Adrianne Akpan, 49, has always prioritized her health, enjoying the way she looks and feels. But three back-to-back pregnancies in her 20s changed her body in ways she didn’t expect.
During the pregnancies, Akpan found herself craving and eating more than usual, while moving her body less.
After her last child was born, hormonal shifts and postpartum changes left Akpan, 30 at the time, carrying 50 additional pounds. She was tired, her knees were hurting, and she worried about her belly fat and the health risks associated with excessive body fat around the abdomen.
“You can learn good behaviors and unlearn unhealthy ones so that you can live a healthy lifestyle.”
“A doctor didn’t have to tell me to lose weight,” Akpan says. “I just knew that I didn’t feel good. I had no energy. I didn’t like the way I looked in my clothes. I wanted to be there for my kids. And unless you do something about it, it’s not going away.”
The mom of three started exercising, walking three times a week. She also cleaned up her diet and became mindful of her calorie intake.
“I didn’t have to go on an extreme diet or do anything drastic,” Akpan says. “I just started eating more veggies, limiting sugar, and the weight fell off.”
It was simple, but it wasn’t easy. Akpan says there were lingering cravings from pregnancy that she had to be intentional about not giving in to. She stayed consistent and determined.
Akpan acknowledges that there are many obstacles to living healthy — some of which begin in childhood. As a young child in Little Rock, Akpan says healthy foods weren’t readily available to her. She remembers her parents cooking a lot of fatty foods.
“They did it out of love, but something inside of me knew that even though the food tasted good, it wasn’t the best for me,” she says. “I grew up wanting to take care of myself.”
When Akpan learned more about nutrition in high school and gained more autonomy over what she ate, she began making healthier choices when she could, like swapping a piece of cornbread for wheat toast at dinner.
Later, while earning a Master’s degree in health promotion, Akpan learned more about the factors that keep people from living their healthiest lives, such as poverty, lack of knowledge, and limited access to healthy foods.
“Many people are hopeless because they don’t think a healthy life is attainable, and sometimes they don’t even know what healthy behaviors look like,” Akpan says. “They have no idea that they are even unhealthy.”
As part of her graduate studies, Akpan taught community members about the importance of making healthy choices, how to incorporate healthy habits into their lives, and introduced them to the tools they need to maintain a healthy life despite the obstacles.
Twenty years later, Akpan is maintaining the healthy habits she returned to in her 30s and continues to love inspiring others to build their own healthy patterns. “You can learn good behaviors and unlearn unhealthy ones so that you can live a healthy lifestyle,” Akpan says. “But you have to be determined and want that change for yourself. The barriers will be there, but you have to fight through them
By Maya Smith
Photo by Tindall Stephens
