12 weeks ago Fifi Box had a baby. Now she's spruiking low-carb diet bars.

By REBECCA SPARROW

“Coming up: Fifi Box is here with baby Trixie to talk about her weight loss mission.”

That’s the tweet I read this morning from Sunrise and I have to be honest and say it stopped me in my tracks.

Fifi Box? Weight loss mission?  Hang on, didn’t she just have a baby like 30 SECONDS AGO?

Twelve weeks ago, actually, as I found out watching Fifi this morning on Sunrise explain how she’s become an “ambassador’ for some new low-carb Atkins diet bars:

And as I heard Fifi roll out all the usual politically correct lines about it not being a diet and how she’s eating sensibly and in no rush to lose weight (except that in six weeks she’s lost nearly 3 kgs!), well a little bit of my soul crumpled.

Dammit, we’ve lost another good one to the dark side, I thought (because I’m a bit melodramatic like that).

Here we are with yet another new celebrity mother succumbing to the pressure of having her post baby body back faster than you can say, “K-ching. The Australian weight-loss industry posted profits of $63 million dollars last year.”

And then I thought, “Wow. You’re a hypocrite.”

Me. Not Fifi.

Oh yes I was people.

Was I doing it strictly? Nope. Was I counting calories? Nope. Was I even weighing in? Er, nope. (I’m beginning to feel like I wasted my money now that I think about it…)

But I signed up to it in a bid to encourage myself to try and eat more healthy main meals and snacks. Instead of doing what I had been doing THE ENTIRE PREGNANCY, which was eating oh, as much crap as possible. Meat pie? Yes please. Tim Tams? Sure! Biscuits, cakes, Maggi Two Minute Noodles, Red Rock Deli Lime and Black Pepper Potato Chips … gimme. All of it. Right now. Are you going to finish that pizza?

And you know what else? I told no one that I’d signed up to the online weight loss program because I knew everyone around me would be horrified and tell me to “stop putting pressure on yourself to lose weight”.

But I wasn’t putting pressure on myself to lose weight.  I was putting pressure on myself to STOP EATING LIKE AUGUSTUS GLOOP IN CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. I just wanted to stop eating hot chips and blocks of Cadbury Snack to get through the day.  And in truth, some of the recipes I learned from that Michelle Bridges program have been fantastic and I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t help me feel better. Not just physically (with less sugar cravings) but psychologically.

So while I’m not loving the fact that Fifi has signed up as an “Ambassador” to a diet product and I kinda wish she’d kept whatever she’s doing private, I do kind of get it.

I get being sleep deprived and just bloody exhausted and not wanting to rely all the time on sugar to give you energy to get through the day.

I get the fact that for some of us when we’re at home all day with a baby, and we’re living in trakky-daks and we smell like baby vomit and our thighs have become super-sized… we just kind of want to lose some of the weight. To get back to feeling like our old selves.

I get the desire to want to get a handle on one aspect of your life (what you’re putting in your mouth) when everything else with a new baby is just so completely unpredictable.

And for many women – not all, but many, I suspect – it’s not about wanting to have a 6-pack stomach. Or to be a size zero. It’s just about wanting to feel like eventually EVENTUALLY you will actually get back into your old jeans whether they were a size 16 or a size 10.  You want that feeling of being you in the centre of the new baby whirlwind.

And you do that by getting your eating habits back in control and eating a healthy, sensible diet. And not putting any pressure on yourself. And guess what? Women are actually allowed to want to lose their baby weight.  Particulary those of us who gained loads of weight during the pregnancy. The key is not to be stupid about it. Or to fixate on looking like a supermodel.

So Fifi, I get it.  I do.

But if in six weeks time I see you posing in a bikini on the cover of a women’s magazine – girl, I’ll be mighty MIGHTY disappointed.

This gallery will give you an idea of how most celebrities present themselves post-baby:

We’d love to provide some contrast for the static, staid and glossy gallery above and post some photos of our readers at their happiest moments (sans perfect hair and make up). Here are our favourite ‘happy’ photos…