There are more than enough ways in which you can lose weight, and of these I have named five of what I consider to be the best methods to lose weight. You don’t have to do all of them, or even any of them to lose weight, but it can help you.
To that extent, I have listed below the methods which I consider to be good, and after that I have gone through each suggestion, in some detail. Just remember that these aren’t the only manner in which you can lose weight, but it can give you a good head start.
1. Breastfeeding
2. Exercise
3. Walking
4. Healthy eating habits
5. De-stressing
Breastfeeding
Not everyone knows this, but breastfeeding your baby can help you to lose weight. Although, having said that, with the positive glut of books and magazines available nowadays on pregnancy and what to do after you have your baby, I wouldn’t be surprised if more people knew about it than imagined!
That said, let me just say that breastfeeding your new baby is not an option for many women. This can either be for personal or medical reasons, but if you’re not going to be breastfeeding don’t worry about it.
If you do have the option to breastfeed your baby, then you might want to take it, as it provides an invaluable
experience for you to bond with your baby.
About breastfeeding and losing weight however, that is another matter entirely, and the reason why you are here reading this section, so let’s start at the beginning.
To begin with then, you should know that your body gains weight during the pregnancy not only to nurture your baby while he is still in your womb, but also in preparation for when your baby is born and you begin to nurse him.
This is your body’s way of storing up on energy so that when the time comes to breastfeed your baby, you have a more than ample source of energy available for you to carry out this amazing feat.
Apparently, a woman who breastfeeds her baby burns up about 500-700 calories per day. That’s a lot of calories when you come to think about it.
If however, you are looking to breastfeeding to help you lose weight, don’t. For one thing, it won’t happen
immediately, and for another thing, you will also need a healthy diet to help you lose weight. Breastfeeding alone won’t do it.
That said, it is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of your body’s natural method of dispersing of the stored fat.
Gentle Exercise
One of the best ways to get some exercise in when you don’t have the time is to do it in bouts of about five to ten minutes. This can help the new mother with no time on her hands to get the exercise she needs, without having to strain her already precious time.
This is also another good way to keep you from stressing unduly over the fact that you aren’t getting enough
exercise, because let’s face it, most of us can spare about five to ten minutes of time at odd hours during the day, whereas to give over a full thirty minutes to exercise is just asking for too much.
Just remember to take it easy the first few weeks immediately after giving birth and to ask your doctor when the best time will be for you to begin exercising in earnest.
Until that time you can always do a little bit of gentle exercising which is not really exercising, but more an
extension of the work that you normally do. And one of the best methods for this is the one which I have mentioned immediately after this, the section on “Walking”.
That said, if you really think about it you will find that just by doing some of the normal day-to-day activities, you are burning fat off your body. The thing then which comes in is to also regulate your diet.
Walking
This is more or less one of the best methods for you to use, especially in the beginning when you want to lose to weight. It’s not overly strenuous nor is it overly taxing. You can do it whenever you want, and you can take your baby along with you.
You can also probably find a group of other mom’s doing the same thing, which is a recommendation all on its own. After all, it’s not everyday that you can get a little bit of exercise, keep your little one occupied and have some adult company at the same time.
On these days you will find that you need to do something else to distract baby and get in that much needed
exercise.
On the subject of walking though, let me just say a few words before we move on. I’ve covered most of what needs to be said throughout the book, but here is one more little morsel for you to chew on.
You don’t need to stick to gentle sedentary walks to help you lose weight. You can also “power walk”. In this way you can lose pounds faster, and it does become a healthier option for you to pursue.
And not to worry, power walking doesn’t entail you walking like a frenzied maniac for half mile, pushing your
baby’s stroller in front of you. Instead, one of the better methods of getting in some power walking is by taking it easy to begin with, then gearing up and giving into a burst of energy for about three to four minutes, then going back once more to your sedentary walking.
Oh yes, and make sure that if you are taking baby along with you, that you take into account the cumbersome stroller’s capabilities when you are power walking. Or, if you find that this style of walking suits you, you could invest in a jogging stroller instead.
To get any health benefits from the power walking however, you do need to do about five to eight bouts of it. Since you are taking it gently in between bouts it shouldn’t be that difficult, although to begin with you might find that you want to take it slow.
Power walking aside, there are other ways that you can utilize the effects of walking, and these include everyday things such as parking the car a fair distance away from the supermarket so that you are forced to walk there and back.
Or if you go to work, then you might want to park your car some distance away and walk into work, and other little things like that.
These don’t take all that much time and effort on your part, and you don’t have to section out large chunks of your time to do this either, since most of these activities are ones that you do on a regular basis anyway.
Healthy (and sensible) eating
I’ve covered this more or less in detail throughout the book, and also in the section marked “Dietary habits” so I won’t take up too much of your time and space here.
Suffice it to say however, that by following a good, and sensible eating regime, you will aid yourself in losing
weight. And the best part is that a sensible eating regime can become a normal part of your life, or in other words, it can become a lifestyle habit and not part of a weight loss plan.
The benefit of this being that you not only get to lose weight just by eating sensibly, but you also have a good
fighting chance at keeping it off long term. And this is where most of us fall down.
We get back into shape, losing pounds and inches off our body, then we go off our diet and fall back into a steady downward spiral of weight gain.
Obviously having worked so hard to achieve the weight loss in the first place, the last thing that you want to do is to have it all come back again.
And when that happens, it becomes more difficult to lose the weight, because hey, hadn’t you already played this particular record before? Hadn’t you already contrived and connived to lose all that weight once before?
It then becomes an uphill task to get yourself back on the weight loss track again, and this time because you re fighting it tooth and nail, you will find that your body is also fighting it tooth and nail.
So I have just one thing to say in conclusion of this section. Make your weight loss-inspired dietary changes a lifestyle habit, and not a temporary thing.
Don’t be looking forward to the day when you can stop dieting and go back to your junk food days, because I can tell you now, it’s not going to do you any good in the long run.
If junk foods and other similar foods which are “bad” for you, are your guilty little secrets, then don’t cut them out of your diet completely. This is just paving the way for craving induced disaster.
Build these into your regular diet so that you’re not deprived of them, and so that you get these “treats” once in a while, just enough to keep to you happy and diet on track.
Lose the stress – take a nap
That’s right, lose the stress. The best thing that you can do for yourself would be to shake off whatever stress
you’re having as this is detrimental to your health. And at the same time, remember to take a nap once in a while.
Besides working miracles on a tired mind and body, a ten to fifteen minute catnap will do wonders for any
problems that seem overwhelming.
Get your priorities straight. If you’re fighting a losing battle with stress and sleep, but you’re forcing yourself to stay awake because the house needs to be cleaned up, then make a decision.
Stay awake, get progressively short-tempered and stressed and have a clean house; or take a nap, feel positively refreshed and bursting with life, and be able to clean house later when you have nothing more important to do.
It’s a choice ladies, that I’m afraid you will most likely have to face. The best choice of course would be to take a nap and get to the house cleaning later, but old habits die hard and you might find yourself unable to sleep surrounded by all that clutter.
In which case, my best advice would be to go to a room which is relatively uncluttered, have a good nap, and come back refreshed to tackle the house and whatever else life throws at you with a newer outlook and a spring in your step. So, basically, lose the stress – take a nap. The title of this section says it all.
Dietary habits
This is the part I think where most of us fail. Somewhere, somehow it has been pounded into our minds that to diet means to starve ourselves of the good things in life.
It takes time and effort to change this thought process around, and to replace it with the realities of a good, healthy diet.
So here are the main facts about dieting which you should know about, You don’t need to starve yourself in order to diet and lose weight; in fact this is probably the very last thing that you should be doing.
You don’t need to deny yourself of your favorite foods; on the contrary a treat now and then of your most guiltridden food can be quite an incentive to keep at it.
Going along with the no-starvation theme, you might want to look at eating meals more frequently. This means that you will need to eat small meals at more frequent intervals.
Junk food is not considered a food group. It is neither a major food group nor is it a minor food group. Junk foods are what are known as “empty calories”. They fill you up without doing any perceivable good for you, and in fact, they can do great damage to you.
Eating right doesn’t mean eating only one type of food. The food pyramid exists for a reason – to show you the path to eating properly balanced meals.
The ideas I have given below are just that, ideas. They are meant neither as rock solid instructions nor are they the be-all and end-all of a person’s diet.
Proper care should always be taken when going on a diet, and consulting with your doctor on what type of diet suits you best, will be to your advantage.
It is also true that you will be able to better formulate a diet that will help you to lose weight in a manner in which your body can safely handle it.