All throughout pregnancy I was excited about getting back to my old exercise routine and my old weight. I couldn’t wait to go running and climbing and biking. Now I have a four-month-old – ask me how often I go for a run or climb or bike. It’s pretty close to zero, but I had to figure out how to lose the baby weight a different way.

I had never dieted in my life, so I didn’t know where to start at all. But I knew I wanted to try to lose weight quickly so I didn’t have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Do I do high protein? track my macros? low carb? paleo? bullet proof? vegan? The truth that finally helped me lose all my baby weight (and then some) is something so obvious, and so easy that it’s no wonder it’s not a diet. It’s literally too simple to fill an entire book, and there’s nothing about it you can sell.

There is nothing you can eat that will help you lose the pregnancy weight.

Lowfat yogurt won’t save you, nor will an apple a day, or only eating protein bars, or green tea altoids, or eating more eggs, or more cucumber or cabbage or whatever weird thing they’re trying to sell us right now. Because eating more is not conducive to weighing less.

After I tackled the first month or so of baby life, I stopped losing weight naturally. I was starving from the breastfeeding and exhaustion and I couldn’t eat enough oatmeal raisin cookies. I had fifteen pounds left to go and I was so tired, there was no way I could work out. I was talking to a friend about my struggles and she led me to the second concept that changed the way I thought about dieting.

You can’t lose the baby weight unless you run a calorie deficit.

You have to eat less. It’s that simple. When you run a calorie deficit your body consumes the excess fat that you’re carrying around to keep it running. That’s how weight loss works. It’s not about fat burning green tea supplements, and while an intense exercise regimen may burn some calories it will never burn enough. If you’re too exhausted from raising an infant morning, noon, night, midnight, and three am, and exercising intensely again doesn’t seem achievable you can still lose weight. In fact, exercise will never alone change your body unless you focus on what you are eating.

The best abs are made in the kitchen.

Here’s why. Picture a box of See’s Candies (or any kind of candy, but my “research” was specifically See’s) Looks good, doesn’t it? Now eat one of these candies. Your favorite kind, it’s okay, go ahead. Divinity? Caramel? Rum Nougat? Butterscotch squares? What you just consumed was roughly 90 calories. Now you can’t just have one, so have two, it can’t hurt too much, right? They’re soooo small. I could probably even eat five three candies without feeling too guilty.

Now let’s work it off so we can run our calorie deficit for today. One high-intensity thirty-minute workout could burn 190 calories. That’s it. You’re sweating for thirty minutes, and all you’ve worked off is two candies, or a single beer, or a latte, or a half of a piece of cake. It would have been way easier not to eat the candies than to carve out thirty minutes of your already packed day to exercise. I don’t care how terrible your self-control is. Thirty seconds of willpower beats the heck out of thirty minutes.

That is why exercising alone simply doesn’t work. You can’t just eat whatever you want and then go for a run. Output has to exceed input, and you cannot do that when you’re eating eight pieces of See’s candy for breakfast.

Case in point: Have you ever trained really hard for a marathon? Triathlon? Five k? I participated in a half triathlon a few years ago and I did not lose a pound. I was training every day for three months. Biking, cycling, swimming. I have never exercised so much in my life. My body was sore, but it didn’t change. Why? I was starving! And I felt like all my training could justify eating whatever the heck I wanted which meant I wasn’t running a calorie deficit. (Apparently, I’m not alone) That’s why studies show that diet is more important than exercise when trying to lose weight. It’s that simple.

So how do you lose all that baby weight and start wearing those skinny jeans again? There are ten rules. Don’t worry, they’re easy.

Ten Steps to Lose the Baby Weight

Step One: Breastfeed

In addition to breastfeeding’s incredible health benefits for you and baby, breastfeeding can also help you run a substantial calorie deficit. Every ounce takes around twenty calories to produce. My son drinks four to five ounces per feeding and eats five times a day and maybe twice at night. He probably doesn’t drink five ounces every time, so I’m assuming about 500 calories that I’m burning per day. If you pump as well that’s an extra hundred calories, and a couple hours you can have out this weekend to go for that run while someone else bottle feeds the little bugger.

Step Two: Eat Better

Hopefully, you have a varied and nutritious diet, and that you try to lead a balanced life. You’ll indulge the occasional french fry, but if you eat ten pieces of see’s candy for breakfast (is there a theme here?) you’ll at least feel guilty about it and kind of icky. At this point, you know that processed food and sodas aren’t going to contribute to weight loss, but that’s mainly because they’re so calorie dense. One fast food meal could be 1500 calories and amount to your entire calorie allotment for the whole day, and that spells disaster when it’s 6 pm and you want to eat dinner. Can you lose weight eating only fast food? If you run a calorie deficit you can lose weight eating only Twinkies. But you’re probably not going to have a very good time.

Besides their obvious nutritional benefit, vegetables are surprisingly low calorie, which is part of the reason why diets often tout their benefit. In fact, a lot of diet plans allow unrestricted veggie consumption! They are full of fiber and protein (that’s right PROTEIN!) and combined with good proteins (legumes, meats, fish, and eggs) can keep you full for longer. If you track your calories you’ll start to realize that a 250 calorie veggie heavy salad satisfies you just as much as a 500 calorie sandwich.

In the beginning, you should use a calorie tracking app to start tracking what you eat in a week. I recommend this because it helps we lay-women understand exactly what we’re putting into our bodies and how it’s affecting us. Maybe that latte every morning is a hundred more calories than a cup of black coffee with some half and half. Or maybe you realize that the banana muffin you always get is a whopping three hundred and fifty calories, or the salad you eat for lunch only two hundred (no wonder you need to snack on chips after you eat it!)

There are a variety of calorie tracking apps out there, and some will track your macros. I used the Fitbit app and it helped me realize that every time I consumed too much fat (i.e. Too many handfuls of mixed nuts) I would get a headache. I realized I was using too much cheese in my eggs, ate too many high-calorie snacks (hellloooo, Costco Peanut Butter Pretzels!) and that a handful of spinach is only seven calories and has a surprising amount of protein. This is an excellent start if, like me, you’re new to the world of dieting and don’t fully understand what you’re consuming. For me tracking was a necessary step on the path to weight loss.

However, I found that tracking my calories made me eat more than my body was telling me to. Calorie trackers’ kryptonite is they can’t know exactly what you’re eating all the time. It’s all averages and ranges, and even if you break down every single ingredient of your healthy kitchen sink salad, and then measure it to the ounce, you’re still not going get an accurate calorie count (and ain’t nobody got time for that.)

I will always tout listening to your body over adhering to some prescribed method, so after tracking for a little while, I thought I would try something different.

Step Four: Eat Half

I always clean my plate. When I try to watch what I eat I serve myself less, but that plate is always spotless at the end of the meal. My husband, on the other hand, almost never cleans his plate. He stops, claiming he’s full and pushes it away. He doesn’t even pick at the leftovers! I started to realize maybe there was something in the way I was eating that I could change to help with my weight loss.

Eating exactly my normal diet, I decided to simply stop halfway through my meal. Wait five minutes or so, and if I felt physically hungry still I would eat a little more. It turns out I was serving myself twice as much as I could eat, and then eating it all. When I wasn’t hungry for lunch and it was lunchtime I ate again (my Fitbit app told me I could) and on and on I went until Fitbit said Yay! You are under your calorie goal for today, and I felt bloated and overwhelmed.

I began forcing myself to eat exactly half of whatever I served myself. I started out by splitting the contents of my plate in two and only eating one side. Then I would stop eating, wrap up my food and save it for later. It was hard at first, but I just told myself “When you get hungry again, get this out of the fridge. It will still be so tasty, and you’ll be happy you have it.” During this stage, It was important not to let my husband/child/dog finish my leftovers because I needed to know that the food would still be there later in order to convince myself to stop eating.

Step Five: Listen to your body

After a few days of eating half of whatever I served myself, I found myself naturally stopping in the middle of my meal, and deciding I was satiated. My desire to eat would actually cease. I would wrap up my plate, put it in the fridge, and if I was hungry again in two hours I would eat again. What I ended up doing was training my body to eat five small meals a day without meaning to.

Experts say that the problem with dieting is that people need to change their lifestyles not simply diet. Eating half and listening to my body changed the way I ate in the long run. I physically can’t finish the food on my plate now, and I don’t crave as many sweets.

I’m a huge proponent of listening to your body when it comes to all things physical. By paying attention to my natural physical hunger cues I was able to train my body to desire less food and easily lose weight. The best part? I always have healthy snacks/meals in the fridge for my mid-morning and mid-afternoon dips.

Eating half is especially important if you eat out a lot. Restaurant food is notoriously high calorie, and with those huge portions, you can expect any restaurant meal to be 500-1000 calories. Eat half, share with your partner, get a to-go box, save the rest for later.

I was able to maintain my breast milk supply while I was doing this, and I’m sure this is a concern for most new moms. My theory is that your body will keep you informed of its needs along the way. If you need to eat more to make milk, your body should be able to tell you that with hunger cues. You can always keep an eye on your supply while calorie cutting, but if you don’t have any breastfeeding issues as it is, a calorie restrictive diet that promotes listening to your body’s needs shouldn’t be bad.

Remember: the goal is not to starve yourself thin, but to get back to your healthy goal weight. You should never let yourself be physically hungry for too long.

Hunger is your body’s way of telling you it needs nourishment and calories. It doesn’t stick to prescribed regimens like meal-times, and it doesn’t care if all you ate today is ice-cream. It takes in calories and understands implicitly how much more energy you need to carry on. Hunger is your best tracker for success. If you are not hungry, don’t eat. If you are hungry, do eat and eat half.

Physical hunger is that gnawing at your gut that’s really hard to ignore. It’s a cramp like the feeling you get when you have to have a bowel movement, or when your milk lets down. It is physical, not mental. It is not thirst or boredom, and it doesn’t necessarily coincide with your lunch break (sorry). But when you feed a hungry belly, it is so so satisfying. You won’t ever want to go back.

It’s okay to skip a meal if you don’t feel hungry. It’s okay to have lunch at three pm instead of one. That is your body’s way of telling you, Hey we overdid it earlier. I’m not ready for more. This is called intuitive eating and apparently, it’s its own non-diet diet.

As you continue to eat half, you will likely find your body is ready to eat when society tells us we should (give or take an hour) but if you overdo it on a meal, you’ll likely throw yourself off for the whole day. Wait until your stomach growls to eat, and you’ll keep fueling that metabolism.

Step Seven: Watch your carbs

If weight loss is about calorie deficit can’t I eat bread all day as long as I come in under my calorie allotment? Technically, yes, you can still lose weight. The problem with a high carb diet is that foods with a high glycemic index (white bread, sugar, flour, rice, potatoes, cookies, candy, and sodas) don’t have a lot of nutritional value and they tend to make you feel hungrier after you eat them because they spike your blood glucose levels (not to mention a recent study just found consuming high glycemic foods put you at risk for all kinds of cancer) So you eat more calories to feel the same amount of full.

Try eating an entire bag of baby carrots (350 calories), and now try to eat a king-sized bag of M&Ms (440). Case in point – high glycemic foods are way easier to overeat and don’t satisfy.

If you want to listen to your body to lose weight rather than tracking it, you may have to cut out some of these high glycemic foods. Seeded nut and whole wheat bread sit in your stomach for longer making you feel full, so try something whole and hearty like that once a day. It might work for you. Don’t omit any one food for long, or, if you’re like me, you’ll find you crave only that.

My problem with bread and carbs is that as soon as I eat a bit of muffin/toast/pasta I want more. Even if it is high in fiber and protein, I personally have a hard time recognizing my full cues with a loaf of bread in front of me.

Step Eight: Take weekends off

Now you don’t want to go overboard and binge on the weekends, but you do want to live your life. Have carbs, eat the See’s candy, or the birthday cake, and practice recognizing when you’re full. The problem with calorie deficits is the calories roll over, so one day of over-eating will affect your whole week. If it’s easier to stick to your regimen than take a reasonable day off, fine. There really aren’t any cheats in dieting, but in my opinion, living your life is way more important than losing weight.

Step Nine: Exercise

Wait I thought I didn’t have to exercise to lose weight!? And you don’t, not technically. But that extra calorie deficit can be helpful as long as you don’t swap it for cake like many runners do, and your body needs all those good endorphins and fresh air and sweaty glorious motion in order to have the willpower to stop eating See’s candy. Cardio and weight training are so important for your health and you want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape to take care of baby.

Go for a walk, do some squats, do some daily moves, or run on the weekends. Continuing to do resistance training (i.e. pumping your bump) while running a calorie deficit tells your body to keep muscles around and get rid of the fat. If you don’t have time or you’re flipping exhausted and just want to fit into your effing yoga pants again, it’s okay, cut yourself a break, just eat half.

Step Ten: Follow a couple easy calorie cutting rules to lose the baby weight

These rules helped me reduce unnecessary calories and they will probably help you too!

Quit eating after dinner Studies show that by not eating after dinner you save an average of 238 calories per day. So put away the ice-cream and make yourself a cup of tea. This chocolate hazelnut is an especially yummy option. Going to sleep slightly hungry and it will keep your insulin low which will facilitate weight loss.

Drink tea or chew gum instead of snacking If you’re not physically hungry, but you mentally want to gnaw on a bucket of pretzels, herbal tea or gum can be equally satisfying, keep your mouth busy, and remind you to feel hungry at your next meal. The extra hydration from the tea will help you feel full. I love the Stash sampler pack, it’s full of 20 different flavors so you always have something exciting to try. Keep a note on your snack cabinet that reminds you to drink tea instead and you might turn to the kettle more often

Have dense protein filled snacks If you’re starving and don’t have a half a meal in the fridge, shoot for high protein options – protein bars are great. Remember, they’re high calorie, so just eat half or a quarter and let your body tell you when it’s satiated. I’ll grab a little one inch square of chocolate protein bar when I’m craving something sweet or I’m just a little bit hungry (I love think thin brand) and keep the rest in the fridge.

Limit alcohol. It’s a lot of calories with zero nutritional benefit. Plus you make poorer eating choices late at night when you’re drinking.

Think about eating as feeding a fire. You don’t want to dump too much fuel on it all at once or you’ll suffocate it. Little logs here and there build it up, and the occasional big stump keeps it burning.



I am not advocating that we all quit exercising but I am saying that focusing on eating is the only way to really lose weight (and I’m not the only one). Luckily you don’t have to change that much about your diet. You don’t have to switch to low-fat food or buy a bunch of Lean Cuisine or Special K. Just eat how you normally eat, but eat half. It could be the simplest change you ever make with high powered results.

Good luck!