What You Need To Know About ‘Bouncing Back’ After Childbirth
As soon as mothers give birth to their babies, they often struggle with accepting and recovering from their postpartum body changes. After giving birth, your body figures change, your clothes size, breast size, even your shoe size can be different. In this digital age where everyone is actively consuming content on social media, it’s easy for us to compare our bodies with the picture-perfect bodies of other women that we see online and feel insecure. That mommy friend on social media who shows her slim figure soon after giving birth, celebrities who have toned bodies and flat belly almost instantly after they delivered their babies…we understand how easy it is to compare your body with what you see online.
You may feel pressured to have the same progress, but please know that every mother’s body is different and it’s normal for healing and losing weight to take time. While we understand that “bouncing back” can mean improving many different aspects in a mother’s life, this guide focuses on some of the fundamental habits you can start doing to support your postpartum weight loss.
Have Reasonable Expectation Towards Your Body
You might have seen some mothers showing off their postpartum body and slimming down just a few months after childbirth. You might feel frustrated after comparing your body with them. Before you feel discouraged, you need to understand that every mother’s body and circumstances is different.
While slimming down fairly soon after childbirth is possible, it is not for everybody. A lot of other factors come into play in the process. For instance, different body types may react differently to certain exercise routines or diets. Meanwhile, mothers who want to see results as soon as possible often have to sacrifice more time, effort, and sometimes more money too—like hiring a professional personal trainer. Hence, it’s time to set a realistic expectation and make progress based on your own pace.
In fact, losing weight gradually during your postpartum is normal. If your pregnancy weight persists after childbirth, it’s normal for your body to take some time and lose weight slowly after birth. After delivery, your body needs sufficient and well-balanced nutrition to recover. Maintaining a nutritious and healthy diet plan with adequate exercise can help you lose a few pounds in a healthy way.
Breastfeed If You Can
We all know that breastfeeding comes with a lot of benefits, not only for babies but also for the mothers. Breastfeeding helps to prevent our baby from illness, providing them with balanced nutrition as breast milk contains all the nutrients that baby needs in order to grow. In addition, breastfeeding helps mothers to burn extra calories, reduce the risks of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and high blood pressure.
Breastfeeding requires extra energy from your body to produce milk. So, nursing moms should get an adequate intake of calories per day. If you’re facing milk supply issues, you may consider getting breastfeeding mom food to boost your milk supply. For example, green papaya is a popular fruit lactogenic food that is widely consumed by breastfeeding mothers across Asia. Also, lactation cookies that contain galactogogues can help mothers to increase milk supply too! Don’t worry about your calories intake, even with these foods, breastfeeding can support your weight loss journey as long as you are maintaining an active lifestyle and a healthy diet.
Do Postpartum Workout
Besides diet, resistance training like weight lifting can help to lose weight and gain muscle. The combination of these two has been considered as one of the most effective ways in helping you “bounce back” in terms of losing weight. It also improves the health of your heart. If you are still under recovery, just make sure you get your doctor’s green light before starting any of these exercises.
Hard to find a time to workout? You can simply do it while your baby is napping. Not to mention there are a lot of free exercise tutorials online that you can do without leaving the house. You can modify it according to your skills and acceptance level.
Drink Enough Water
Stay hydrated. According to research, drinking water can increase the sense of fullness and stimulate metabolism, which helps you to lose weight. Drinking water is extremely important, especially for breastfeeding mothers. For nursing mothers, your water intake replaces the fluids lost through milk production. Experts recommend nursing mothers drink at least 2 litres of water per day to ensure your body is hydrated.
On a side note, if you are a breastfeeding mother who likes to have outdoor activities or exercises, remember to drink more water too! Bring enough drinking water out and don’t forget about your breastfeeding accessories if you need to feed your baby outdoors. You may look for suitable mom and baby accessories at MumChecked.
At the end of the day, every mother recovers at a different pace physically and mentally after giving birth. As long as you are making progress, there’s no need to feel pressured or discouraged! Remember that you are strong and beautiful to have come so far, and keep taking baby steps each day!
Regaining your pre-pregnancy body in a healthier way is beneficial both to your body and future pregnancies. If you need any assistance or support, do remember to talk to healthcare professionals, friends or families. Accept your new life, celebrate your new role, and appreciate who you are right now!
