Winning at Post-Natal Weight Loss: Six Simple Strategies for New Moms — Part 1

A healthy pregnancy almost always involves weight gain. But now that baby’s here, you’re probably wishing those extra pounds would hurry up and disappear! While it won’t happen overnight, these six simple tips can help you lose that extra weight in a healthy way. (If you’re looking for parts 2 and 3 of this article, you can find them both at http://www.mambomoms.com/articles.html)

1) Try to relax and don’t be in too much of a hurry to lose your extra pregnancy weight. Remember, it took 9 months for you to put it on, and you should give yourself at least half that amount of time to take it back off. In fact, eight to 12 months is not an unreasonable amount of time to give yourself. And even if it does take a year to get back to your pre-pregnancy size and shape, those pounds are all the more likely to stay off because you’ve lost them gradually.

You definitely should not be thinking about weight loss at all in the early post-partum weeks. Your body needs this time to recover from giving birth, readjust to its pre-pregnancy state, and establish a milk supply for your baby. Besides, most new moms find that a fair amount of weight tends to melt off all by itself in these first few weeks as excess fluids retained in late pregnancy are gradually shed.

Remember that gradual weight loss based on sensible nutrition and enjoyable physical activity is the best path to permanent weight loss. This applies whether or not weight gain is due to pregnancy, but when you are dealing with all the changes and adjustments that come with having a new baby, it’s all the more important to take a slow and steady approach so you don’t add to your stress level.

And speaking of stress, recent research shows that when you’re stressed, your body releases hormones that can contribute to weight gain. So try not to add to your stress level at this time by putting unreasonable pressure on yourself to lose that extra weight too fast. Instead, take a long term approach and be sure to incorporate some kind of relaxation into your day, whether it’s having a nap, a warm bath, or receiving a relaxing back massage.

2) Eat well and nourish yourself with healthy foods so you’ll have the energy you need to care for yourself and your baby. If you restrict your calories you’ll probably get tired, cranky, and lose energy, making you less apt to exercise and less able to take good care of your baby.

Cutting back too much on your caloric intake can also sabotage your weight loss efforts by forcing your body into “starvation mode.” When your body isn’t getting enough fuel, it becomes much more efficient at using what you do give it, so that over time you will actually gain weight rather than lose it. You are much better off to eat well and get regular, moderate exercise to help shed those extra pounds.

Remember though, that there is a big difference between eating and eating well! If you eat nourishing foods you will probably feel full sooner and you will likely need fewer calories than if you eat “empty calorie” foods like white bread and french fries. Eat a variety of healthy foods, including plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and make sure you are getting a proper balance of the major nutrients (protein, carbohydrate and healthy fats). You may want to talk to your doctor or midwife about continuing to take your pre-natal multivitamin, or other supplements, at least during the immediate post-partum period.

Snacking is something you’ll probably want to do a lot of, either because you may not always have time to prepare a meal, or because the demands of caring for a new baby mean you get hungry more often. Here are a few ideas for good, nutrient-dense choices for snack foods:
• apple slices spread with low fat cream cheese and sprinkled with crushed walnuts
• yogurt with chopped fresh fruit and nuts
• whole grain toast with nut butter
• cheese with whole grain crackers or rice cakes
• tomato or mixed vegetable juice with a hard boiled egg

On the other hand, try not to overdo it. Being pregnant or nursing a baby is not a license to indulge in a non-stop buffet of foods, even if they are nutritious! Eat when you are hungry, make healthy food choices most of the time, and remember that your baby is counting on you to choose wisely if you’re breastfeeding, so make those calories count nutrient-wise.

In part two of this article, you’ll learn why drinking plenty of pure water is important to weight loss in general, and to post-partum weight loss in particular. You’ll also find out how many calories a day you’ll use by breastfeeding your baby. Part three will teach you how you can burn extra calories easily and enjoyably without huffing and puffing at the gym. You’ll also learn the secret that savvy new moms use to effortlessly burn up to an extra 200 calories a day —that’s 2 pounds a month with no extra effort!

Walk Off Your Pounds and Lose Weight Fast!

People are constantly on the lookout for some magic pill or enlightening weight loss secret, and in the process they tend to forget that the best weight loss plans simply involve an increased emphasis on commonly known activities and healthier eating habits. One of the most effective weight loss activities is, very simply, walking.

Set The Right Pace

If you want to walk to lose weight fast, the first thing you need to do is set the right pace. You don’t need to set off like a torpedo and tire yourself out in ten minutes. Neither will a leisurely, idle pace really help. The best strategy is to walk at a moderately brisk pace that you think you can maintain for about half an hour. A speed of 3-4 miles per hour is pretty good. Basically, if you can get yourself breathing harder than normal and can feel your body warming up with the effort, you are at a good pace.

According to most medical experts, to maintain good health, an average person should get about 30-minutes a day of cardiovascular exercise, five days a week. Walking counts, and it burns in the range of 100-165 calories per mile, depending on your weight. So in 30 minutes of brisk walking, you could burn 200-300 calories.

How Much?

If you maintain this effort five days a week, without altering your diet in any way, at the end of the month you would weigh 1-2 pounds less than you would have without any exercise. This means that over six months, you could lose up to 6 kg! That’s an excellent rate of weight loss, and shows you just how effective walking is.

Walking vs. Jogging

A lot of people believe that unless they get out on a jog, and get themselves sweating and out-of-breath at the end of the spell, they will not burn enough calories to lose weight fast. This is a false perception.

There is a negligible difference in the number of calories brisk walking and jogging burn per mile. What really matters is the amount of distance you cover. So, you could do a hard jog for 8 minutes and tire yourself out, but you would still not burn as many calories as someone who walked briskly for 20 minutes and covered more distance than you in the process!

Besides, with walking you run the risk of fewer impact-related injuries than jogging. So, if the objective is simply losing weight, for a person of average fitness, walking is the more efficient of the two.

Bringing Walking Into Your Life

The good news is that the 30 minutes of walking you need to do in a day for quick weight loss, does not have to be done at one go. The total time of exercise is what matters for burning calories, not how it breaks up. So, if you are really busy, you can simply incorporate walking into your usual routine, by parking your car one block away or walking down to buy groceries or run your daily errands.

Walking also tones your muscles, which in turn speeds your metabolism and helps you burn more calories even while you rest. It also improves your cardiovascular health, your overall fitness, bone density and cognitive health! Talk about a ‘magic’ strategy to lose weight fast!

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Weight reduction With the Diet Remedy Program

You’ll find so numerous diverse programs advertised on television as well as the world wide web that frequently some of the best-selling programs don’t turn out to be the healthiest or most nutritionally sound. Often the most effective sellers just take place to be sold by experienced advertisers who know the way to market their product and understand much less about the quality or effectiveness of the strategy itself. One program which is obtainable and different is the Diet plan Remedy Program.

Weight reduction With the Diet Solution Program is a lot more about a lifestyle change than an actual diet plan. It is what you might call the Non Diet diet plan. The strategy provides much much more than just a menu to follow, it discusses the science and logic behind it. The plan was developed by a nutritionist who originally created the strategy to support her deal with her own weight loss struggles. It discusses how a number of the foods traditionally thought to be very good for us could possibly be producing our bodies hold onto, if not improve, our body fat.

It also states that most plans teach us that so that you can lose fat; we ought to not consume huge amounts of fat. This plan breaks down the distinction between good and bad fat. You can find particular forms of fat our bodies need and can digest that really aid burn stored fat, even though you can find other kinds of fats that have the opposite effect and can cause us to store and or gain fat. The diet explains how our liver works to filter what we put into our bodies as well as the distinct approaches in which it works to filter natural and unnatural processed foods.

While this program just isn’t one of the much more publicized diet plan plans, it undoubtedly seems to be among the a lot more logical, sound and nutritionally total plans accessible. Not certain if this weight loss plan has been advertised on tv, but in case you go to the web site there is a video tutorial where the creator, Isabel De Los Rios, explains the science behind the eating program and how particular foods act as a catalyst to boost metabolism and promote fat loss. The plans aren’t one-size-fits all but are tailored to the requirements of the individual. The plan asserts that the very first weeks weight reduction will be between 3 to ten pounds.

Weight reduction along with the Diet Remedy Program is really a proven and productive weight reduction program. Among the drawbacks to this strategy is that it’s not free of charge; even so, it really is one of the far more reasonably priced plans available. Log on to the site and listen to the video tutorial. At the end of the video the narrators will tell you what is included with the program and what the program costs.