Ladies, we all know the changes that come with pregnancy. One day your regular clothes fit and the next you can’t see your feet. Once you’ve given birth, your body just isn’t the same as it was and you probably still can’t fit into your old clothes. That might have you feeling ungainly, fat, and undesirable. We can’t have that! And then you start counting calories to lose weight after baby…

Luckily there are ways to lose that weight that will leave you healthier than ever. Making the choice to make healthy choices is just the first step when it comes to weight loss. Making that commitment is vital but you have to know what choices are the right ones. That includes dropping calories to lose weight after baby. Here are just a few tips to get you started on diets to lose baby weight.

Calories To Lose Weight After Baby: What Is Healthy?

Never trust most of those fad diets. Most people who do fad diets end up regaining the weight and that’s not what you want to do, right? They’re not very healthy when it comes to metabolic weight loss. Now, you’ve just had a baby so you’re still going to need to give your body the fuel it needs to take care of a newborn.

Great news though, breastfeeding has been said to aid in weight loss after baby! Now, if you’re going to focus on your diet, you need to start by recording in a journal everything you eat and drink for about a week. That will allow you to see just what you’re putting in your body.

Are you consuming lots of coffee, soda, and other nutritionally deficient things? That type of food is called empty calories, where you’re not getting anything good (like vitamins and nutrients) while adding to your daily calories. The very first thing you can do to make your diet better is to cut those empty calories out by asking yourself just what they’re doing to help your body.

Consider Your Preferred Food Groups

The next thing is to look at the food groups you are consuming. Carbohydrates are not always the best thing to have too many of, but if you must eat bread try to only consume the whole wheat or whole-grain varieties. It comes back down to what your calories are doing for your body. The most obvious change you can make is to eat more fruits and vegetables, which are full of the vitamins and minerals you need.

Swap out your afternoon snack for some fruit, for example, and you’ll be adding a needed serving to your day. Nuts are better than say, cookies or a candy bar when you’re hungry. When it comes to meat, chicken (skinless of course!) is great and so is fish when they’re both grilled.

Cut the breading out entirely if you can! For red meats, you should only eat meat about the size of your closed fist. That’s a decent serving if you’re aiming to lose weight. Grilled vegetables and meat are the best way to prepare meals.

For salads, you should not dress them in advance or pour the dressing liberally. Instead, have the dressing on the side. You can lightly dip each bite in it, which will use up much less dressing and lowers the number of calories you can assume. And please, avoid using croutons if you can!

Doctors say that women who have just had a baby should not be consuming any less than 1,800 calories a day and should probably consume a bit more if they’re breastfeeding.

How About An App?

If you want to track the number of calories you consume, there are several apps that are great for doing just that. One of the best apps is MyFitnessPal. This app offers a lot of features and is completely free so long as you don’t mind the ads.

If you hate seeing ads in your apps, you can pay for the premium service at the rate of $49.99 a year. You can track the foods you eat and their database has 5,000,000 foods so that it will immediately log the information and calories to lose weight after baby. You can even use its bar code scanner for packaged foods, which simplifies the process even more.

If you’re a Samsung user, give S Health a try. Unlike the one I mentioned before, you can use all its features without intrusive ads, not to mention that you won’t have to pay a dime.

Metabolic Weight Loss

In short, metabolic weight loss is a holistic way of using calories to lose weight after baby. You’ve got to stack the deck against your metabolism if you want to lose enough weight and keep it off. That means that you should not try to work against yourself by denying yourself the things you love completely. Give yourself a cheat day or a cheat meal once a week. You’re taking care of a newborn so you deserve it! If you deny yourself the things you crave, you’ll just end up throwing any dieting out the window. Then you’ll soon be back at where you were, dissatisfied with how you look and feel.

Now, back to gaming the system against your sluggish metabolism. Foods like yogurt, for example, can give you the probiotics you need so long as you don’t eat the kind that’s full of sugar. In fact, avoid sugar altogether! Greek yogurt is really good for probiotics, for example. Even protein is needed from time to time in order for you to keep your body running. Like we’ve said before, you should be asking yourself what your foods are really doing for your body and whether your food is giving you all the nutrients your body needs.

A Sample Diet: Calories Weight Loss Plan

Okay, so you’ve got all the fitness trackers and are about to use calories to lose weight after baby. If you’re like me, I sometimes can’t figure out the healthiest choices unless there are examples so here’s a day menu that is full of healthy choices. Remember, you have to make that commitment to healthy eating!

Breakfast:

Apple juice, yogurt, a small bowl of oatmeal, and some lightly buttered whole-grain toast.

Lunch:

Salad with grilled chicken and veggies, dressing on the side, a glass of water.

Snack:

Fruit salad with nuts and granola sprinkled on top.

Dinner:

Herb grilled cod, steamed peas, and carrots, unsweetened ice tea.

Dessert:

Whole grain blueberry muffin.

See? It’s easier than you think to lose weight after baby. Do any of you have any tips for someone interested in diets to lose the baby weight? Please share here!