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10 Tips On Losing Weight After Childbirth
Many women struggle to lose weight after their baby is born. A healthy weight gain during a pregnancy is between 25 and 35 pounds. It’s very easy to pack on more than the recommended weight gain. Keeping unnecessary weight off during the pregnancy is related to how fast you can take it off after your baby is born. Bad food habits can linger long after the pregnancy if you’re not careful.
Unfortunately once you gain the weight during the pregnancy, you can’t diet until after you have your baby. We all experience cravings, but it’s important not to go overboard. Extra weight is not only harder to get off after the baby arrives but it can also negatively affect your health throughout the pregnancy causing problems such as high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. Here are some tips to help you get back on track and lose that baby weight.
Restrict Your Calories. Try to stick to an 1800 calorie a day diet. If you’re nursing you’ll want to wait at least two months before you restrict any calories because you don’t want to risk losing your milk supply.
Breastfeed. Breastfeeding helps to shrink your uterus back to its pre-pregnancy size quicker.
Eat small frequent meals. This will help to speed up your metabolism
Choose Healthy Snacks like fruits and nuts
Increase your fiber intake. Fiber will not only fill your belly up making you feel more full but it also helps to lower cholesterol.
Drink 6-8 glasses of water a day.
Join a gym. Getting into a routine of going to a gym will help increase your metabolism, lose weight, and get you out of the house.
Exercise a few times a week. Doing cardio exercises will help burn the fat while weight lifting will help speed up your metabolism and tone your muscles. If you can only find 20 minutes twice a week than do that and gradually increase your workouts. Any amount of time exercising is better than nothing.
Join a weight loss program like Weight Watchers. You’ll learn how to avoid the pitfalls of dieting plus you’ll connect with other people who are on the same journey.
Be patient with your body. It took nine months to put the weight on so it may take some time to get it off. In order to keep the weigh off permanently plan on only losing 1-2 pounds a week. Don’t look at it as a diet but instead as a lifestyle change. If you have a bad day, forget it and move on. Don’t let that sabotage you. It’s okay to indulge once in a while as long as you are doing well at least 85-90% of the time.
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