Fit Fare

After nine long months, you have finally delivered the most delicate and beautiful little person that you will ever know. As you anticipate reveling in the baby’s developmental accomplishments, you will also have an important challenge of your own to tackle as the future months loom in the horizon. It is what every new mother soon comes to recognize as baby weight or pregnancy weight.

Without realizing, you already have a goal to reach, your pre-pregnancy weight. This number sits on a pedestal as you become aware, through photographs mainly, of your enormous maternal size. 

Some women have no difficulty dropping the extra weight. In fact, I have seen women who I enviously note to have looked as though they were never pregnant within a week to two weeks after delivery.   Aside from these few exceptions, the rest of us are not blessed with locomotive speed metabolisms. In fact, some women even find that their previous fast metabolism has been changed within their bodies’ chemistry after delivery and they no longer have that rapid metabolic rate. This leads to important keys to trying to lose weight after pregnancy. 

Work on keeping your metabolism from slowing down.

There are three different ways to keep your metabolism from slowing down. The first way is to make sure to eat every two to three hours. Do not eat an entire meal, but try to split your meals into smaller portions to eat throughout the day. This will keep your digestive system from shutting down, allow the body to work all day long, in turn burning more calories.   

In addition to eating all day, exercise is another critical component to keeping your metabolism from becoming sluggish. Exercise not only burns excess calories, but also helps your metabolism quicken. The benefits of exercise extends beyond just increasing the speed of your metabolism. It helps you increase oxygen flow to your blood and heart, and works out all of your muscles.

The third way to increase metabolism is to breastfeed your baby. The natural act of breastfeeding is not only beneficial to the baby, but also an effective calorie burner for the mother. In fact, as breastfeeding occurs, natural gauges in the body simultaneously working the expanded uterus to shrink. In the process of helping the uterus to shrink, the belly begins to retract and in turn results in weight loss.

Eat healthful protein, dairy, vegetable and fruit filled meals.

Now is the time to begin restricting your provisions to only the most healthful and nutritious foods. The benefit is two fold. For women who breastfeed, eating lean proteins, healthy fats, and an expansive array of vegetables and fruits not only benefits the mother but the baby receiving breastmilk as well. Eating well balanced and conscious meals takes a bit of planning and discipline, especially immediately after the birth of the child. However, eating a healthy meals are essential to losing weight. Stay away from artificial foods and prepackaged meals containing high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils and enriched breads. Reading any of these on the ingredients panel should be a clear indicator to avoid the food product.

When eating starches, stick to whole grain and whole wheat breads and pasta. Be sure to include a good amount of dairy as well in the form of yogurts, cheese and milk. Consult with your doctor a solid meal plan that both helps repair your recovering body from delivery, and allows you to lose weight in a healthy pace.

Exercise whenever you can!

Taking care of a newborn is not an effortless task. More often than not, women end up collapsing to sleep whenever they get a chance and do not make the effort to exercise. However, exercise is the element that accelerates weight loss and removes fat the quickest.   

Some easy ways to incorporate exercise into your busy day can be as simple as taking the stairs instead of the elevator, hiding the remote control, and walking for just 10 minutes a day. Any movement counts, though the more rigorous the exercise, the more rapid the weight loss.

Drink at least eight glasses of water a day!

Hydration is essential in weight loss as it is in maintaining a good weight! When you do not drink enough liquids during the day, your body believes water is scarce, therefore what few water is in the body ends up preventing the liver from working on burning fat. A more in depth explanation of the benefits of drinking water can be found at LowCarbGuy.com.