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Leave it to Blake Lively to tell it like it is on social media. Today, the mother-of-two took to Instagram to post a fitness-minded selfie showcasing her strong arms and toned abs alongside longtime trainer, Don Saladino. Thanks to a clean diet of no processed foods and a rigorous workout schedule, it took just over a year to the lose the weight she gained after the birth of her second child, Inez, with husband Ryan Reynolds. And it wasn t easy: "Turns out, you can’t lose the 61 lbs you gained during pregnancy by just scrolling through Instragram," she quips. "Thanks @donsaladino for kickin my A double S into shape. 10 months to gain, 14 months to lose. Feeling very proud."
And why shouldn t she be? After all, Lively, along with others, has said that society s expectation of young mothers to immediately bounce back after giving birth is "silly." She even admitted, after the birth of her first child, James, that it took a moment to get used to her new physique. “After I had a kid I thought, ‘Okay, this is what my body looks like. This is amazing—I earned this body,’” she told an Australian radio station. “‘And it’s not as good as it was before I had a kid, but, oh well.’” Of course, Saladino and her job as a professional actress to portray a surfer chick stranded out at sea in the 2016 film The Shallows whipped her into extreme shape in ten months-time. Lively called the role "an advantage," and said, “I’ve never been in that great a shape in my whole life." Now, with no bikini-clad character calling her name, she s done it again, and she s proving that slow and steady, healthy and happy, wins the race.