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Home › Articles › Fitness › Battle of the Baby Bulge

Battle of the Baby Bulge

Returning to Your
Pre-pregnancy Weight

By Carma Haley Shoemaker

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

exercising

Goal-Setting
The most important factor when focusing on losing postpartum weight? Set realistic goals. Believing that after giving birth the pre-pregnancy shape and weight will return immediately is a sure way to become frustrated.

"Women may set these goals that are not attainable regardless of whether they have become a new mother or not," says Ingrid Kromer, personal trainer and exercise specialist for women at Bally's Total Fitness. "A good realistic goal for weight loss is losing about a pound a week. If a woman has 10 extra pounds, then taking two months to lose that weight is absolutely normal. Setting little goals such as doing 10-minute exercise sessions each day and then moving up to 10 minutes twice a day will make the goals more attainable but still offer the results that are wanted."

After setting a goal, it's crucial to have a functional plan to accomplish it.

For a new mother, decreasing the amount of food consumption is not necessarily the best route to take. "One thing that women immediately think is that they have to go on a diet which is probably the biggest mistake a woman can make with trying to lose weight after pregnancy," Kromer says. "Some of it will naturally happen, but dieting will cause you to become weaker and not able to function properly after having a baby."

Dawn Nowakoski, a full-time mother of eight in Indianapolis, Ind., says, "I gained more weight with each child. I've neer really dieted, though if I was serious about losing weight I'd eat less junk food than normal. I've always been pretty active, not with a particular sport of any kind, but staying active as in playing with the kids or running after them or going up and down the basement steps to do laundry."


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