Postpartum Weight Loss – 3 Strategies for New Mothers

Have you recently brought a beautiful baby into this world? Well, wow! You have just done something incredible!

Let’s consider your body, the changes it’s gone through, and, look at three key strategies to get back to great tone and a healthy weight.

As you began your journey through pregnancy, you were diligent in maintaining proper nutrition throughout your pregnancy to support you and your child’s needs.

Then you underwent the powerful, sudden and extremely physical process of giving birth, whether by natural or medical means.

Your body has gone through a dramatic transformation.

Here are three strategies to remember as you begin your post-birth weight loss journey: Taking it easy on yourself, prioritizing your health, and balancing nutrition and exercise.

1. Take it easy on yourself
Recognize that your body has gone through a nine-month transformation culminating in the climactic encore of the birth of your child. Because your body has gone through a nine-month transformation, returning to your pre-pregnancy form may take a little time. Your body will need time to recover from the actual birthing process, particularly if you had any health complications or medical procedures.

2. Prioritize your physical and mental wellness
It should be about you and not what others think of you. Aspire to be the best possible version of yourself instead of comparing yourself to others or an ideal based on society’s projected picture of perfection.

Adopt a maintain a healthy lifestyle that prioritizes your well-being while taking into consideration your post-pregnancy needs and a healthy weight and appearance will follow.

3. Balance Nutrition and Exercise
As with any weight management journey, you will have a two-pronged approach: nutrition and exercise. Let’s go through a few key points for each that are relevant to postpartum wellness:

Nutrition
When it comes to nutrition, a key rule is to pay attention to your body.

Eat when you’re hungry. You may be eating more frequently than you’re used to, but your body is letting you know. Just focus on healthy options AND to pay attention to how much you are eating each time.

If you never were much of a meal planner before, this may be a good time to start. Initiating meal planning at this time helps particularly during the trials and joys and caring for your small child. It will also help you create a healthy example as your child grows.

If you are breastfeeding, then keep in mind that you should follow similar nutritional choices that you had made during your pregnancy. Research from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) indicates that breastfeeding can help accelerate weight loss, but recommends a daily multivitamin, an extra 300-500 calories per day for milk production, and three additional servings of protein to preserve lean body mass.

You can make extensive use of your freezer for a few things: when you’re to tired to cook, to control portion sizes (particularly for those sweet cravings), to avoid unhealthy temptations, and to reduce the temptation of ordering out.

Exercise
Prior to incorporating any exercise regime, it is imperative that you discuss your personal physical issues with your doctor and progress slowly.

As with any exercise plan, you should focus on your whole body, and not just target your abdominal region specifically.

Beyond this, there are two major areas that you may have to contend with:
     • the separation of your large abdominal muscles known as diastasis recti
     • a weakened pelvic floor

Similar to your meal planning strategy, make your exercise a daily activity, incorporate your child into your routine whenever possible, and ensure that you have comfortable appropriate clothing to give you quality support.

Simple activities that may take some time include:
     • walking (with your baby and/or your dog)
     • deep, full-body breathing, incorporating all of your abdominal muscles.
     • Kegel exercises to strengthen your pelvic floor
     • dancing
     • baby-friendly gyms (whether it is a mother-baby fitness class or a gym that provides childcare)

As your child begins to eat more solid foods, you reduce or stop breastfeeding, and your major back and abdominal muscle groups have strengthened, you can reassess your exercise activities, goals, and timeline. At this point, you may shift to a strategic weight management plan to get back to your pre-pregnancy figure.

10 Ways to Get Those Calories Burned Without a Trip to the Gym

Want a slimmer body?  Know you need to burn more calories but not making it to the gym in spite of your best intentions?  You’re not alone!   Fitting time in the gym between work, commuting, family, chores, friends, and sleep is a big challenge for many of us!

Fortunately, relief is at hand when you realize that there are many ways to up your activity and daily calorie burning without a gym.  Read along for a great list of 10 ways to do just that!

Before getting to that list, though, consider three important points:

First, though, remember it’s possible to out-eat any activity level and still not lose weight so controlling your food intake is still important.

Second, be clear on both the health and weight loss results you want. What are your goals? Mobility Weight loss? Strength building? Increasing your fitness level might require a structured exercise program but that’s a topic for another blog.  Here you are looking purely at the calorie burning benefits of activity so you can be flexible.

Third, for most of us, starting small is the way to go. Increase your activity progressively so your body can adjust. It may be easier than you think to increase your NEAT (Non-Exercise activity thermogenesis), or all those daily activities that aren’t that vigorous.

So, here’s our list of 10 ways to burn calories without the gym:

1. singing in the shower or on your commute
2. some of those basic inside household chores: cleaning, laundry, sweeping, cooking
3. some of those basic outside household chores: yard work or gardening
4. low impact activities that use your mind and body: hopscotch, jump rope, darts, badminton, charades, mini golf, bowling, dance)
5. regular walks, perhaps with your dog or window shopping
6. practice good posture 
7. fidget
8. basic stretching
9. get chilled to make your body shiver
10. use apps to help track your movements 

Think about how your typical day flows, keeping these activities in mind, and imagine progressively adding more of these activities to burn more calories on a daily basis.


How can you add NEAT movements into your day? An early morning, lunchtime, or after dinner stroll? A screen break to stretch and socialize? Seated exercises at your desk or on the couch? Active social activities? Singing and dancing along as you complete various tasks?



The more you move, the more your body uses energy. While these activities won’t necessarily burn a lot of calories, the increased mobility often will make you want to do more. And you don’t need a gym to do them.

What other calorie-burning activities can you think of? Share in the comments!

Need Help with Weight Loss? 5 Ways to Stay Accountable

Want to lose weight? Then you need to set up an accountability system.  For most, accountability is absolutely imperative when it comes to your weight loss journey.

What is accountability? To be accountable means to be subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something. Or at least, that is what the dictionary says.

Accountability comes in many guises:  Here we will look at 5 accountability methods: self-accountability, sharing your goals, social media & going public, group support, and working with professionals.

Self-Accountability

Sometimes you need to psyche yourself out. It can start with writing out a personal contract of what you want to do and the steps to achieve it.

At the end of the day, you want to feel proud that you have accomplished something toward your weight loss goal. Did you stick to your meal plan? Did you meet the 10,000 steps goal? Did you write out that meal plan for the week? Did you log every bite you took? Did you weigh yourself? Or try on your favorite jeans? Or measure your waistline?

When you start logging all of this information (and there are many apps for weight loss accountability), you can begin to assess your lifestyle, and assess your needs and wants. Reviewing this information can provide immense satisfaction as to how far you have come as well as allow you to make adjustments to life’s hurdles.

Sharing Your Goals
Perhaps it simply takes verbally stating a goal to help you stay on track. Sharing with friends and family your goals will keep your goals at the forefront of your mind. When friends and family tempt you to stray, you can remind them of your goals, and vice versa.

Social Media and Going Public
Some are very private with your weight management challenges, but maybe you are the type who wants or needs encouragement and support from others. Luckily the Internet and social media provide many avenues for you to share your journey: blogging, videos, Facebook, Twitter. This public accountability is a reminder that everyone has their own weight challenges and your public sharing can be an inspiration to them and to you.

Group Support
Maybe you need a more formal support group for your weight management challenges. You may have a unique medical condition with medications that make things difficult. Or you may want to get to know people locally or online that can share with you what works for them. Many support groups address the mental challenges that come with weight management. Regular interactions can help you become more accountable for your health choices.

Group support can take the guise of team challenges for weight loss. From the variety of television shows to businesses taking an interest in employee health and well being, team challenges can provide time within your daily routine to support one another.

Another aspect of group support can be a workout buddy. This person may simply watch your children so that you can go to the gym. Or she could be like your favorite high school coach that can say just the right thing to motivate you for that last hill to climb. He can be that person waiting for you at the gym before work. Or she can be that person a text message away when you’re thinking about the latest seasonal latte at the coffee shop.

Work with Professionals
Professionals in weight management come in many guises such as lifestyle coaches, dietitians, and personal trainers.

A step further is when you decide to work with a specific weight management plan, which will often provide a combination of these kinds of services to help you. Much like a follow-up visit to the doctor, regular appointments with your weight management experts will guarantee that certain information is being documented and evaluated regularly to help you stay on track and to make adjustments accordingly.

3 Ways Online Grocery Shopping Can Help with Weight Loss

Online grocery shopping is more than just a trend: it is an opportunity to redefine how we interact with our food!

There are many benefits to online grocery shopping including placing orders at any time of day or night, opting for delivery versus curbside pick-up, online comparison shopping, avoiding checkout lines.

Beyond this, online grocery shopping can be your ally in weight management, health, and wellness!

Think about it. 

When was the last time you went to the grocery store?

Did you make a list and stick to it? Did you have coupons at your finger-tips?

Or, rather, did you wander all over the store to find what you needed? If so, did you really make the best choices? Or were you drawn in by the snack aisles?

How much time do you spend trying to decipher small print on food labels?

So, you see, when it comes to your weight management, online grocery shopping can be a boon in three key ways:

Time • Meal Planning • Impulse Control

Time
We all want more time to do the things we want. So we can create that by being more efficient with the time spent on what we need to do. While you still need to make your grocery list, including alternative items, you can manage time better by placing orders at your convenience. You can arrange to have your groceries delivered or arrange for curbside pickup. Either option will decrease the number of errands you may have to run on a given day.

What will you do with that extra time not spent wandering around the grocery store? Maybe you can pick up a yoga class the local recreational center? Or join a local kickball team through the recreational league? With one less concern, you can better focus on your child’s soccer game or music recital or have some extra personal time to enjoy the latest bestseller.

Meal Planning
You’ve still got to decide what you are going to eat. Your meal planning strategy is knowing what you already have, what other ingredients you need, and any substitutions you will accept. Some online sites may already have certain items grouped together, such as all the ingredients for “taco night” available at the click of a button.

Whenever you may be dealing with fresh produce, you may want to give further instructions regarding the ripeness of certain items to the person shopping on your behalf.

Impulse Control
While online shopping doesn’t completely eliminate impulsive food choices, you can avoid some of the pitfalls created by your local grocery store: the smell of the rotisserie chicken in the deli, end caps of the aisles filled with seasonal or sale items, the colorful pastries near the entrance, the scattering of free samples throughout the store. The sights and smells won’t come through your screen to tempt you, hungry or not.

Online grocery shopping won’t completely erase your food shopping activities. You may still want to visit the local farmer’s market to see what’s new. You may still have that local CSA subscription. You may still need to swing by the store to pick up some things you forgot and perhaps can’t live without. But online grocery shopping can help you focus on other important things in your life, particularly in meeting your weight management goals.

Talk to a weight management expert to explore how to incorporate online grocery shopping into your weight management plan that meets your nutritional needs.