Diary of an academic mum

Dr Breanne Kunstler (BBiomedSci, BHealthSci, MPhysio, PhD).  Physiotherapist, behaviour change scientist and run coach.   This is part two of my blog post on the tendency for people to set new year’s resolutions that involve weight loss, rather than focusing more broadly on achieving good health. This post was inspired by my personal reflection on my relationship with food and exercise since giving birth to my daughter four months ago. If you haven’t read that post yet, then please read it here as I will be referring to it throughout this post. Let’s pick up where we left off Let me return to the question I ended yesterday’s post on.  How do we focus on ways of eating, exercising and participating in other behaviours that can support physical, mental and social wellbeing (“ health ”) instead of just taking the mental shortcut and focusing on becoming thin? I believe it requires a shift in our thinking from eating to lose weight, which involves surren...

Dr Breanne Kunstler (BBiomedSci, BHealthSci, MPhysio, PhD).  Physiotherapist, behaviour change scientist and run coach.   A little about me I gave birth to a healthy and lively baby girl almost four months ago on 13 September 2019. I ate foods to fuel my pregnant body and exercised to keep myself fit and strong, all with the aim of growing a healthy baby while keeping myself healthy, throughout my entire pregnancy. This approach, as well as the perceived inability to eat large quantities of food due to general discomfort and heartburn, led to a very healthy pregnancy (Image 1). I ate when I was hungry, stopped eating when I was full and exercised when and how I wanted to. This was so simple; I was just acting on intuition. Childbirth was bloody hard, the recovery painful and the sleepless nights that ensued were relentless. Pretty standard experience I’d say. Image 1: Me in my third trimester at my baby shower (credit: Facebook ) The focus on weight loss in th...