Being Kendra_ Cribs, Cocktails, and Getting My Sexy Back - Kendra Wilkinson [38]
I was really hungry postpartum because I was breast-feeding and chasing around a little toddler. All I could think was, “OMG, I need to eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.” But I wasn’t burning enough calories to counteract what I was eating! I breast-fed for four months and I didn’t shed any pounds and/or inches. You can’t lose weight when you are single-handedly keeping Dunkaroos in business. I was constantly thinking, “No one is looking, I’m going to sneak a couple handfuls of popcorn, I’m going to sneak two big brownies and some Dunkaroos.” I really could have had an endorsement deal with Dunkaroos. I probably would have done it just for free product. I would eat two packages of Dunkaroos before I even left the kitchen.
I saw pictures of myself online and I knew that I needed to lose the weight. There would be a paparazzi shot of me or a posed red carpet shot and I’d just see fat all over the place. I remember looking at baby Hank and saying, “Suck harder!” I was pumping to feed him and to lose weight, but it wasn’t working!
I think a lot of my weight and body issues were self-imposed. While I had a condition, I also brought a lot of the problems upon myself. I exercised and tried to stay fit during pregnancy, but I also developed nasty eating habits that stuck with me. And, of course, I had spent the better part of my adult life showing off my body. I guess it shouldn’t have come as a complete shock to me or anyone that losing that body and putting on weight wasn’t going to be the easiest thing to deal with. That came up in a dramatic way when it came time to debut my “bikini body after baby,” something pretty much every mom in Hollywood just loves to do now.
I did a shoot with OK! magazine about losing my pregnancy weight—it was all about diet—and yes, I was trying, but I just wasn’t successful. At least trying to maintain a diet and knowing that I was supposed to focus on it made me feel good. In my head I was trying, but then in reality I would sneak a brownie or a bag of white cheddar popcorn, in addition to the meal-replacement smoothies I was chugging. I was lying to myself.
I was not excited about that shoot. I love OK! magazine and they treated me well. A few weeks earlier they had done our official newborn baby shots, for a full cover, and they gave us all of the photos to blow up poster-size so we could have them forever. I loved that. But I had signed this contract with OK! before giving birth, which also locked me into doing the newborn photo shoot and the “body after baby” shoot in a bikini. I totally had forgotten I had signed up for that, and one day they just came calling, saying, “We’re ready to do our bikini shoot!”
I was supposed to take off the baby weight by then, but as you know I struggled through the first several weeks and I wasn’t in any kind of shape to do it, not to mention it was only about two months after birth. Plain and simple: I was still fat. And in the weeks since I had gotten the six-week clearance I was sweating my ass off at the gym. But I still couldn’t shed a pound. It was obvious and I can admit that I was, shall we say, touched up. I would have rather had that photo go out not touched up, because I had to see my fake self in photos every day and try to live up to it from that point on. I was not this rock-hard body in a blue bikini. I was a blob still. But I had to give off the image that I was fit. We had a deal so I had to follow through. They thought I was going to lose the weight faster, but because of my condition and the fact that I had a C-section, it didn’t turn out as planned.
I topped off at 165 pounds during pregnancy, meaning I put on about fifty-seven pounds overall. It wasn’t going to just melt off me.
I walked around wearing