14 Most Effective Tips for Fast Weight Loss After Baby

It can be so frustrating to be so grateful of your body, for bringing life into this world, but still hate how it looks. Losing the baby weight can be SO hard. Statistics show that for women who were in the normal weight range before pregnancy, nearly 50% kept on an additional 10lbs a year later, and 25% retained 20lbs or more.

But don’t worry, if you are dedicated, you WILL lose weight after having a baby! Follow these tips and you will back to your pre-baby body in no time!

Make sure to consult with your doctor before starting any new dieting or exercise program, and do NOT begin exercise after having a baby until being cleared by your doctor to do so!

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14 Ways to Lose Weight Fast After Having A Baby

Postpartum Recovery Plan

Out of all of the tips on this list, this one is by far the most important! I believe using this program is going to be the quickest way to lose weight after having a baby

The Postpartum Recovery Plan is a plan that was created by Katie. Katie is a mom of three who majored in nutrition and is very well educated in physical fitness. All of her pregnancies and labors were really hard on her, but she was determined to heal and get back to being her fit self. So after mastering her postpartum recovery plan, she decided she wanted to share it with other moms who really want to get their bodies back.

She doesn’t just want to help you lose the baby weight, she wants to help you lose the baby weight AND heal in a healthy, safe way. This plan was designed for postpartum moms!

Here’s what it includes:

• Meal plans
• Grocery lists
• Snack ideas (designed to replace your favorite unhealthy foods)
• Supplement suggestions designed for increasing and maintaining milk supply
• Workout plans (with video tutorials)
• Plans designed to heal your abs (diastasis recti), your pelvic floor and the rest of your body
• A Facebook group, to help keep you accountable and to ask questions
• And so much more!

To check out the Postpartum Recovery Program, click here!

Watch your diet

There’s a lot more to watching your diet than cutting calories! Here are some important steps in managing your diet:

1. Track your calories AND your macros!

• While reducing caloric intake is important in losing weight, so is counting your macros. Macro is short for macronutrients. When people track their macros, they track the amount of protein, carbs, and fats that they’re consuming each day. This is important because even if your caloric intake is really low, you’re still not going to be getting the nutrients your body needs if all of your calories are made up of carbs.
• Check out this macro calculator so you can figure out how much of each macro you should be getting.

2. Eat protein

• Protein is an important part of weight loss. While you’re losing weight, you’re losing both fat and muscle. By eating enough protein, it will help you to preserve that lean muscle, while still helping fuel fat burning.
• Some healthy protein packed snacks include jerky, trail mix, hard boiled eggs, peanut butter & celery, cheese, almonds/nuts, protein bars, and milk/chocolate milk.

3. Increase your fiber intake

• Fiber is great for weight loss, as it helps you feel full without all of the extra calories. Fiber is a carbohydrate. But unlike other carbs, fiber passes through the body rather quickly and doesn’t make your blood sugar spike as other carbs do.
• You can increase the number of fibrous foods you’re eating, or you can take a supplement.
• The suggested amount for women under the age of fifty is 25 grams of fiber per day.

4. If you’re going to do a diet, do the Whole 30

The purpose of the whole 30 is to reboot your body and help to get rid of your sugar cravings for good. It’s also meant to help you see if you have any food sensitivities that you didn’t know about before.

In a nutshell, the whole 30 is a diet in which you go 30 days without eating anything that people might have a sensitivity to, anything that causes inflammation, or anything that hinders weight loss in general. You’re basically limited to meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruits. (There’s a little more to it than that, of course.)

If you’re serious about losing weight, whole 30 is the way to go! Yes, it’s hard! But it’s totally worth it! I highly suggest getting the book on the whole 30. It breaks down all of the science for you as to why and how your body craves sugar, and how by doing the whole 30 you can train your body to fend off those bad habits. 

Don’t bored eat

Bored eating plays such a large roll in not being able to lose weight. This is especially true for new moms. Having a newborn puts a lot of limitations on what you can do and where you can go. Odds are, before you had a baby, you were out and about working, doing activities, etc. Now you’re stuck in the house bored, going up to the fridge or the pantry just to open it and close it again.

There are two different ways to manage bored eating:

• Stop being bored- find a hobby, go for more walks, etc.
• Keep bored eating- only allow yourself to eat super healthy snacks, like cucumbers, celery, carrots, etc.

Meal Planning & Prepping- What’s the difference?

Both meal planning AND meal prepping are GREAT steps for anyone who is looking to lose weight! Meal planningconsists of planning out exactly what you’re going to eat for a period of time, usually one or two weeks. And mealprepping is actually preparing meals ahead of time so that they are ready, or almost ready, to eat!

Meal planning is great for weight loss because if you know exactly what you’re eating, it’s MUCH easier to track your calories and your macros(protein/carbs/fat). It is also easy to turn down junk food because it’s not in the plan!

Meal prepping is even MORE beneficial for weight loss because it makes eating healthy food convenient. The best way to meal prep is to make a plan for the week, go buy your food and spend your Sunday prepping as many meals and snacks as you can.

Cook a few chicken breasts for lunches for the rest of the week, cut up your watermelon and section it out in tupperware, portion out your snacks for the week and put them in snack bags. Put all of your meals for the week in tupperware dishes so they are just ready to eat.

It’s a lot easier to say no to eating out, or snacking on unhealthy foods when you already have something ready to go.

Don’t forget to grab a FREE Meal planning sheet and grocery list printable!

Drink a ton of water

Our brains have a hard time identifying whether we are hungry or thirsty, so often times we eat even though we are really just thirsty.

The daily recommended amount of water intake while trying to lose weight is between half an ounce to an ounce of water per pound of body weight. So, if you weigh 150lbs, aim for between 75-150 ounces of water per day.

Four important times to drink water are;

• When you wake up
• Before a meal- to help prevent overeating
• After a meal- to help with digestion
• Before going to bed

Helpful tip: Get yourself a cute water bottle with a STRAW. People tend to drink more water if they’re drinking from a straw.

Breastfeed

Breastfeeding is great for weight loss for a few reasons! First, it actually burns about 300-700 calories per day! Cool, right?

It is also good for postpartum weight loss because nipple stimulation causes your uterus to contract. This helps your uterus to shrink back down faster and shed the blood quicker.

Read our related post: 7 Most Effective Ways to Lose Weight While Breastfeeding (This includes a list of foods that are GREAT for weight loss that will also help to maintain a healthy milk supply!)

Also, here’s 8 Lifesaving Must Have’s for the Breastfeeding Mom!

Get enough sleep

Sleeping? With a Newborn? This is a joke, right? I know, it sounds ridiculous.

Studies show that getting a decent amount of sleep each night dramatically increases weight loss. This is because when you are lacking sleep, the hormones in your body that control your appetite are out of whack. So you end up feeling hungrier and overeating.

The recommended amount of sleep every night for someone is trying to lose weight is 7-9 hours. So, go to bed earlier, nap when baby naps, and give yourself one hour of ‘me time’ every day that hubby can watch the baby for, and take a nap!

Exercise

Exercise is an important part of weight loss, regardless of whether or not you just had a baby! While you don’t haveto exercise to lose weight, it definitely speeds up the process. Sadly, there is no “one size fits all” workout program for losing weight.

But, there is a basic “formula” that works for most people trying to lose weight; cardio+calorie deficit= weight loss. So, cardio is important for weight loss.

Cardio for weight loss

Here are a few different examples of cardio exercises you could do:

• Fast walking/jogging
• Running
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Aerobic classes
• Cardio equipment such as an elliptical, or stair climber
• Jumping jacks
• Jump rope

Strength training for weight loss

Yes, cardio is important for fat loss, but what a lot of people don’t know is that strength training is also really beneficial for losing weight.

By strength training, you are helping to keep your lean muscle, while losing fat. Sadly, during cardio, you can also lose muscle, as well as fat. So keeping those muscles will help for an overall more toned look when you lose the fat.

Also, after a weight training session, your body is working hard to repair that muscle tissue, and all that hard work burns A LOT of calories.

Strength training can play a huge role in getting that amazing body after baby that we all desire!

Click to read more about strength training for weight loss!

Find your tribe

In most cases, it’s a lot easier to stay motivated when you’ve got someone to help you get through the hard parts.

Find a friend who has similar goals, and you can keep each other accountable. Whether it’s with meal planning, exercise, water intake, or anything!

Or, you can find a group of women who are all working towards the same goals. Facebook is a great place for this! There are a ton of weight loss/postpartum groups to be a part of.

My favorite weight loss group is the Six Week Weightloss Challenge. The coolest part of this group is, you can win money, A LOT of money! Here’s how it works:

• Everyone participating puts in $20
• The challenge lasts six weeks
• The top three people who lose the largest percentage of weight split the pot (70/20/10)

There’s usually an average of about 60-100 people who participate. The top winner often gets over $1,000! (Although, I’ve seen it much higher) They do it by percentage lost, instead of pounds lost so that it’s fair for everyone.

If you’d like to be a part of the group, click here! (You don’t have to participate, you can join and just sit back and watch how it goes first!) You can ask to join the group, and the administrator will accept you before the next challenge starts! 

Find some inspiration

Sometimes it takes a little bit of admiration, or sometimes jealousy, to give you that kick in the pants to really buckle down and work for what you want. Start following some awesome fitness bloggers, so you can see everything they’ve been able to accomplish, regardless of their busy mom life.

Here are some inspiring MOMMY fitness bloggers you should be following on Instagram!

-Kelly @ totsnsquats 

-Keri @ kerispilatesroom 

-Anna @ bubs2bikinis

Set goals

Goals are SO important, but they can be bad for you, too. You need to set one or two long-term goals, such as lose 50lbs, fit into my favorite jeans, etc. But you need to set short-term goals, too! Because if you aren’t feeling as if you’re making progress, you are more likely to give up. Some really great postpartum weight loss goals are;

• No soda for 30 days
• Lose 1lb this week
• Exercise 4 days this week
• Drink 80 ounces of water each day this week
• Don’t eat out more than twice this month
• Track calories every day this week
• Go on a 30-minute walk every day this week

Reward yourself

Once you have achieved a goal, reward yourself with anything BUT food. It’s not a healthy practice to use food as a reward if you’re struggling with weight loss. Some examples of good rewards are;

• Date night with hubby
• A new article of clothing
• A new accessory
• Family vacation
• Any new item you’ve been wanting

See your doctor

If you’re doing all you can to lose weight and nothing is working, go see your doctor. There could be a health-related reason, such as a thyroid issue, that is stalling your weight loss efforts.

Out of all of these ways to lose the baby weight, which one are you going to try first? We would LOVE it if you could share this article, so that other moms can get started on their postpartum weight loss journeys, too!

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