Tips for Losing Weight After Pregnancy

Lose weight after pregnancy sensibly. Image by Africa/Freedigitalphotos.net

So, it’s Fitness Friday – as I’ve started calling it – and it’s time to focus on losing weight after pregnancy. I’ve finally lost my pregnancy weight and I wanted to share some insights and how to lose weight after pregnancy sensibly!

It’s taken just over six months to lose the weight and this is a good amount of time – after all, it took nine months to gain it, right?

For the record, I still have a lot of weight to lose but that was weight I already needed to shift before getting pregnancy back in September 2011.

·         Lose no more than 2lb per week: I hate seeing all these diets that tell you that you can lose a stone in a month – actually, I saw a diet on Facebook the other day promising two stone in two weeks!

This is not a healthy way to lose weight and will do nothing for you in the long term. You may lose two stone in two weeks but will you really keep that weight off?

These “quick fix” diets cut out so many calories and so many nutrients that you’re not healthy. They put your body into starvation mode and it starts to cling onto as much fat and calories as possible. You end up losing muscle!

That’s not the way you want to go. It’s healthy of lose weight slowly and it’s easier to keep off! You change your eating habits for the better.

·         Make sure you get your nutrients: whether you’re breastfeeding or bottle feeding (your choice – I won’t judge), you need to make sure your getting the right nutrients. It will take longer to lose weight if you’re breastfeeding because your body holds onto the extra fat.

If you want to know, I opted for bottle feeding after two weeks of breastfeeding because my daughter wouldn’t take to it. I did find it much easier to lose weight but that didn’t mean I didn’t have to focus on nutrients.

You will be doing a lot of running around for the baby and will be tired all the time (in the first month or so anyway) so your body needs as much help to refuel as possible.

This will also help to battle against postnatal depression, where a lack of nutrients has a part of play.

·         Take your time to get into exercising: the last thing you want is to injure yourself. Exercise is good for you but take your time to get into it!

Depending on the type of birth you had, you may have to wait six weeks before you can get back into exercising. I had a c-section and stupidly opted to go for a three hour walk to register the birth of my baby a week after getting out of the hospital. BIG MISTAKE‼! It hurt, I was tired and I just wanted to curl up with a big, unhealthy takeaway – and it didn’t do my stitches much good either.

Let your body get used to exercise again to help avoid injury. You could start with just going out for a walk with your newborn before getting back to the gym.

·         Don’t compare yourself with others: it’s really easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself with others – I did it! I figured if they could lose the weight just as quickly, I should be able to too!

It doesn’t work that way – everyone is different. There are people (annoyingly) that can lose the weight instantly but there are others who will find it takes months to lose the pregnancy weight.

Another thing: don’t compare yourself with people who haven’t been pregnant! I started comparing myself with friends who were just losing weight for their wedding or didn’t even have weight to lose and my husband had to keep reminding me that I had a very good reason to be overweight but I was getting there with it!

The best thing to do is look after yourself. You need to remain nutritious while losing weight after pregnancy. Don’t just straight into – your baby and your health are more important. The general rule is that it will take just as much time to lose it as it took to put on!