Being Kendra (9 page)

When I finally got my head on straight, I was mad at myself (and Hank) because I realized the main contributing factor to my not having anything diagnosed sooner was that I was traveling all over the country following Hank. Every few months I had a new doctor, and then just when he or she got to know me I would leave. Nobody took the time to properly assess me and what was going on with my body. I was in Indianapolis for the last stages of pregnancy and then birth, L.A. for first few months of Hank Jr.’s life, then Philly, then Minnesota, then back to L.A. No one had the time to fully check me out. It was always a quick test of my blood pressure, my vagina, and my weight. As if that was
all
that could be wrong with me. If I had been settled in one city I would have caught it. Like kids whose parents are in the military, here I was an “NFL brat” moving around from city to city with a severe condition that was going untreated.

After pregnancy I knew I was going to have to consider dieting, something I never in my life had really done. The first few weeks of postpartum I still ate like I was pregnant. But I knew better. I don’t see eating healthy as a diet, I see it as something normal I just do. Before pregnancy I ate healthy, I worked out, and I had a great body, but I could eat whatever I wanted. I knew those days were over. But I must say now I look at pictures from before pregnancy and I think I look too skinny! I like my body thicker and more muscular. I would always ask some of my black friends how they got their butts and thighs. And they would say to me, “Eat fried chicken and corn bread and sweet potato, then you’ll get a bigger butt!” So I tried that, but only my stomach got bigger. But now after pregnancy I’m happy (and obsessed) with my bigger butt and thighs. I finally have the body I’ve always wanted.

Steak and fries for Hank! So we hadn’t started our diets just yet.

I was never ashamed of my body during pregnancy. In the beginning it looked like I was gaining all of this weight because there was no belly, so people just assumed I was fat, and I didn’t enjoy that. During our honeymoon I was about four months pregnant and sad about getting into a bathing suit because I looked fat, not pregnant. It’s especially disheartening when one of the things you are most known for is your body. I’d rather have people say, “Oh, she’s pregnant,” instead of, “Oh, she’s fat.” As long as they had the right information, it didn’t bother me. But at first, it takes some getting used to. No one wants to be called fat. So that was the reason I actually told people I was pregnant. I didn’t want them to think I had just put on some extra weight!

But overall I actually felt sexier when I was pregnant than when I wasn’t pregnant! My skin was glowing, my hair was thicker, my lips looked fuller, and my cheeks were pink. It was a fuller, sexier look, and I embraced it. I was rocking it! Even though I wasn’t eating great, I stayed fit by working out and swimming.

My diet was supposed to take a drastic turn for the better after birth and I tried to mentally prepare myself for it. The instant the baby came out of me I looked at him and thought, “This is the love of my life; I need to be healthy. I love you more than I love Dunkaroos. My diet will change right now.” Let me tell you though, it’s easier to think about than to do. I did love baby Hank more than Dunkaroos, but I convinced myself that I could love the both of them! My body was still craving the sugar and the fat it had been given for the past nine months; it wasn’t like I could just stop. I was flat-out addicted to the stuff. I tried to mentally fight the cravings but I was also battling insomnia, depression, anger, and the overall lifestyle of being a new mom, so the last thing I had energy for was fighting cravings. It’s a lot easier to just give in.

Before I got the six-week clearance from my doctor that I could exercise, I was just a blob. My arms lost their shape and got bigger. In fact, I felt bloated and bigger all over. I hated my body immediately after birth. I couldn’t work out, my blood wasn’t flowing, I was uncomfortable in my own skin and still felt depressed. I ate a ton of bad food, and I generally started to put on even more weight. I was frustrated by my inability to fight cravings and lack of self-control. Instead of slimming down, I just shoved anything I saw into my mouth. I was busy learning the ropes as a new mom and it was so much easier to just stick my hand in a bag of cookies and eat it for lunch because that saved me time and I wouldn’t have to think about it.

In my life, I have quit drugs cold turkey. I just decided one day, “That’s it, no more drugs.” I guess I was never
really
addicted to them. I used a lot of them, but luckily I was just able to one day wake up and quit. Quitting food wasn’t as easy. For me, quitting junk food was ten times harder than quitting drugs, because Twinkies and Oreos are so much more readily available and convenient to do than drugs. They fit into your daily schedule and are everywhere you go.

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 extra-large clothes after the photo shoot to put out the façade that I was losing weight still. I didn’t want people to think I was a liar. But that photo shoot made me obsess over my body even more because I had to live up to those photos. It was the worst feeling of all time, to look at myself on the cover of a magazine and say, “I wish I looked like that.” That made me get on the treadmill twice a day and try even harder. I realize now what other women must feel when they see beautiful actresses and models on the covers of magazines; it’s just not realistic, and certainly not fair.

Hank is my worst critic, just like I used to be his. He knows what I want and he knows that I truly want it, so he helps me stay disciplined. But I tried my best to go behind his back. If he catches me he’s like, “Ahhh—what are you doing?” I love it when he does that. No one has ever made me feel like that or put me in my place. I never had a father to yell at me or that male voice in my life that I had to listen to. When I hear that deep voice bellowing, “I know you are sneaking a Dunkaroo!” I love it. He always knows! It’s like that scene in
A
Christmas
Story
where the dad is cutting into the turkey and the mom is in the other room screaming, “Stay away from the turkey!”

So, I did what I had always done with things I’m hung up on—I threw it all away. It was hard to do but I did it. I cleaned house. I knew I had to. If it wasn’t in the house, I wouldn’t eat it. I wasn’t ready to get rid of all of this stuff—my cravings weren’t gone yet—but I had to do it. It was just the only option left. Once I stepped back on that treadmill, I regained that sense of self and empowerment that I used to have and used it to fight my food cravings.

You can see how low I got. And how far I strayed from being myself. I felt like I had no control over my body and my health. And my body had been my calling card, my moneymaker, what I was known for for so long. It was a scary journey. Losing that part of my identity, in some way, might have helped me redefine myself in other ways, as a wife and mother. But now that I have lost the baby weight and am back on track, I feel so much better.

Hank and I are making sure that our diet knowledge spills over to Hank Jr. too. I make sure he eats a variety of different healthy options and doesn’t eat the same thing twice on the same day except for veggies and fruit. He can eat those all day long. Anything with meat or bread I don’t let him eat two of the same thing a day. I make sure that if he eats ham for breakfast he won’t eat it for the rest of the day. We make sure we are very balanced in diet. I make sure I don’t give him too much bread or sugar or salt. Kids these days will have juice and sugar cereal in the morning, and then sugared snacks, juice all day, a cookie at lunch, a cheeseburger and fries for dinner with juice, and ice cream. That’s just not right. I’m so OCD about a balanced diet with him. Most of the time we cook his food and make sure that everything (including his sugar and salt) is balanced. He’s so good, he’ll eat steamed veggies without anything on them. We make sure he gets his iron and red meat and chicken and I have fresh-cut deli meat from the deli, not anything that’s prepackaged and soaked in sodium or preservatives.

When we got the clearance that Hank Jr. could eat solid foods, I had so much fun! The very first thing I stuck in his mouth was veggies. I was obsessed with blending; I blended everything I fed him. Carrots, broccoli, squash (spinach was way too stringy)—we gave him everything you could imagine and he loved it. I was so into it that a few times I would meet new moms who had given birth around the same time I did and we’d be talking and they’d say they were just giving their kids jar food, and I passionately started preaching to them—go and get a blender, start blending!

The result? Success. Now he eats straight-on adult food. We are still on the veggie diet for him. You can’t go wrong with any veggies. He loves broccoli and squash. They make it so easy nowadays; everything is prepackaged and you can buy it frozen and organic and washed. The grocery stores are doing it for you. They cut that shit up! There’s no excuse—“This takes too long!” Hell no. We steam and add garlic and whatever—it takes five minutes to do this! Ten minutes and you can make it for the whole week!

Of course, sometimes I feel like I’m all alone in this mission. If Hank feeds him a cookie or cake or if I find out Hank’s mom and dad fed him something fattening, then I get so pissed. I’m like, “That’s not good. Never feed him that!” But on the flip side, of course it’s okay if I do it every once in a while. If anyone is going to give my baby sweets, I’d rather it be me. I’m the one who knows him best and keeps track of that stuff. If I give him a cookie, I need to know someone else didn’t give him one two hours earlier. I’m getting less crazed about it but I just want to make sure that he has a good diet. I want him to have healthy habits and not bad habits. I want to put in his mind that this is the way it is.