Sophia Sark-Geissler, 31, was left in agony after an emergency C-section and struggled to accept her new body, with the new mum nearly cancelling her own wedding
Sophia Sark-Geissler had her heart set on getting back in shape for her wedding after an emergency caesarean section, but the harsh realities of the surgery left her in excruciating pain and with her confidence shattered.
The 31-year-old wasn’t fazed by the dramatic shift from natural birth to C-section and believed she’d quickly bounce back, tending to her newborn and heading to the gym. “I basically had in my mind the whole time that I was going to have this natural birth, and being quite active, I would just be able to walk out of there and feel great about myself and get back into the gym straight away,” she shared. “After the C-section, I just didn’t feel comfortable. I felt every movement. It was painful.”
A meticulous planner by nature, Sophia’s goal to return to fitness following childbirth in November 2023 was thrown off track, prompting a risky stint with her health and wellbeing, reports the Daily Star. She said, “I felt that the only way I could get back in shape was to effectively stop eating. I’d ordered some fitness meals. I made up my own amount of calories that I should be consuming, and they were half the amount of a woman’s daily advised calories – and I wasn’t even consuming that. I was eating like 500 calories a day, if that, and I was exhausted.”
The new mum found her energy levels plummeting as she breastfed her son, which took a toll on her mental health. “You’ve had the most amazing experience of your life, the biggest high, and then you’re presented with such lows,” she said. Her self-esteem hit rock bottom, “I had such a negative feeling of myself.”
Sophia’s strict diet wreaked havoc on her metabolism, leaving her shocked at her post-birth check-up weight. She recalled, “I remember being on the bed to have my C-section, and they weighed me, and I was around 78.4 kg. But when I went in around 16 weeks post birth, I was 81.9 kg, so I’d actually put on a significant amount by doing something that I just shouldn’t have been doing myself.”
Taking a photo of herself, Sophia’s self-esteem was so low that she even began to question if she could go ahead with her wedding. “I think the photo speaks for itself. I couldn’t actually look in the camera. I was really embarrassed,” she remembered. “I was close to the point of not wanting to even go down that route and get married, because I just felt awful about myself. That’s another incredible moment of your life, and you are meant to enjoy it. I didn’t know who that version of me was.”
Sophia knew she needed to seek help when she became overwhelmed with negative thoughts about her weight and appearance. After seeing a soap star regain her figure post-pregnancy with the aid of Ultimate Performance, a London-based personal training firm, Sophia reached out to them. They arranged a consultation, crafted a bespoke fitness and nutrition plan, and even took comprehensive body measurements, which Sophia was keen to undergo.
“It’s a bit strange to be measured by someone else. But I felt like I was on my journey,” she said. “I treated everything very much like learning. I wanted to know, why would we do this, or why was it important to get this whole view of my body? For me, it was education.”
Committing to thrice-weekly workouts with her trainer for 19 weeks, incorporating weight and strength training, and aiming for 12,000 steps daily, Sophia watched her fitness levels skyrocket. She also upped her calorie intake to fuel her transformation, “What my trainer Jack introduced to me was that you don’t need to cut anything out. I wasn’t forced into a meal plan. He gave me pointers on what the best carbs you can eat are, oats, as an example, and rice. But he didn’t mandate that I would have those. So I never felt like there was a strict rule about food and I had the autonomy to decide what I wanted to have.
“To begin, I was on what I thought was high calories, of 2,000. I was breastfeeding, so there had to be an amount compensated within that for the amount of energy and calories I was burning from breastfeeding. And then it slowly decreased to 1,500 for the final three weeks. My partner was really supportive throughout my journey even though he was working. He dedicated his lunch hour to looking after our baby whilst I trained.”
By July this year, Sophia had smashed her target goal and lost 15kg of weight. She beamed, “Our goal was to get down around the 68kg mark. I went from 81.9kg to 67kg. I’ve read so many other people’s transformation stories and been like, ‘I just wish that was me’. I just wanted to feel how they did. But you never actually think, ‘Oh, my God, that can be me’. And that was so cool.”
When she walked down the aisle earlier this year, Sophia looked and felt amazing. She shared, “Everyone was just like, ‘How the hell did you do that?’ And I have to credit the people that helped me get there. Because if I were doing it by myself, I probably would have looked very different on that day.”
