Yet another “-orexia”
August 5, 2008 by angelique
Filed under Women's Health
We’ve discussed before the phenomenon of adding “-orexia” to everything under the sun to create jazzy-sounding new “disorders” — manorexia, drunkorexia, humorexia. (Okay, that last one is my own invention.)
Now, there’s pregorexia. According to Marijke at Womb Within, pregorexics exercise fiercely during pregnancy so they can shed the “baby weight” as quickly as possible.
Personally, I worked out hard during my pregnancy, but only to keep my body in shape. I gained an acceptable amount of weight and always kept my “tenant” in mind when eating and working out. I also lost weight rapidly after my son was born, mainly because he had colic and I wasn’t eating or sleeping much, plus I was breastfeeding.
I honestly don’t think I was a “pregorexic”. In fact, I deliberately focused on not falling into a trap of worrying more about my body than my baby.
For those of you who’ve given birth — did you experience “pregorexia”?
I’ve never given birth, but I’ve often thought about how I’ll deal with the weight gain someday. I’ve always heard you just shouldn’t increase your work-outs, but continuing to work out the same amount (or less) is fine. That always sounded fine with me.
I went and read the original story, and the idea of someone’s ego being stroked by the comment “Oh, but you don’t look pregnant,” is really sad to me. Sounds like an EDNOS.
Hi, I was just over at that article and no, you don’t fit that. I think what she was talking about people who are doing this just so they will fit into their small clothes a week after having the baby. Like a badge of honor or something. They aren’t dieting or excerising because they think they’re fat or whatever and thats prolly the big difference.
Erin – you are right. That’s exactly it. It’s an ego boost to hear that you don’t look pregnant, for these women. But, what’s wrong with looking pregnant, if you *are*?