How to Lose Weight After Pregnancy: What to Eat and What Not to Eat

Losing the extra pounds gained during pregnancy can be challenging. Learn which foods can help you return to your pre-pregnancy weight.

What is Pregnancy Weight?

During pregnancy, you gain some weight due to the growth occurring inside you. The growing baby, placenta, amniotic fluid, and larger breasts all contribute to this added weight.

Additionally, the body’s fat reserves also increase. This fat is an energy reserve that you will need during childbirth and the energy-demanding months that follow.

Pregnancy weight is an integral part of post-delivery life. However, for health reasons, you shouldn't keep this weight for too long.

If you control your diet after pregnancy, you can lose weight after having a baby in the following way.

What to Eat After Delivery

If you want to lose weight after pregnancy, avoid crash diets. You need to follow a balanced diet to lose weight after delivery. This will help you stay healthy and ensure that you can provide quality breast milk to your baby. Here are some foods that should be included in your postpartum diet to ensure both your and your baby’s health:

• Low-fat dairy products
• Whole grains
• Fruit
• Leafy green vegetables
• Eggs
• Fish
• Water

Skim milk, low-fat cheese, and skim yogurt provide vitamins B and D that both you and your baby need, as well as calcium. Additionally, being low in fat, they help you avoid gaining weight.

Remember that dairy products can have negative effects on the baby, so be careful and don't over consume them.

So, how can you quickly lose weight after pregnancy? Whole foods are ideal if your goal is to lose weight in a month. They are high in fiber, which adds bulk to your food. This improves your digestive health and prevents you from gaining more weight.

You should eat fruit very often, especially when you want a snack between meals. Fruit is a good source of vitamins and minerals essential for health. Leafy green vegetables are also a source of minerals and vitamins.

You should complement your diet by adding spinach, broccoli, kale, or Swiss chard. Vegetables are low in calories, so you don’t have to worry about gaining weight by eating them.

Eggs are an almost perfect food. Like fish such as salmon, they are high in protein, the building blocks of the body. The skin and internal muscles of the abdomen are stretched and loose after childbirth. The body uses proteins to repair this skin and muscle, helping you regain your pre-pregnancy figure. Fish and eggs also contain omega-3 fatty acids, like DHA, which are important in fetal development.

With weight loss through metabolism, you’ll need to drink enough water to eliminate waste. Drinking plenty of water also helps the body burn more calories.

What Not to Eat After Delivery

During breastfeeding, your appetite increases. This allows the body to include in breast milk the nutrients your baby needs.

This increased appetite will heighten cravings, many of which will not be for healthy food. You should resist the urge to binge on the following unhealthy foods:

• Alcohol
• Coffee
• Fried and greasy foods
• Carbonated soft drinks
• Certain fish and seafood

The alcohol you consume can make its way into the breast milk your baby drinks. Additionally, studies show that alcohol intake reduces breast milk production.

Like alcohol, the caffeine in coffee can also pass into breast milk. This can make the baby restless and uncomfortable, preventing them from sleeping well.

Fried and greasy foods contain oils and fats that will make you gain weight. Additionally, if you want to lose weight after a cesarean section, you should eliminate these fatty foods from your diet. They do not contribute to the body’s recovery process.

Speaking of recovery after a cesarean section, you should also avoid carbonated beverages. They cause bloating, which is uncomfortable for the abdominal wall. Additionally, they contain many useless calories that not only interfere with the recovery process but also cause weight gain after childbirth.

Earlier, we mentioned that fish was a positive component of a post-delivery diet plan. However, not all fish and seafood are good for you or your baby. Many contain mercury, which is toxic.

Does Breastfeeding Make You Lose Weight More Easily?

During pregnancy, the body prepares for the demands of breastfeeding by increasing fat reserves. (Fat is an excellent energy source).

Therefore, it’s natural to wonder if breastfeeding helps the body lose this accumulated fat. The answer is yes.

If you follow a healthy and balanced diet with a variety of foods, you can gradually lose pregnancy weight while breastfeeding. This will also ensure your health and that of your baby.

Many women do a lot of cardiovascular exercise and follow a crash diet to regain their pre-baby body.

While this may work in a relatively short time, it has certain drawbacks. Rapid fat loss releases toxins that make their way into breast milk, reducing its nutritional value for the baby.

Therefore, you should aim to eat well and take it slowly. You will gradually lose the weight gained during pregnancy and regain your pre-pregnancy shape.

How Long Will It Take to Lose Weight After Having a Baby?

During pregnancy, you’re likely to gain between 11 and 15 kilograms (24-33 pounds).

This is usually due to the weight of the growing baby, the increased size of the uterus, and the placenta. Amniotic fluid, increased breast tissue, and increased blood volume also contribute to this weight gain.

Therefore, it makes sense to lose weight when you give birth. Depending on the size of your baby, you can lose up to half of this weight during childbirth. This includes the weight of the baby, amniotic fluid, and the placenta.

However, you will still have half of the gained weight to lose.

So, the question remains: how much weight will you lose after delivery and when?

While you can lose a significant portion of the gained weight in the first six months after delivery, there will still be some that take longer to lose.

Therefore, you should expect to weigh a bit more than before you got pregnant. However, with exercise and a healthy diet, you can gradually lose weight and get as close as possible to your pre-pregnancy body.