraged to get close to your ideal weight by your doctor (according to body mass index charts), but losing even 10 pounds can have a significant positive impact on fertility for many women. Diet drugs are an absolute no-no though when trying to conceive.

Losing weight is a personal choice (and for many women, a difficult path), so be sure to weigh your own feelings into the decision. It’s also important to note that too much weight loss too quickly can make it difficult to conceive.

Discuss Major Causes of Fertility Problems

When you see your physician, it is a good idea to ask about two common medical issues that impact the ability to conceive for many plus-size women. If you have never had your thyroid tested, ask for a complete thyroid profile (the traditional TSH test is NOT enough because an underactive thyroid sometimes is only detected with thyroid antibody levels). An underactive or overactive thyroid can impair fertility and also cause problems during pregnancy. Overweight women are most likely to experience an underactive thyroid since the failure of thyroid to function properly can lead to weight gain. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, the most common form of underactive thyroid, is five times more prevalent in women than in men. 

You should also discuss Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) with your physician. Between five and ten percent of all women of childbearing age have PCOS, which is a complicated metabolism and hormone imbalance. Symptoms include infrequent or irregular cycles, acne, facial hair, high cholesterol, thinning hair, skin tags, and sleep apnea. PCOS is a leading cause of infertility in overweight women (and there is a higher incidence of it in overweight women), because the imbalance of male and female hormones makes it difficult to get pregnant.

Some women find they have both of these problems, creating a double whammy. These disorders are things that many physicians are not as aware of as they should be, so asking to be tested for both will offer you peace of mind about your own fertility.

Make a Trip to the Drugstore

Your physician will prescribe prenatal vitamins for you, an important way to make sure you will have a healthy pregnancy. While prenatal vitamins are important, there is some research to suggest that the typical prenatal vitamin does not contain enough folic acid to provide protection in overweight women against neural tube defects in the baby. Some physicians believe plus-size women should take additional folic acid supplements (since it is a harmless vitamin) along with their prenatal vitamins in order to obtain full protection. Ask your physician about a higher dose of folic acid.

Track Your Cycle

While trying to get pregnant can be a romantic and exciting proposition, there is a science to it. Learning how to maximize your cycles can mean getting pregnant more quickly. Start tracking your basal body temperature each morning before you get up. Talk to your physician about how to read this chart (essentially you’re looking for a temperature drop, then an increase of at least .4 degrees, which indicates ovulation). Over the counter ovulation predictor kits are also a valuable tool. The key is to try to have sex at least every other day during the five days before you ovulate and the two days after. For more information, see www.FertilityPlus.org.

Stay Positive

Feeling good about your body and keeping a positive outlook will not only ease stress (which has been shown to have a negative effect on fertility), but will help you stay happy as you begin trying to get pregnant. Many women hope they will get pregnant right away, but in actuality there is only a 25% chance of getting pregnant each month, so you may have a long road ahead of you. Make time for your relationship and for yourself and try not to let all your hopes and happiness ride on that monthly pregnancy test.

Staying positive about your body is key, because many full-figured women often have low self-esteem. This is the time in your life when you should appreciate the amazing things your body can do, and learn to love it for what it is.

When to Seek Help

According to the CDC, 55% of couples get pregnant within three months, 72% within six months and 85% within one year. The standard advice is to try for a year before seeking assistance, but overweight women should seek assistance sooner, since weight can impair ovulation. If you do not ovulate (based on your basal body temperature chart or ovulation predictor kits), you should call your physician immediately. If you are over age 35 you also should not wait a year, since your window of opportunity is getting smaller.

Recommended Books

About the Author

Brette Sember is a plus-size mom of two and co-author of Your Plus-Size Pregnancy: The Ultimate Guide for the Full-Figured Expectant Mom (Barricade Books, 2005). Her web site, www.YourPlusSizePregnancy.com, contains a section on plus-size fertility.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Obesity Contagious! Beware of Fat Friends and Other Nasty Headlines

from Elegant Plus Magazine

In a week that saw the opening of the delightfully fat friendly, feel-good movie Hairspray and the celebrated third installment of Mo’Nique’s F.A.T. Chance self-esteem and size-acceptance television special on the Oxygen Network, a study of an entirely different nature reared its head in the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine from researchers at Harvard and the University of California.  Within hours of the related press-releases stating “Obesity is Socially Contagious” hundreds of articles had appeared and news outlets across a variety of media picked up the story.

What raised the alarm bells first for me was realizing that unlike many “stories” that make daily appearances in our culture in the infamous War on Obesity, this one had more legs than most.  Thoughtful news shows like Jim Lehrer on PBS and columnists at the well respected New York Times took up the story, while more tabloid type outlets gleefully declared that you should beware of fat friends and family members because they could make YOU fat!  Yet not once did I hear any real examination of the science behind the study, NOR a consideration of the implications such thinking might have on the lives of large individuals who are already targets of bullying and ostracization.

As an academic who has been trained to cast a critical eye on scientific methodology and underlying assumptions  before accepting the conclusions of any study as fact no matter from which institution it comes,  the media’s tendency to embrace every study that comes out of a laboratory as fact with a capital F has always disturbed me. Perhaps especially so because of the prevalence of hype and sound bytes throughout all types of media in the United States today.   Equally disturbing is the frequency of Junk Science and statistic manipulation used for a whole host of agendas, not the least of which is the support of the diet and pharmaceutical industries.   My first inclination was to contact NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) to see if their health experts had addressed this specific study and invite them to write a guest article for Elegant Plus.   I received a cordial reply and the press release they had prepared on the subject which didn’t seem to really target this specific study, but more the general underlying hype surrounding the media’s War on Obesity, with the promise of a Guest Article if I wanted one.  I encouraged the latter option and sincerely hope one comes.  I am very interested in  publishing an educated and well informed rebuttal from someone equiped to take a critical look at this study for our readers.

So far, the only clearly argued discussion that refutes the specifics of the study based on data and methodology that I’ve seen comes from Sandy Szwarc’s blog Junk Food Science.  She’s a nurse with a biological science degree that equips her better than most to think about health related studies critically.  I highly recommend reading her article “Oh what a tangled web we weave” to begin to bring the hype on this particular obesity study into a balanced perspective. 

But regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the science there is another very real and dangerous repercussion from this type of media spin, especially on women.   Many of the lead drummers in this charge to “fix” what they view as a  looming public health crisis, fail to take into account the impact of their language, rhetoric and social messaging.   Screaming headlines like “Obesity is Contagious” and “Fat Friends Could Make You Fat”  does not effectively guilt anyone into changing lifestyle patterns, which is their purported intent.  It only makes people feel worse about themselves, lowers self-esteem and now piles on the guilt of harming the people closest to them.  How could this be a positive and productive state of affairs?

 In fact equating weight with lifestyle is one of the dangerous underlying assumptions permeating society.   The two are so enmeshed in popular thinking that fat, obese and unhealthy lifestyle are considered interchangeable synonyms (as are the equally false thin, slender, healthy lifestyle) , the first two the current synonyms of headline choice.  We, as a society, somehow think that simply by looking at (or weighing) an individual we have the ability (and sadly the right to judge) how well they take care of themselves.  But the fact is weight and obesity are far more complex than that, with some individuals naturally heavier than others, others suffering from medication side-effects and a host of other medical reasons.  There are women who eat healthier than most and run marathons who will never be slender.  There are skinny minis who eat chips and soda and junk food every day, and rarely lift so much as a  toe to get any exercise.   Simply, you cannot tell by someone’s weight alone what kind of lifestyle choices they make. 

 Think how differently the emotional impact of this research would read if the headlines said “Unhealthy Lifestyles are Socially Contagious”.   That truly is a different meaning than the one currently screaming across our media sphere, since not all fat people have an unhealthy lifestyle and many thin ones do.  Not only would the scientific data have a better shot of upholding such a theory which is already debatable as junk science, but the social implications would be less damaging to individuals already judged strictly by their body mass.  This leads to a downward spiral of social and self-loathing that adversally affects an individual’s mental health.  Now add in other’s fear of just knowing a fat person and we have a recipe for permissable discrimination.  I don’t think that is the path most of these so called “health advocates”  truly had in mind.  But it is the one we, as a society, are fast going down.  

Popularity: 18% [?]

We just came across this fabulous video on MySpace……  “A Fat Rant”

 This is one of the best video clip commentaries we’ve seen in awhile.  Joy, a plus-size model, lets the world know what she thinks about fashion, attitudes and size.  Check out our MySpace Page to view!  Can’t figure out how to post it here, but really, it’s worth the effort to buzz over there and watch.

Ammendment 5/1/2007:

Good news! We discovered Fat Rant by plus actress, Joy Nash, was available on YouTube as well, so no extra clicking. Here it is!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUTJQIBI1oA]

Popularity: 8% [?]

As a personal trainer and aerobics instructor I often hear, “I know I can be healthy and happy if I just lose a few pounds.” It seems we women, in particular, are always in search of that elusive perfect weight, the one at which we can accept ourselves and our bodies. Of course if we are feeling unhappy in our bodies the solution is to go on a diet, right? After all, any doctor will tell you that thin equals healthy and fat equals unhealthy. We certainly get this same message from going to movies and watching television. The closer we can come to being thin, we believe, the healthier we will become.
 
 Wrong! Based on anecdotal evidence alone we can see that dieting is no solution. How many times have you or someone you know lost weight only to gain it back? How many times have you or someone you know lost weight and gained back more than you lost to begin with? Dr. Glenn Gaesser, author of Big Fat Lies, reports that at any given time nearly half of Americans are dieting to either lose or maintain their weight. According to National Institute of Health, a full 90% plus of dieters fall into the first category, and more than 80% of people fall into the second. Now, is this because we’re a nation of gluttonous, weak and lazy people who can’t control what we eat, or is there something else going on here that remains unexamined?
 

Our bodies really have a single goal, and that is to keep us alive. When we begin a diet our bodies immediately register that the nourishment we need to live is in scarce supply, and we prepare for the “famine” biologically by lowering metabolism and storing fat. Little do our bodies know, the “famine” is not due to an actual shortage of food, it is self-imposed.
Despite the body’s tendency to adjust to a dieting state, many of us do lose weight. For as long as we are dieting, though, we can expect to go through a recovery period where we feel hungry for no reason and generally out of control around food. This recovery period is our body’s way of recovering from the “famine” and making sure we do not ever go without again. It is during this time that we tend to regain weight and eat more than our body needs, not out of weakness or gluttony, but because our body is designed to help us survive. And surviving is a good thing, right?
Dieting leads to feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. After all, we think, what can we control if we cannot control our weight? Dieting also teaches us to distrust ourselves and our internal needs. If I were to eat every time I wanted food, the dieter thinks, I’d be as big as a house. I know this because I used to believe it myself, until I stopped dieting.
So if dieting isn’t the answer, then what is? The amazing truth is, our bodies have a built-in system designed to regulate our weight and our appetite which dieters generally try their best to ignore. Once restrictions around food are removed and our bodies are left to regulate themselves, our weights will stabilize and we will find peace with food. Once we are working with our bodies instead of against them, taking care of ourselves completely, we can know a more balanced, healthful existence, where energies are devoted to the truly important things in life, and not to food obsession and body hatred.

For books and resources on women’s health, fitness, self-esteem, exercise, eating disorders and more - visit the Elegant Plus Recommended Book and DVD List.

Plus-size fitness and work out apparel in sizes up to 6X is available though our Activewear Shopping Directory.

 © 2003 Jennifer Portnick

Popularity: 7% [?]

Kiss My Assets: Self-Esteem and Body Image
Holiday Survival for the Body Healthy Gal
by Dr. Robyn Silverman

How can December be so wonderful and so stressful at the same time? Holiday cheer is the air; all our favorite foods are cooking in the oven and BAM, New Year’s resolutions about dieting and losing weight creep into consciousness.

People can go a few ways on this issue.  You have the overeaters — who know they are going to put food restrictions on themselves as soon as the date says “January 1” so they binge on everything in sight to make up for it.  Then you have the guilt eaters — who feel bad about eating at all for fear that someone in the family is going to say, “now I know why she’s getting so big.”  Then you have the healthy eaters — who don’t let the time of year or family opinion dictate the food choices they make.  They don’t over do it and they don’t restrict themselves from enjoying great food.  Which one are you?

We have likely all heard about the need to be “healthy at any size”.  But since we are in a world where time whizzes by and we don’t always have the time to make the best food choices, many of us are left with food that does not nourish or satisfy.  We know what is good for us but the “good stuff” can spoil quickly and can take longer to prepare when you compare it with going to the local fast food joint.  No wonder our relationship with food can be so erratic.

It is time to take back our health.  Why wait until January 1^st to star thinking about health?  Believe it or not we can nourish our bodies and our minds and still enjoy this holiday season:

(1)     Get rid of the diets: Seriously.  Food restrictions only make us eat more and they just plain do not work.  In fact, they slow down our metabolism and make us feel more anxious and depressed.  Dieting can make us more preoccupied with food and weight loss.  Instead, embrace a steady, healthy way of eating for life.

(2)     Eat for health: Perhaps when you were younger you were told to “eat the rainbow.”  This is still true for adults today.  Eat foods that have a lot of color and vibrancy because they are rich in antioxidants and vitamins that make us look and feel younger and more energetic.  At this time of year, make sure that your meals are balanced with whole grains, lean proteins and lots of fruits and veggies so that we can keep up with the hustle and bustle.  Think about it: a fast food hamburger and French fries—what the heck color is that in the rainbow?  There is a reason we feel sluggish after we eat it!

(3)     Eat a light snack before shopping or partying: We all know that if you go shopping when you are hungry, you will make food choices that make you feel bloated and tired.  Plan to eat something satisfying and healthy before you go.  Sandwiches on whole grain bread, salads with lean proteins or fish, or even an omelet filled with your favorite veggies will give you the energy to be out all day.  In addition, this is a great thing to do before a holiday party because it puts you in control.  You get to choose the foods you eat rather than letting the circumstance dictate your diet.

(4)     Go out for a walk:  Boy, do we sit around a lot at holiday parties!  This is a great time to reconnect with your family and friends who you don’t see very often.  Why not take the conversation outside?  The fresh air and exercise will make everyone feel great.  This will burn off some stress and get you out of the house.  You can also choose to do another form of exercise, like going to the gym, roller blading or going biking—either way, it does a body good!

(5)     Savor, don’t shovel: With so many tasty options, it is easy to binge eat even when we don’t want to do it.  After all, eating can be very social.  But remember, people took a lot of time (perhaps even you!) to create these delectable dishes.  It is a compliment to the chef to take your time eating it and it certainly is healthier for the digestive tract.

(6)     Enjoy the holiday:  Don’t worry so much about what other people are thinking or doing.  Take time to enjoy the people who you are with and the experience of celebration.  Holiday times do not need to be about stress, over eating, and preparing for your New Year’s resolutions.  It can be a time to relax, laugh, and enjoy if you make it that way.

(7)     Give yourself a break:  You are not a bad person if you over eat at holiday parties.  You are still a beautiful, healthy person. Obviously, if you eat in a healthy way most of the time, take your vitamins, and exercise, one day will not undo all of that.  It takes many days of eating unhealthily to put a person on an unhealthy path.  So give yourself a break—and if you overindulge at the holiday party, get up the next day and resume your typical healthy eating and exercise plan.

 Enjoy your family and friends this holiday season, but most of all, enjoy yourself! 

 Have a wonderful holiday and a happy, healthy New Year!

Additional Resources:

• Women’s Health
• Size Acceptance

Dr. Robyn Silverman is looking for preteens and teens to interview for her upcoming book! Please contact her if you are interested in participating!!!! Dr. Robyn is a success coach and body image expert who can help you to achieve your goals at any age. 

For more information, go to http://www.DrRobynSilverman.com or email her at DrRobyn@PowerfulWordsOnline.com. To share your thoughts about this column or to help Dr. Robyn with her research, join her blog at: http://kiss-my-assets.blogspot.com/

Popularity: 7% [?]