Kim Brooks opens up about her weight in her Salon essay, “I’m pregnant, I’m fat and I hate it.” After the birth of her first child, she found it hard to take off the pounds. Now pregnant with her second, Brooks is stressing about the “predicament” she’s found herself in thanks to her approach to eating during her first pregnancy:

For the first time in my life, I felt light and free, even as my thighs and hips grew heavy. I did things I never would have done sans fetus. I “treated” myself to drive-through junior bacon cheeseburgers on my way home from the gym. Guacamole-laden tortilla chips replaced seasonal salad as my first course of choice. I bought a maternity tee with the words, “We’re hungry,” printed across the belly. I didn’t stop exercising, but it seemed like the more I exercised, the more I ate. In 39 1/2 weeks of pregnancy, I gained 39 1/2 pounds, and then delivered, to my astonishment, a little peanut, a 6-pound, 10-ounce baby boy. When I came home from the hospital, I hardly recognized myself. It took me about a year to lose the first 25. I was still working on the last 15 when No. 2 made an appearance on the sonogram screen.

Brooks understands that tabloid stories about stars’ post-baby diets and workout plans are fueling the intense pressure women feel to take off the pounds, but she’s not completely buying the self-acceptance line of reasoning either. In her opinion, Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat? and Jezebel’s articles about the dangers of the baby weight craze ignore the fact that most women actually should lose the baby fat.

[T]he big, fat truth is that most mothers aren’t going too far to shed their excess baby weight. We’re not going far enough. Sixty-two percent of American women are overweight, and so for the majority of American women, excess, lingering baby-weight is a real problem: health-wise, self-esteem-wise, and otherwise.

There are plenty of readers who will identify with this point of view, but I would argue that the real problem has to do with another statistic entirely. Instead of zeroing in on the number of overweight women who need to lose the baby weight after pregnancy, we should be focusing on the number of women–of all shapes and sizes–who are struggling with weight issues and poor body image as they enter motherhood. Three out of four American women suffer with some form of disordered eating; it stands to reason that a good number of those women are or will become mothers. We are a nation of chronic dieters and emotional eaters. Some go even further with bingeing, purging, extreme restriction, and overexercise. And whether you wear skinny jeans or plus-sizes, most women have experienced a significant amount of appearance-related stress and anxiety in their lives. When we go into pregnancy with this kind of baggage, it increases the chances that we will find ourselves obsessing over the numbers on the scale or buying into the “eating for two” myth, as Brooks describes.

So what’s the solution? Sure, new moms who get right back on their diets and back on the treadmill might lose some pounds, but they won’t necessarily learn how to eat without scrutinizing points, calories, fat grams, carbs, etc., and they certainly won’t be any better prepared to pass along healthy attitudes about food, weight, and body image to their children.

Brooks points out that many healthcare providers are now beginning to understand that nutritional counseling should be incorporated into prenatal care. If we’re talking about a holistic approach to counseling that will help women of all sizes leave behind the yo-yo dieting mentality in favor of intuitive, healthy eating throughout pregnancy and beyond, I’m all for it. If this adds up to more comprehensive prenatal screenings for disordered eating (beyond the requisite “history of depression” check box) and referrals to qualified therapists, sign me up. And how about some sensitivity training for obstetricians who make weigh-ins the center of every visit and have a tendency to throw their patients into body-loathing tailspins with their offhand and unhelpful comments about extra pounds? Hey, I’ll be the first in line with my endorsement.

Like Brooks, I am also in my third trimester of pregnancy. As someone with a history of eating disorders and disordered eating, I refuse to enter into a fruitless battle to get my body back after my child is born. What I think moms and moms-to-be really need is encouragement to make peace with our bodies–to take care of ourselves with nourishing foods, to find movement and exercise that feels good, and to deal with those lingering body image issues that are really about so much more than weight.