Kathryn Thomas: I was annoyed when people said I'd ‘bounced back’ after my first pregnancy

This week, TV personality, broadcaster and business woman Kathryn Thomas launched the latest addition to her Pure Results fitness business - KT Bump Fit - an exercise programme designed for every stage of pregnancy.

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Thomas is just four weeks away from welcoming her second baby and says that recording the Bump Fit workouts means that she now has a video diary of her pregnancy. “Looking back at the whole editing process, I now have this journey through having no bump to a little bump to the giant bowling ball that I have now,” she says.

The initial idea for the programme arose when she was pregnant with her first child, Ellie, and was extremely nervous about what she should do fitness-wise having been through two miscarriages, intense fertility treatment and surgery. “It was important for me to take things slowly and make sure that everything was going to be ok this time around,” she says of that time. “It had been a long road and I didn’t want to jeopardise it.”

Thomas had approached trainer Roisin Jones, an expert in pre-and post-natal training, to help devise the first Bump Fit programme - a downloadable pdf guide. This time around they’ve created a programme of 96 workouts so subscribers can follow Thomas as she exercises from week 8 to 40 of pregnancy.

There were days during filming that she certainly wasn’t in the mood for exercising. “You can clearly see that sometimes I am not motivated and I am saying to people that if they are feeling the same then they need to turn me off and come back to me the next day. The programme is not about completing all 96 workouts, it’s about women knowing that it’s there if, and when, they feel like it.”

“I didn’t have any issues with tiredness, pain or morning sickness when I was pregnant with Ellie - this time it is a completely different story,” she says. “That said, I am running around after a young child and I am also 42 and have to recognise that I am no spring chicken. I am listening to my body and to the experts around me as well as to the people who know me best.”

Thomas advises people not to jump into any exercise programme without advice from their doctor - particularly if they have not been active or exercising prior to becoming pregnant. “My first piece of advice is to always talk to your doctor. I think it is often the case that women are afraid to ask too many questions. I had my doctor plagued with questions on my first pregnancy,” she says. “I would advise women to build a good rapport with their doctor - no question is a stupid question.”

She urges women not to see weight as a priority during pregnancy. “You are growing a human being - you need to be making sure you’re looking after yourself and worrying about weight is so unnecessary.” She says that she was appalled at the old footage of Chris Evans weighing Victoria Beckham live on air in the recent Channel 4 documentary Spice Girls: How Girl Power Changed Britain.

“There is a pressure, not just on women in the public eye, but on women in general,” she says. “I hate that word ‘bounceback’. When I had Ellie I didn’t think I would be able to breastfeed or that it would be for me, fortunately, I was able to and I lost a lot of my pregnancy weight early on. What bothered me though, was people saying ‘You’ve bounced back!’ - the last thing I felt 10 weeks in was that I had ‘bounced back’. 

I was floored, I was all over the place. I might have looked like I had ‘bounced back’ but I didn’t feel it, so whenever people said it or it was written about me I was so annoyed.

At 42 she “doesn’t give two hoots” about what anyone thinks of her because she has had “every judgement” and “everything written” about her since she was 18. She says that working on Operation Transformation has made her see just how damaging it can be when one’s confidence and self-belief hit rock bottom.

Speaking of her work, in the days before social media, on travel show No Frontiers she says that she had no idea she was being body shamed until she read nasty comments on an online forum. “But at that time I was doing a lot of visits to schools and I realised that I had a responsibility as some sort of role model to ensure that the message I gave out was: ‘Always be yourself, never try to be anyone else, surround yourself with the people you love',” she says. “Not everyone is going to love you. If your mission is to be loved and liked by everyone it ain't going to happen - you just have to make sure that you are happy with who you are - whether you’re in the public eye or not.”

Thomas will be forever grateful for the lessons learned on that early TV job. “For one, it was the jammiest job in the world. My friends were in college eating Pot Noodles and I was trekking the jungles of Papua New Guinea,” she laughs. “What it taught me is that there are so many different cultures and beliefs that just because you’re born in a particular place and time doesn't mean that is the only way to exist.”

She says witnessing various beauty standards around the world was a great education in learning that “trying to fit a mould is never the right thing to do”. “What I want for my daughter is that she lives a life where she is fully and truly herself.”

Her travels also inspired her Pure Results business of which KT Bump Fit is part - having boxed in Thailand and hiked in Montana she wanted to create a similar camp or retreat experience here in Ireland. On the one hand, the Pure Results team had to quickly pivot online during the pandemic but on the other, they’ve seen a surge in interest since their live retreats returned.

Thomas says that there is now less guilt around taking time out for self-care. “I think women are racked with guilt - and we all need to realise that time out is not time wasted. There is less apologising now because there is a recognition that we need to step away in order to recharge and come back feeling like the best version of ourselves.”

As something of a workaholic, however, she admits that she needs to take a dose of her own medicine. She says one is “judged if you do and judged if you don’t” in terms of returning to work after the birth of a baby but that she will be returning to RTE’s Operation Transformation this year because it’s a project she is “massively passionate about”.

“I get such energy from my work and the people that I work with - whether that is my own clients on retreat, the leaders on Operation Transformation or helping people through a Bump Fit programme - that helps me be a better person and a better Mum,” she says.

“It balances me out and it’s important to me. I am taking time out now but at Christmas, I will turn up to the studio and I’ll be on Zoom with the leaders - we have tweaked things to make it work for me. I will probably be working two days a week and the rest of the week I will hopefully be enjoying motherhood. My family is my priority, and my health and the health of my child is my priority, so rest assured I won’t be doing anything to jeopardise that.”

For now though this self-confessed workaholic is winding down (aside, that is, from redecorating the bedrooms and coordinating builders and plasterers). “Ellie is so excited - she keeps looking into my bellybutton to see if the baby is coming out. We are under no illusions - she is used to being the queen bee - so I have been looking online and talking to plenty of Mums to find out how to help her deal with the transition. She is getting a new room and has picked her own bunk beds so that’s all massively exciting.”

• The KT Bump Fit programme includes 32 weeks of pregnancy workouts, 96 follow-along videos and a downloadable PDF guide. €129. https://pureresults.ie/bump-fit/