How sit-ups make you fat
Reported November 11, 2008
Here’s what I wish I’d been told after having children: Abdominal exercises can make your midline pooch look even bigger.
Instead, after both pregnancies, I religiously did crunches to get my pre-baby body back. And my bulge never budged.
It wasn’t until I saw my physical therapist for another issue that I learned I’d actually split my abdominal muscles during pregnancy, labor or delivery, a fairly common condition known as diastasis recti that affects about two-thirds of women who have had children.
Separated abs aren’t painful, so the condition often goes unnoticed. But if left untreated, it can cause lower-back pain and poor posture because your muscles aren’t giving you the proper support.
And once you’ve separated your six-pack muscles — and have what’s known as “jelly belly” — sit-ups are one of the worst things you can do.
Once those muscles are split, “only a thin layer of connective tissue is holding your intestines in place, so doing a sit-up make the intestines bulge up,” rather than lying sleekly along the spine, said Kari Bo, a pioneering researcher in pelvic floor disorders and a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
Bo suggests “tucking in” activities that use the transversus abdominis (TVA) and oblique muscles. For example, lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Pull in your navel toward your spine (so it looks as if your stomach is “caving in”) and hold for a minute or two, while continuing to relax and breathe. Do two sets of 10.
Physical therapists also recommend kegels, exercises that tighten the pelvic-floor muscles as if to stop the flow of urine. Eventually you can do exercises that work the lower abs or the TVA, such as plank or push-up position.
Separated abs aren’t easy to self-diagnose, but if you can feel a space below your navel or a bump running from your breastbone down to your navel, see a physical therapist who specializes in women’s health rehabilitation.
The muscles dont necessarily come back together on their own, said physical therapist Cindy Neville, who once treated a woman who had a 5 centimeter separation between the muscle bellieseight years after delivering twins.
“We were able to reduce the separation to 2 centimeters in 4 weeks,” said Neville, the director of Women’s Health at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. “For some reason when (separated abs) are related to pregnancy, the connective tissue of the abdomen seems to be responsive to healing even years later.”
