“How am I going to lose this baby weight?” is a question on the minds of most pregnant gals – at least it was for me! So how did I do it? Let me start with my basic philosophy: I’m a big believer in moderation and good old-fashioned discipline. There’s no silver bullet, no magic pill to get a body in shape. I believe the body, by and large, knows how to look great … if given healthy food and regular exercise!
That’s been my strategy for as long as I can remember, and for as long as I can remember, through disciplined eating and lots of yoga, my weight has been pretty much where I want it, give or take a couple pounds.
I’ll go into more detail about my diet and exercise in another blog post, but today I want to focus on a specific time in my life: Losing the baby weight. I gained 40 pounds during my pregnancy, and as I’m writing this, 6 months after delivery and with no help from a trainer, it’s basically all off (well, except for a pound or two from my new big boobs!).
After a 36 hour all-natural labor, I came home with newborn baby and husband, and although my mom came over to help out for 4 weeks (lifesaver!) that first month of recovery was pretty rough nonetheless. I couldn’t even think about exercise. I was only sleeping for like an hour or two at a time between baby feedings…and my body was just wrecked from labor – I could barely walk down the hall without hunching over. Even still, I lost about 15 pounds that first month – 8 or 9 of it was of course the baby and fluids that came out at the hospital. As I understand it, the rest came off from breastfeeding, nature’s way of helping the mom turn the excess fat into nourishing food! I was simply transferring my weight to Draco… nice, right? 🙂
So how about the other 25 pounds?
After that first month, when I was finally walking like a person again and not a Neanderthal, I began with yoga – gentle, restorative yoga that helped my body finish healing. It’s funny; my mom and I created a beginners yoga/meditation DVD a couple years ago called Daily Dose of Dharma and I had no idea it would be so useful post-partum! There are three 20 minute yoga segments on the DVD and I started doing one every day. It felt great to get my body moving again.
After a month of that, I could tell my body was getting back into the swing of things – the yoga had stretched and gently toned my muscles, I’d lost another 8 pounds, and I was ready to add more to my regime: more simple, basic aerobic exercise – often just 20 minutes a day. Read here to see how I worked in yoga with a baby for the next several months!
Epilogue: Yoga and light exercise combined with healthy eating (tons of calories, but avoiding things like wheat, sugar and dairy – see this blog for more on what I eat), and my body shed my extra pounds after about 9 months. Yep, 9 months on, 9 months off. For me, that was the gentle, consistent way to feeling back to my pre-pregnant self!