Daniela Knaan
UX/UI Designer at - Adobe
Overview
When I was pregnant with my first child, I developed a very healthy appetite. Salty and spicy would be my preferences but I also was not short on fruit and sweets! By month seven, I had put on about 9 kg and thought I looked and felt great! I also thought that 12 kg would be the minimum weight gain during pregnancy.
But my doctor did not share my opinion. he told me to try not to put on more than 9 kg altogether.
What?
Yes, he told me, 9 kg would be exactly the weight I will be losing after childbirth without keeping any diet at all.
When I left his practice that day I was quite offended. He is a man and he has never been pregnant, how can he probably understand, I thought to myself. He just had taken away my great feeling.
But later on, I thought to myself- what if he is right? By all means, who wants to be stressed out with dieting while having a newborn baby or later on toddler around? All power and sanity need to be kept just to put up with this task…
I don`t know if you can generalize how much weight a woman can lose without doing anything about it.
The last couple of months of my pregnancy I just paid attention a little more to what I ate, did not put on much further weight and in the end, I lost it all while breastfeeding and running after my boy!
But I know that I am rather the exception here. I have met women who have put on anywhere between 5 kg up to 35 kg during pregnancy. And to be honest, we cannot judge anybody! One woman I talked to told me she felt so sick the first couple of months she used to eat salt sticks and dry bread all the time… That was what made her put on a lot of weight…
During pregnancy we have so much going on in our minds, our body goes through massive changes, and sometimes the little comfort we get by eating certain things is all that keeps us going. Not to mention hunger attacks that we just cannot control.
And then comes the wake-up after giving birth. When we feel the urge to look good and sexy again. When we are out of the bubble of being pregnant and our once beautiful baby belly is just a mass of hanging skin.
If we are breastfeeding, we cannot just stop eating. So let`s talk about safe weight loss after pregnancy. What options do we have, and how do they work?
Some interesting Facts
- Normal weight women gain between 11.5-16 kg during pregnancy
- Nearly half of women gain more than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy
- 12 months after giving birth, most women keep only 0.5-3 kg of the original weight gain
- Studies show that breastfeeding women lose more weight by the time of six months after childbirth than formula-feeding women
- Women who combine diet with workout lose by an average of about 2 kg more than women who only reduce their calorie intake
Breastfeeding and Diet
Breastfeeding women lose weight faster on average than women who don`t breastfeed. So that is already encouraging to try, isn`t it? Besides, breastfeeding has so many benefits for you and your baby!
If you are nursing your baby, you cannot go on any extreme diet. And not only because of the nursing. To heal properly, our body needs to be nurtured well during postpartum. Taking care of a newborn and regaining our strength after giving birth demands a lot from our body, and without being nurtured well, we will soon feel tired, distressed, and weak.
Cutting down our calorie intake by 500 would lead to losing about 0.5 kg per week. According to studies, this is considered safe weight loss after pregnancy during breastfeeding for overweight women. And as we all know, losing weight slowly is always a better method for keeping it afterward.
Tips for safe weight loss
1. Drink a lot of water
Water promotes great health and helps with weight loss. Drinking two glasses of water first thing in the morning is said to prevent many diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol, or even cancer. Squeezing in a few drops of fresh lemon you can even boost your metabolism and digestion. Drinking water frequently during the day makes us feel less hungry.
2. Counting calories
This technique can help you choose what to eat. You might keep a diary to track your eating and see what works well for you. With counting calories it will be easier for you to make sure you do not cut off too much of your daily needs. For safe weight loss after pregnancy, you may cut off 500 calories a day. This way you make sure your body can heal properly during postpartum and you will not hurt your milk supply.
3. Eat high-fiber and healthy protein foods
Eating high-fiber and healthy protein foods help with weight loss because they make you feel full longer. How does that happen? They slow down digestion and increase certain hormones that control hunger feelings.
High-fiber foods are vegetables, fruit, legumes, seeds, nuts, and whole grains.
Healthy protein foods are fish, eggs, legumes, nuts and seeds, and certain dairy products.
4. Snack healthy!
I know how that may sound to a lot of you- but when you feel like eating sweets, try to eat dried fruit, nuts, or other healthy snacks. It takes time to get used to it, but if you try from the start to keep “bad” snacks out of your home, it will be so much easier.
Refined sugar and highly processed foods are not only bad for your figure, but also for your health and looks. They make you feel lacking energy, being more tired, and they even promote faster aging and many many diseases. So you may want to avoid foods like sweets, snacks and bars, sugary juices, and pastries for example.
If you – like me- cannot go without all of this completely, try and bake yourself! To be honest, I would not recommend anybody to do without sweets at all if you really like them. Especially in times of breastfeeding I often find myself searching the kitchen for the next snack. And avoiding things you love will always get you to a weak point where you want to through away everything you worked for. Besides, to maintain a healthy body, weight, and lifestyle and to be able to be a strong, fit, and present mother, what we are looking for is not some diet you can do for a few weeks just to regain more kilograms than you lost as soon as you stop. No, what we are looking for is a solution that works for a lifetime without you suffering from it!
With homemade pastry, cakes, and biscuits you are already better off since you control the ingredients and most certainly do not use chemicals like artificial flavor and preservatives. Those and many others are what make highly processed food so bad for our health.
Now, baking yourself, you can also alter recipes. Reduce the amount of sugar, substitute white flour with whole grain flour, and use coconut oil instead of butter, there are so many opportunities!
If you are not sure about how to alter recipes and are afraid of the outcome, there is a whole world of healthy recipes out there! Check out my favorite healthy baking, or how to replace ingredients.
5. Workout, Workout, Workout
No losing weight and living healthily without doing sports! I know that with a newborn there are quite not many opportunities for most of us. But it is really important to regain strength after having a baby.
Great solutions are walking, which you can easily do with your baby in a sling or online workouts like yoga for example. In postpartum yoga, you can easily involve your baby with certain postures. This is a great way of resistance training which has been shown to be highly effective for weight loss in combination with diet.
My list of everyday power foods
I am not a nutrition specialist. But my whole life I took much interest in healthy nutrition, and knowing a few things about it, I like to be good to my body.
Especially in times of pregnancy and breastfeeding, I have some power foods that cannot be missing in my daily routine! As moms – breastfeeding or not- we have such demanding lives, that it is crucial for us to feed our body and mind properly.
So here is the list:
Oats
I cannot do without them. Me and my sister were raised on oats. It would be our breakfast every day. And it stayed that way. I start my day with a bowl of oats combined with other seeds like sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flaxseeds, and chia seeds together with some raisins or fresh fruit and almond milk it is the perfect start to a busy day!
Oats and seeds contain a lot of soluble fiber, carbs, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Read more about the health benefits of oats.
Nuts
Nuts are an easy and quick snack for in between everything! I keep several kinds of nuts at home and when I feel like I need a quick boost of energy, I just grab a handful. Be careful not to overdo it, nuts are healthy in small amounts.
To get the most benefits out of eating nuts make sure to buy them unroasted and unsalted.
Nuts are a source of healthy fats, magnesium, vitamin E, and selenium. Read more about the health benefits of nuts.
Dried fruits
Especially dates are very good for pregnant or postpartum women. But be careful again with the amount as dried fruits contain a lot of sugar!
Dried fruit is rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. It is also high in antioxidants. Read more about the health benefits of dried fruit.
Fresh fruit according to the season
I think it is quite common knowledge that fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables are the healthiest you can eat. They provide vitamins and minerals, and according to the WHO, we should have 5 portions a day. Always prefer to eat the whole fruit over juicing it. When juicing, we easily consume a larger amount of fruit -which means larger amounts of sugar- and we do not benefit from the valuable fiber.
Different sorts of fruit have different health benefits. It is always best to pick fresh fruit according to the season to get the maximum value.
Unsweetened natural yogurt
Natural yogurt mixed with fruit or just some maple syrup is one of my absolute favorite in-between snacks. Yogurt is a dairy product made through the bacterial fermentation of milk. It contains healthy proteins, B vitamins, and minerals. Yogurt with live bacteria, known as probiotics, showed to have many benefits on digestion.
Read more about the health benefits of yogurt.
Salad from fresh vegetables according to the season
At our home, there comes a giant salad with almost every meal I prepare for dinner. Especially in summer, it gives you such a fresh feeling to have those crispy salad vegetables splashing in your mouth. As mentioned above, fresh vegetables and fruit are one of the best sources of vitamins and minerals.
Vegetable Soup
Like salad in summer, soup in winter is an absolute soul food. Few things can be more comforting than a bowl of hot soup when it is cold outside. Eating soup in winter may boost your immune system and keep you warm.
This variation of eating vegetables (one of your 5-a-day) is also great because you can mix a lot of sorts together and eating soup for some people is just easier than munching on fresh fruit and veggies.
Vegetable soup provides a lot of proteins, minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants. It is even said to keep you full longer, so this one works well for your safe weight loss after pregnancy!
And one of the final and greatest pluses of soup is that it is so convenient and easy to prepare! Chop some vegetables and let the whole thing cook! in a few minutes, you can prepare really large amounts. Freeze them in portions and you have a healthy and nutritious meal at your hand whenever you need! This is priceless for new moms.
Dark chocolate
There it is. Chocolate is what keeps my sanity. And to be honest, I like to eat every version of it and can hardly stop once I start. But my favorite is real dark chocolate. And when I don`t have any at home, I make my own! Even healthier and sooo easy:
- Cocoa- organic if possible
- Coconut oil
- Maple syrup or Date syrup
Mix until you get a paste-like mixture, freeze in little forms and you have real dark bitter chocolate.
Quality dark chocolate may even be healthy, as cocoa contains fiber, antioxidants, and different minerals. Of course, due to the amount of fats and sugar, which make chocolate rich in calories, you should consume it in small amounts. Read more about the benefits of dark chocolate.
Green Tea
Having Green Tea is my moment of taking my breath whenever I find a moment for doing so. Three kids leave very few opportunities, but after they are off to school and kinder garden, and my littlest is asleep, a cup of green tea is one of the things that just make my day better.
Green Tea is very rich in antioxidants. Some studies suggest that green tea boost your metabolism and fat burn, but this is not agreed on finally just yet. Read more about the health benefits of green tea.
Cinnamon Tea
The best-ever postpartum tea contains cinnamon, ginger, and other great herbs that are beneficial for postpartum healing and maybe even weight loss. This is my every-night bedtime tea! Read here about the benefits of the different ingredients and get the free recipe!
Summary
Weight loss after pregnancy or in general and maintaining a great figure as well as a healthy lifestyle are all connected.
Even if you have gone through your life with several diets, workout programs, or other ways of losing weight, long time results are only achieved through healthy eating behavior.
This may sound like a big and impossible change to take for some, but as with everything in life it can be achieved step by step. After all, you might want to raise your kids to a healthy lifestyle!
But do not overdo or rush into changes you do not feel up to. Take it easy and listen to your body! Nutrition is a large topic that has been researched only for a few decades and still is!
On most outcomes, nutritionists disagree with each other. One thing might work for one person but not for the other. Try out different things and stick with what makes you feel and look great, fit, and healthy!
related articles
Sources
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/weight-loss-after-pregnancy#TOC_TITLE_HDR_12
This is really helpful! I’ve gained some weight during pregnancy and this advise will definitely help to get back to my normal size without starting extreme diets which usually are hard to stick to 🙂
I am glad you found the information valuable! Since you are about to have a baby I would recommend you check out the article about natural birth tips and breastfeeding, if you like! Good luck with everything and let me know how things turned out for you, afterwards!
Your article is so important. Many new mums get really depressed after giving birth and finding they’ve retained their baby fat. It can seem an impossible task to shift it when they are still coming to terms with sleepless nights, messed up routine and a baby that relies on them totally 24/7. I wish I’d had a website like this to turn to when I was crying my eyes out, 27 years ago, when I was convinced my body had been destroyed by motherhood and nothing in my wardrobe fitted anymore. Well done for giving new mums guidance on how to get back to normality after childbirth.
Thank you for the nice words, Kate! We moms have to help each other wherever we can!