How to Remove Belly Fat After Giving Birth? How to Lose Weight Quickly While Breastfeeding?

Straight after giving birth moms dream of going back to their original clothing size. However, it is not as easy as it seems. Taking care of a child takes so much time that it is hard to find a minute for the morning exercises, not to speak of attending a gym or a pool. That is why the majority of women do not lose weight, but rather gain excess during the first year of the child’s life.

This is the issue of the day for young mothers. And it is really hard to solve, because lactation period is not the time for a starvation diet. Then, how is it possible to reduce the excess weight, to remove belly fat, to get slim again after childbirth? A “heavy” problem, but quite a solvable one. If you follow these simple but proven recommendations, then soon you will share the secret of losing weight fast without dieting with mummies on the playground yourself.

In this article:

• Baby’s daily regime
• Lactation
• Walking
• Exercising for two
• Diet while breastfeeding
• Fasting days while breastfeeding
• How to remove belly fat after giving birth: exercise
• When can I start training
• Important principles of training after the birth

Baby’s Daily Regime

The most common mistake of new mothers is Improper daily regime. While your baby is awake, you are probably entirely absorbed in taking care of it and absolutely forget about yourself. And when the little one is off to sleep you rush to the fridge to eat and then to the sofa to get some long-awaited sleep.

Undoubtedly, you are now very tired, but such a schedule only does you harm. Refusing the normal diet, you subject your own body to an immense stress, forcing it to produce extra fat deposits, and then get puzzled about reducing the belly. Due to malnutrition you do not just gain unwanted weight, but also suffer from constant fatigue – this is the main cause of your desire to finally get some sleep.

“But what do I do then?” – you may ask. Just try to eat together with the child, rather often, 4-6 times a day, but in small portions. Even with the most trouble some, restless child you can always find ten minutes for a light snack. And, most importantly, never try to eat up after the baby, even if the porridge is very tasty and you feel incredibly sorry to throw it away! Once you reconcile your daily routine with your child’s, you will solve a lot of problems with weight gain and constant fatigue.

Lactation

Nutritionists, literally unanimously, state that women who feed their child with breast milk return to the previous size more quickly. This is due to the fact that during breast-feeding more rapid contractions of the uterus are stimulated, which contributes to its return to the pre-natal state.

However, if we consider the statistics, we can come to a very sad conclusion: while breast-feeding, many women gain weight. Therefore, are the nutritionists wrong? Not at all.The fact is that these moms, trying to ensure a stable supply of  good breast milk for the baby, consume huge amounts of dairy products, choosing those that are richer. In fact, to “eat for two” is absolutely unnecessary, and it is not healthy to eat double portions. Your diet should be not twice as large, but twice as rich in vitamins! Your baby, for proper growth and development, needs not calories but specific vitamins and minerals.

• Proper nutrition

Do not even try to go on a diet immediately after birth. First, it is absolutely useless and meaningless. And second, in the period of breast-feeding you must eat fully. Believe it, in the issue of “how to remove belly fat after giving birth” the important and sufficient thing is to watch your diet. The food should be tasty, varied and as healthy as possible.

It is not a secret that delivery is a huge stress on the body. And at such times, it suffers a strong protein, iron and calcium deficiency. These elements must be included in your daily diet. Cheese, dairy products and fishare the richest in calcium. You will always find necessary proteins in the following products:

1. vegetable proteins – in nuts, soy, legumes;
2. animal proteins – in meat, fish, poultry, cheese.

In addition, the body loses large amounts of iron during heavy postpartum bleeding. It is nearly impossible to lose weight having iron deficiency, because iron promotes the production of a special enzyme that affects fat burning. So every day you need to eat foods rich in iron, such as: lean meat, liver, seafood, beans, nuts, eggs and wholemeal bread.

The only thing you need to remember when choosing products is the level of their fat content. Choose low-fat foods – not fat-free, but low-fat. It concerns dairy, meat and fish foods. And as it was already mentioned – eat often and little.

Walking

A large number of mothers think they are to tired to go out and prefer to get fresh air on the balcony. That, incidentally, is one of the most common causes of childhood colds. Learn to take walks with a stroller not as a duty, but as an extra convenient opportunity to stay in a good shape.

Everyone has heard of heel-and-toe walking and its benefits. The average speed of a person is about 4-5 km per hour. With a baby, it is desirable to walk twice a day for 2 hours. Just one hour of intensive walking burns about the same number of calories as three hours at the gym. Now try to calculate how much you lose sitting at home and how you can benefit from walking with a stroller. And now answer the question of how to lose weight quickly after giving birth yourself. However, for the real effectiveness you need to walk at a brisk pace, with your back straight and be sure to wear comfortable shoes.

Exercising For Two

Answering the question of how to lose weight quickly after giving birth, we can’t but mention the root cause of excess weight – physical inactivity, as the experts call it, or better to say, the absence of physical exertion required. Even eating only fruits and vegetables, consuming a minimum of fat, in the absence of movement any person gains weight. Working muscles consume fat. And laying on the couch each candy will immediately be deposited into your sides. Of course, the last remark is used only as an example, because a small child does not leave a chance for sedentary lifestyle. However, nursing a newborn and doing housework, try to train all muscle groups.

By the way, banal carrying your child in a baby carrier is a great exercise for moms. This exercise develops a good posture and strengthens back and abdominal muscles. Here’s a wonderful recommendation how to remove belly fat after giving birth at home and lose weight without dieting and gym. Periodically change the position of the baby from the front to the back – so you will ensure the load on different muscle groups. Your child is constantly gaining weight, but with the help of training you will increase the load gradually, without damaging the spine and back muscles by the rare but sudden loads.

Using only this last appointment, by six months of your child’s life, you will lose as much kilograms, as the baby will gain. And if you implement all the recommendations, you will return to their former size. Nevertheless, I would like to delve more into the nutrition during breastfeeding and exercise for the belly after giving birth.

Diet While Breastfeeding

Do not take the word diet wrong and do not try to use starvation or aggressive diet during breastfeeding. Unfortunately, by “diet” people often mean a strict limitation of supplies to reduce calorie intake. But the diet is actually a regime, food culture, a competent set of rules of food intake.

Considering the enormous shift in hormonal levels during pregnancy, disordered metabolism during this period, the problem of how to lose weight quickly after giving birth is easily solved by a simple scheduled nutrition. Follow these guidelines, and you will be surprised how quickly you will go back to harmony and elegance.

1. Seriously limit sweets and baked goods. They contribute to the formation and build-up of body fat and are not healthy for the baby in the period of lactation. Increase the amount of fresh vegetables. Be sure to take vitamins for nursing mothers.
2. As you remember, you need to eat often, but little – no more than 200 grams at a time. This is the optimal amount of food, nutrients which the body is able to digest and benefit from at a time. Every extra gram is reserved.
3. Do not eat for 4 hours before bedtime, try to fall asleep by the time your stomach is empty. During sleep the body burns fats the most intensively. So just let it do its job.
   
4. During breastfeeding you need to drink plenty of fluids: water, juices, teas. The liquid consumed should be not less than 2 liters per day in total. Water is responsible for the rapid withdrawal of the waste products from the body, and if they stop accumulating in the body, they will stop poisoning it. Metabolism occurs in an aqueous environment, so liquids help to accelerate this process and weight loss in general. Water helps get rid of wastes in the body and regulates the digestive process. There is another little secret, how to lose weight quickly after giving birth: the drinks should be cooled. The fact is that the body expends more calories to absorb the cold than hot. Green tea increases metabolism excellently. Just one cup of this drink can accelerate calorie burning over the next couple of hours.
5. Training and exercise should be done with an empty stomach, otherwise they will be ineffective. Get to it, waiting 1-2 hours after meals.

Set the proper diet and nutrition. Eat when you want, do not stay hungry. Eat in small portions, but often, probably together with the baby. But do not eat up child’s porridge, in any case. Avoid fried, fatty, smoked meats, sausages, baked foods, hot spices and lots of sugar.

Cook in a steamer, boil, stew, bake in the oven. Products prepared in this way do not let you gain weight, and besides, do not lose its beneficial properties and preserve more vitamins and elements.

The meat is necessarily to appear on your table once a day. Just make sure that it was not greasy, spicy or smoked.

Try to eat vegetables and fruit raw: at least half of your daily diet should be eaten fresh. The rest should be boiled, steamed, and so on. Another small detail: grapes and bananas are rich in calories.

You will benefit from cereal grains, brown rice and whole wheat bread.

You can’t replace with breast-feeding. However, do not purchase fat milk or cream. Prefer fermented baked milk, low fat milk.

For dessert, apple or pear is perfect instead of cake, chocolates, cookies or nuts.

Fasting Days While Breastfeeding

If you have a rational meal schedule, a couple of fasting days a week will help you to quickly lose weight after delivery. When we speak about rational nutrition, we mean rejection of fat, fried, starchy foods, sweet pastries with cream. Instead, you should increase consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, which not only improve bowel function, but also fill your body with positive energy.

There are a lot of variations of fasting days, but not all of them are suitable for losing weight after birth-giving. The main principal of the right fasting is that the amount of food should be divided into 5-6 meals, not more than 22 grams a meal. Fasting days are usually divided into protein and carbohydrate. You can choose one of the acceptable choices for your variants or alternate them to vary the fasting menu.

• Protein fasting days are as follows

1. Mix low-fat 400 gr. of cottage cheese and 200 gr. of any fruit or berries. You can beat them in a blender. Also, in addition you can enjoy 0.5 liter of low-fat yogurt.
2. 500 grams of non-fat cottage cheese plus a liter of yogurt.
3. Cook 500g. of low-fat meat or chicken without the skin. Do not add salt. While cooking you can add greenery or use flavorings that do not contain MSG.
4. 500 grams of boiled fish, possibly with spices and herbs, but it must be without salt.
5. Take two soft-boiled eggs and 300 gr. of cheese.
6. 1.5 liter of low-fat sour milk, yogurt or any other dairy products.

• Carbohydrate fasting days can have the following forms

1. You can choose any fruits or vegetables in amount of 1.5 kg. The only fruits which are not good for such days are grapes and bananas. It is better to eat them raw, although you can bake them, like apples, for example. You may add 5 tablespoon soft sour cream or vegetable oil.
2. 200 gr. of bran and 1 liter of low-fat yogurt
3. 1 kg of boiled potatoes and 0.5 liters of low-fat yogurt.
4. Boil 150 gr. of brown rice without salt, divide it into three portions of equal value. For breakfast, add a pinch of cinnamon or other spices to the rice. At lunch, add a small apple, grated. At dinner, add a little pepper or a carrot, preferably raw, but you can simmer them in the oven.
5. Boil 150 gr. rice without salt, grab an apple and a small carrot. You can use herbs and spices for flavor.

There are a lot of diets, which are based on fasting days and help to lose weight quickly after giving birth. We offer you one of them. This diet is based on a fasting week. One week it is necessary to completely adhere to a variety of alternate fasting days, and during the second one you can eat as usual. Be sure you include a liter of nonfat yogurt in your diet every day, except for the sixth day of the week – the day it must be replaced with clean water. Daily add various products (400 gr.) to the yogurt, in particular: low-fat cottage cheese; baked potatoes without salt; any fruit (except bananas and grapes); chicken breasts, cooked without salt. During the week, alternate the protein fasting days by carbohydrate fasting days and make week ends fruity days.

It is important to remember that during fasting and diets of any kind, it should be mandatory to comply with the drinking regime – you need to drink not less than 2 liters of liquid a day. The amount of fluid intake directly affects the amount of milk you produce, besides excessive drinking seriously boosts metabolism. If you combine the fasting days with moderate exercise, then very soon you will be able to significantly lose weight and then put on your favorite clothes.

And remember that immediately after training you should refrain from eating. It is necessary to wait at least an hour or two. The reason for this is the fat burning mechanism, turned on during a workout, which continues after exercising for about 2 hours. If you eat immediately after training, their effectiveness will decrease or even come to naught.

How to Remove Belly Fat After Giving Birth: Exercise

Undoubtedly, the best way to remove belly fat after giving birth and to lose weight fast without dieting is physical exercise. However, to start it immediately after childbirth is not possible – the body must recover from such a huge stress as pregnancy and childbirth.

When Can I Start Training

The duration of the recovery period, after which you can start to do the exercises and training, depends on the severity of birth. But anyway, it will happen not earlier than one month after birth, and if labor was severe or using Caesarean section, not before the gynecologist gives you the “OK” after the medical examination.

Remember that the problem of how to reduce belly fat requires patience and endurance. You need to be patient, and do not demand impossible things from your own body. You need much more than a month to fully return to your previous shape.

One of the main reasons why once flat belly does not immediately return to its former state is that the paired abdominal muscles which are normally stuck together, during pregnancy are parted to the sides. Experts call such a phenomenon a diastasis of rectus muscles. Gradually they begin to close a few days after a normal birth, passed without complications and surgical intervention, but rather slowly. And only after the disappearance of diastasis you can start doing exercises that strengthen the abdominal muscles, aimed at removing belly fat after giving birth.

To determine the degree of diastasis at home, you can perform the following test:

1. Lie on your back on a flat hard surface, bend your legs at the knees and put your hands on the belly, near the navel.
2. Then, raise the head and shoulders to detach them from the floor.
3. In this position, palpate the abdominal area. If you hit upon the interval between the muscles, so there is diastasis.

This test can be performed on a daily basis, until you find that muscle has come together as closely as possible and now you can start the course.

Important Principles of Training After the Birth

So, you are ready to start exercising. It means it is time to reveal the main principals of training to remove belly fat after giving birth. If you follow them, you will get the results much faster.

So, the basic tenets of how to reduce belly quickly and effectively, but not harass your body:

1. Exercise regularly, at least 2 times per week. Otherwise the effectiveness of training will be significantly reduced.
2. To form a beautiful slim silhouette, it is important to combine strength exercises and exercises aimed at burning excess fat. This will make the body fit and graceful.
3. The most efficient fat burning occurs on the pulse of 120 beats per minute – this pulse corresponds to a brisk walk. Higher pulse burns muscle.
4. Performing abdominal exercises, you need to follow the proper breathing. Breath can be held in no case. With the effort you should exhale through the mouth, with relaxation – inhale through the nose. This breathing technique will significantly increase the effectiveness of exercise due to sufficient supply of oxygen to the body. Oxygen is actively involved in the burning of fat.
5. Do not let yourself relax and lay down on the floor between repetitions of movements, it is only necessary to lightly touch the hips or shoulders (in accordance with the technique of exercise) and immediately raise the legs or shoulders again. Bring the block of exercise to the end.
6. If you are tired, take a rest. Remember: the amount of exercise is not as important as their quality.

By following these simple rules, you will soon realize how to lose weight quickly without dieting and how to remove belly fat after giving birth. Here are some exercises to strengthen abdominal muscles and buttocks, which are advised by the leading fitness trainers. Fulfilling them by the pulse of 120 beats per minute, you effectively get rid of fat in problem areas.

• Losing belly fat: exercises for the upper abdominals

Starting position: Lie back on the floor. Bend your legs at the knees, lower back pressed to the floor. Put your arms around the neck. Do not interlink your fingers or squeeze your fingers around the neck. Lift your upper body slowly.

Now drag your chin to the knees, with the need to tighten your abdominal muscles, but not the neck. If your muscles ache and tremble, then you do it right. Do not forget to watch your breath! With the effort – exhale through the mouth, with relaxation – inhale through the nose.

• Losing belly fat: exercise for the lower abdominal muscles

Starting position: Lie back on the floor, stretch out both arms along the body and straighten your legs.

Now slowly raise your legs, stopping at an acute angle, so that the lower abdomen feels strong tension. Thus, knees should be straight. Hold the position for 10 seconds. Do not forget to watch your breath! With the effort – exhale through the mouth, with relaxation – inhale through the nose.

• Losing belly fat: exercise for the oblique abdominal muscles

For your abs to look harmonious and belly tightened, it is necessary to train the obliques on which, to a greater extent, depends the state of your waist.

Starting position: Lie back on the floor. The knees bend, severing the feet off the floor, so that the lower back is pressed to the floor. Hands on the shoulders.

Now press the chin to the chest and “twist” from the floor with a smooth motion, lifting your shoulders. Do this movement so that the amplitude in the twisting is small, and the lower half of the spine does not rise from the floor. Concluding the exercise,put your upper back to the floor slowly. Do not forget to watch your breath! With the effort – exhale through the mouth, with relaxation – inhale through the nose.

• Tighten your buttocks: exercise for the buttocks

Fat on the buttocks is a usual thing during pregnancy. Therefore, it is necessary to struggle it to regain a slim, beautiful figure.

Starting position: Lie on your back and bend your legs at the knees at an angle of 90°, hands should be stretched along the body.

Now tighten your legs and start to slowly lift your pelvis up and down. To increase the effectiveness of exercise, complicate it. Try to do the same thing, only lifting and pulling up one leg at 45 ° to the floor. Slowly lift your pelvis up and down on one leg resting and the other held in the air.

• The last guidance on how to remove belly fat after giving birth at home

Inspired by regaining of the shape, or the improvement of the figure after giving birth during breastfeeding, be sure to remember the influence of your actions on your newborn baby.

Despite the notorious advertised methods for rapid weight loss, remember that losing weight should be gradual! It is more than enough if you get rid of 250-400 grams a week. Believe it, this is not little, even if at first glance this is what it seems. This is the optimal amount of weight that your not yet recovered body is able to give, not suffering from the stress and without causing harm to health.

Do not follow the advertising tricks offering magic pill or miracle grass, which instantly makes you slim. After all, no drugs or dietary supplements for weight loss may be beneficial for the baby and a nursing mother. The problem of weight loss should be treated with the utmost care and responsibility, and better shared with a good, professional dietitian.