It’s hard to get into an exercise routine when you’re taking care of young ones. Lots of new moms vacillate from starvation to binging or spend a ton of cash on an expensive weight loss program or gym membership. Here are the top 5 do’s and don’ts to keep you on track for losing pregnancy weight.

1. Don’t obsess over your daily calories. Skipping meals or becoming too strict with yourself could lead to binging when hungry and purging to ease the guilt. Committing to eating healthy meals for losing pregnancy weight should be a gradual transition so it won’t sabotage your efforts by being a shock to your system and psyche. Choose natural foods and healthy low-calorie receipes and snacks that cater to your tastes.

2. Do snacking the right way. Snacking is a good habit. However, snacking the right way requires that you need to change the type of foods that you are snacking on from high fat, salt and or sugar snacks to healthier ones. If you have the occassional chocolate bar, you don’t have to beat yourself up as long as you don’t let it undermine your efforts at losing the pregnancy weight. Having a granola bar is better then a chocolate bar and saying no to whip cream on your latte will cut down on un-needed calories.

3. Don’t forget to stretch out those muscles. Returning your body back to its pre-baby shape after giving birth can be challenging. Muscles in your neck and lower back, hips and arms could benefit with a good morning strecth. When stretching always include a brief warm-up and cool-down. Stretching helps when losing pregnancy weight because it helps enhance physical fitness by reducing muscular soreness and tension.

4. Do resistance training. Give your workout a boost to burn the baby fat with some exercise Ball crunches or rubber resistance band bicep curls or even getting an at home BOSU Ball for squats. Resistance training is an excellent way to losing pregnancy weight because it tones the muscles and therefore effectively burns more calories.

5. Don’t avoid getting some shuteye. It can be hard to hit the sack when you have a little one but make sure you get a naptime too! Losing pregnancy weight can be hard when you are exhausted. Your muscles, metabolism and nerves need a rest and so get some rest while you can.

Whatever route you’ve choosen to go about losing the pregnancy weight, always strive for a balance in your mental, physcial and psychological health. These do’s and don’ts are just guidelines to your bigger plan, but no matter what you do just make sure you are having fun!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 12:29 am and is filed under Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.