The Best Guide To Skip The Cardio During Your Postpartum Weight Loss Journey

Despite what magazines and celebrity stories would have you believe, losing weight after pregnancy takes time. In one 2015 study, 75 percent of women were heavier 1 year after giving birth than they had been before pregnancy. Of these women, 47 percent were at least 10 pounds heavier at the 1-year mark, and 25 percent had kept on 20 more pounds.
Pro tip: Keep processed foods and sweets out of the kitchen, or even better, out of the house. We’re loving these healthy snack ideas for the office, the pantry, or wherever you go. Though they may be tempting, sugar and refined carbs are high in calories and usually low in nutrients.
If you’ve been taking note so far, a lot of these tips are made far easier when you’re eating whole, unprocessed foods. They’re usually full of protein, fiber, and less sugar. Processed foods, on the other hand, are often high in sugar, unhealthy fats, salt, and calories, all of which can counteract your weight loss efforts, according to the .
Additionally, alcohol may be related to weight gain and may lead to more fat being stored around the organs, also known as belly fat. According to , there is no known safe level of alcohol for infants. The advises that the safest option for infants is for breastfeeding mothers not to drink at all.
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Group-based weight loss can be beneficial for some people. A showed that people who engage in group-based weight loss tend to lose more, or at least as much, weight as those who lose weight alone. Both face-to-face weight loss groups and online communities may be helpful. However, another research review that included 16,000 people found that group weight loss had no significant effect compared to other weight loss interventions.
If you are feeling depressed or anxious, or you’re simply struggling to cope, don’t be afraid to reach out for help. Ask friends and family for help around the house, preparing meals, or taking care of the baby for a few hours to allow you to rest or get some exercise.
Everyone is different, and there are several different factors that contribute to postpartum weight loss, like how you delivered and how quickly your body is healing. But there are some general weight loss norms as well as nutrition and exercise tips that can be helpful to know as you settle into this next chapter.
But if you’ve had a C-section, you’ll experience more limitations. Because a C-section is a major surgery, it generally means a longer postpartum recovery period before you can start physical activity. Depending on your doctor’s recommendations and whether you’re experiencing pain, you may be able to start light activity around six weeks after childbirth.
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Everybody is going to approach postpartum exercise at their own pace. Whether you were already consistently active before and during pregnancy or are getting active for the first time, here are some general guidelines for creating a postpartum workout plan: Your path of recovery is yours alone, and your body will tell you what works.
Three 10-minute periods of activity spread throughout the day are just as good as one 30-minute period. Find the times that work best for you and your family. Exercise with your baby. You’ve probably figured out that even the weight of a baby can tire out your muscles after a while.

Exercise when your child is asleep It’s recommended that new moms try to sleep whenever their baby does. But if you’ve had some quality shut-eye, baby’s naptime might be a great time to do exercises that require more focus – or that simply require having both hands free. Add exercises to routine activities.
60 to estimate 60% of your max heart rate. During exercise, you can track your heart rate with a smart watch or other activity tracker, or by counting how many pulses you feel in your wrist over one minute. Two of the places that you’ll have lost the most strength during pregnancy are your core and your pelvic floor.
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A good rule to follow is to have a glass of water, milk or juice each time you nurse. An occasional glass of wine or a cocktail is okay and may help you relax. Remember, the alcohol can collect in your breast milk and pass to the baby, so don't overdo it.
As you reduce or eliminate breastfeeding or pumping, you won’t need as many calories. Consider nixing your afternoon snack or decrease the size of your meals. Adjusting to life with a baby can be chaotic, and it can be easy to let things fall by the wayside. But there are some things you can do to make eating healthy easier.
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For some women, that joyful time when a warm and snuggly newborn has finally arrived can be mixed with emotions about the changes in their own bodies, and many of these women have questions about how they will lose the weight they put on over the past nine-plus months. Studies show that many women appear to hold on to at least a couple of pounds postpartum, and a quarter of women retain 11 or more pounds (5 or more kilograms) a year after giving birth.
5 to 5 lbs. (1 to 2 kg), said Kathleen Rasmussen, a professor of maternal and child nutrition at Cornell University. That may not seem like much, but if a woman goes on to have more children or gains more weight for other reasons, the pounds can add up, she said.
And losing the pregnancy weight is important not just for new moms, but for babies, too. Going into a future pregnancy at a higher weight can put both the mom and the developing baby at risk for medical complications, such as gestational diabetes and hypertension. To determine the best practices for women who want to shed the baby weight, Live Science dove deeply into the data, reviewing the best studies on postpartum weight loss and talking to key experts in the field.

Emily Oken, a professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. And although it's possible for women to lose all of their pregnancy weight without making major changes in their lives, the natural shift in women's lifestyles that happens after they give birth certainly introduces new challenges."It's not so much that [women] need to make major changes, but that they need to figure out how to fit in the healthy eating and activities they used to do," Oken told Live Science.
But it's important to understand how much weight you should gain, why your body is putting on pounds and how it plays a role in what happens after the baby arrives. So, how much weight should a woman gain during pregnancy? It all depends on her body mass index (BMI) before she gets pregnant.
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And yes, added fat also weighs in. In addition, some studies suggest that gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the likelihood of a cesarean-section delivery, according to the review. (While C-sections are generally considered safe, they do carry additional risks compared with vaginal births. For example, a C-section is a major surgical procedure, and having a C-section for a first birth can often lead to repeat C-sections in future deliveries.)According to the IOM, one of the major reasons women should limit their weight gain during pregnancy is to reduce risks to the baby's health.
But the amount of weight a woman gains should not be spread equally over the three trimesters of pregnancy. The IOM advises women to gain between 1. 1 and 4. 4 lbs. (0. 5 to 2 kg) during the first trimester. Then, during both the second and third trimesters, women are advised to gain 0.
A woman needs "close to zero extra calories in the first trimester," Rasmussen said. "The body makes a lot of immediate changes in response to pregnancy [in the first trimester], but these changes don't require a lot of calories," Rasmussen told Live Science. Even so, a lot of the "overgain" that women experience happens in that first trimester, she said.
And doing so can have negative consequences. "It is becoming increasingly clear that excess weight gain, even very early in pregnancy, can predict later weight retention and [worse] heart health not only for the mom, but also for her baby," she said. In a 2015 study published in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Oken found that weight gain in the first trimester was more strongly associated with weight retention at seven years postpartum than weight gain during the second or third trimesters.
[Body Changes During Pregnancy]"It can be a challenge to not gain too rapidly" in the first trimester, Oken said. For example, women who experience the fatigue that is very common in the first trimester may overeat; other women may experience nausea that's helped by snacking, she said. And "in some cases, women might think that, 'Well, now that I'm pregnant, weight gain is expected, so I don't need to think so much about what I'm eating,'" Oken said.
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[How to Gain Weight During Pregnancy, the Healthy Way]But women shouldn't beat themselves up if they deviate from a day of healthy eating. Pregnancy can be stressful, and focusing so much on being perfect causes needless worrying during pregnancy, said Katherine Tallmadge, a registered dietitian and an op-ed contributor to Live Science.
All About How Much Weight Do You Lose After Giving Birth? - Owlet
Women who have a BMI greater than 35 before getting pregnant may not have to gain any weight during pregnancy, she said. However, doctors don't recommend that women intentionally try to lose weight during pregnancy, Nicklas added. After giving birth, the last thing that's likely on a new mom's mind is going on a diet.
Women should be able to lose their extra weight by six months after they give birth, Lovelady said."We recommend a weight loss of approximately 1 pound per week," Lovelady told Live Science. However, in reality, women will likely lose more weight at the beginning, and the weight loss will slow as they get closer to their goals, she said.
[2016 Best Bathroom Scales]Not all of the experts agreed that all of the weight had to come off within six months. However, 12 months seems to be the upper limit for how long it should take for women to lose all of their pregnancy weight. That means women who started out at a normal BMI before pregnancy should aim to return to a normal BMI, and women who were overweight or obese before pregnancy should aim to return to their pre-pregnancy weight, and then continue losing weight, if possible, Nicklas said.
"Many women may need the structure of an evidence-based diet or weight-loss program to lose their pregnancy weight."It's also important for a woman to lose the weight before getting pregnant again, experts say."Ideally, a woman would be at a healthy weight by the time she enters her second pregnancy," said Paige van der Pligt, a researcher at the Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research at Deakin University in Australia.
They found that seven of the studies involved interventions that were effective in helping women lower their weight retention after pregnancy, and that, of these, six included both dietary and physical activity components, according to the review. The authors concluded, however, that "the optimal setting, delivery, intervention length and recruitment approach" for the most effective interventions remain unclear.
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Several studies suggest that making small changes can be helpful for losing pregnancy pounds. For example, in the Active Mothers Postpartum trial, which enrolled 450 overweight and obese postpartum women, cutting out junk food and being less sedentary were associated with postpartum weight loss. (Lovelady, who was an author on that study, noted that these results were specific to overweight and obese women.
One group was counseled about their diet, another on diet and exercise, and another on exercise alone. The fourth group received no advice and served as a control group, for comparison. The women in the diet-only group not only lost the most weight but were also the only group that continued to lose weight nine months later, according to the study.Rasmussen, who was an author on the study, noted that the dietary changes the women made were not major.
(One limitation of the study, however, was that the exercise component was not a huge change from the amount of physical activity the women were getting prior to starting the study, Rasmussen said. So, while they did adhere to the exercise requirements, it didn't represent a substantial increase in their energy expenditure, she said.)"I can tell you, diet does work," Rasmussen said.
[Diet and Weight Loss: The Best Ways to Eat]And although diet appears to be the driving factor in losing the baby weight and exercise doesn't have a huge effect on weight loss, the experts agreed that it's still important for new moms to get back to moving as soon as possible.

(Image credit: Oleg Baliuk Shutterstock. com )Yes, gone are the days when women were confined to bed rest after giving birth — certainly, a woman should take care of herself and recover from giving birth, but it's important to get moving, Rasmussen said."Most women can start walking soon after giving birth, regardless of whether they give birth vaginally or have a C-section," Nicklas said.
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All of the experts we spoke with agreed: Walking is a great way for new moms to get exercise. [2016 Best Pedometers]Walking during the postpartum period has been shown to have excellent health benefits, van der Pligt said. Plus, it's convenient and cheap, and can be an important social activity for new moms, she added.
The women in the study had been largely sedentary for the previous three months, however, she added. For most women, moderate exercise during pregnancy is considered safe and healthy. It's also important to reduce inactivity. In a 2007 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers looked at the effects of television viewing, walking and trans-fat consumption on postpartum weight retention.