14 DAY TRIAL // Less than two months after she gave birth to her first child, a baby girl she and fiancé Dax Shepard named Lincoln, actress Kristen Bell sat down for an interview with Redbook to talk about motherhood and whether she was feeling under any pressure to lose the pregnancy weight.
Kristen gained 43 pounds (19.5 kg) while with child and is now only 15 pounds (6.8 kg) heavier than she was before she became pregnant.
She’s lost the extra weight through a combination of healthy eating, mild cardio and breastfeeding, but she swears she doesn’t feel any kind of pressure to bounce back into shape, like many other celebrities seem to be able to do almost overnight.
Instead, Kristen plans to just take it easy and enjoy this stage in her life.
“I’m going to continue working out and see where it goes. I’d like to get back down to where I was before the baby. But if this is where my body wants to be, so be it. I’m not going to make myself miserable for the rest of my life trying to get back to where I was before,” the actress explains.
Having a baby means your body is bound to change and Kristen has embraced that. It’s a small price to pay to bring new life into the world, if you will.
“I like my Lincoln leftovers because they’re proof I did something extraordinary. I gave life to my new BFF & she gave me a comical amount of midsection skin,” she says.
Besides, Kristen adds, her fiancé loves her no matter her dress size, which, she insists, is not what defines her as person or, come to think of it, as an artist.
“All he did was tell me he loved me chubby, he even asked me to stay chubby after the baby was born. I refused to worry about something I could not change, and I still refuse,” Kristen continues.
“I had to surrender to not worrying about the way I looked, how much I weighed, because that’s just part of the journey of having a baby. I am not a woman whose self-worth comes from her dress size,” she tells the mag.