Gemma Atkinson, the actress, has opened up about her turbulent relationship with body image and urged viewers to be aware of one thing. The mother-of-two, who played Carly Hope in Emmerdale, admitted to crying over her changing shape from pregnancy and C-sections, but now views this as a positive thing.
“When I was pregnant with my daughter, Mia ended up being an emergency C-section,” she said in a new episode of her podcast, The Overshare. “… you don’t look at your scar for a good few days, they change the dressing and whatever.
I remember taking off the C-section bandage and looking in the mirror the first time I got home after spending a week in the hospital. It was so swollen and so bruised, I physically started crying thinking, ‘oh my god this is awful, this big cut on my body’. “
Fast forward to 2023, and Gemma gave birth to her second child, Thiago, who was also birthed via C-section. She claimed that everything completely changed when viewed in a different way despite the previous “shock and upset” over her scars.
“Now, I’ve had a second C-section again, not an emergency one but a necessity, because Thiago decided to poo inside me while I was trying to get him out,” she quipped. My children’s lives were saved there, I think. How capable was my body?
I felt a little embarrassed when I first saw it, both the shock and the upset, because I saw it in that way when it did such an amazing, wonderful thing. “
Beyond her scars, Gemma also revealed that she gained over three stone, ‘loads of cellulite’ and numerous stretch marks during this period. While she wasn’t too keen on this either, her husband Strictly pro Gorka Márquez ‘couldn’t get enough’.
She went on: “When I was pregnant, I put on three-and-a-half stone, and I developed loads of cellulite and I was like, ‘oh my gosh! ‘ Gorka wasn’t bothered, he was like, ‘more the merrier’, he couldn’t get enough.
“He was like, ‘you look beautiful’, and he loved it. It was in my own mind. My backside stretch marks will now be known as my tiger stripes. I have tiger stripes because I’ve grown, housed and delivered two children. “
Gemma, 40, is more confident and fit than ever. In December, she, told Women’s Health that she wanted her body to be ‘functional’, adding: “That’s always my aim with training. It’s never, ‘I need to fit into a certain size,’ it’s ‘How can I remain strong? ‘
“Especially going into your forties; perimenopause will kick in…I want my body to be functional. ” However, she encouraged people to be aware that everyone’s path to fitness may look different.
On the podcast, she said: “I’m asked a lot on my socials how many calories I eat a day. I mean, it’s a lot, I eat a lot of food but I’m doing a lot of expenditure. I’m walking, I’m training. Because it depends on the person, putting someone who is five-foot-two who works in an office for nine hours a day on the same calories as me would result in completely different outcomes.
“And that’s another thing, I think there is not enough awareness. Everyone assumes one-size-fits-all. “
Source: Mirror
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