You did it! Your body spent the last nine months growing a super cute baby. Now you are ready to get back to how your body used to feel. This is great, except when you think about how awkward your body now feels. And as great as it is to be able to do normal things again like bend down, see your feet, and put on your socks, you’re anxious to get rid of the squishy, deflated belly. So here are five exercises you can do to lose that baby weight.
Have an Active Mindset
If you’re already a mom, I don’t have to tell you how very hard it can be to set your own schedule. This means having a consistent gym time may not be doable (unless you have your partner or a babysitter with the child). So, one of the ways to battle this new obstacle is by having an active mindset. If you have it in your mind that you want to actively move through your daily tasks and chores, anything can become a way to exercise.
For example, when sweeping, try to make it more upbeat by listening to music and dancing or going faster. Instead of lazily and slowly (or tiredly) moving things around, get your body moving.
Reach all the way back and forth when grabbing something or moving furniture. Instead of combining trips to one place in the house, take extra trips so that you burn calories by walking back and forth. Rather than setting your baby down while tidying up, carry your child around with you, which will not only help to burn calories but also build shoulder, back, arm, and overall body strength. Having an active mindset throughout the day can drastically change how you move and how many calories you burn.
Take The Baby for a Walk
This is an exercise that will really benefit both you and your baby. Walking is one of the best exercises for you because it is easy on your joints and muscles. And now that your stomach isn’t the size of the moon, you can actually enjoy it. There are numerous benefits to taking a daily walk, including boosting your mood, decreasing the chance of heart disease, and lowering your blood pressure, just to name a few.
A brisk walk ( walking fast enough that you begin to feel winded or the way you would walk if you were trying to get in from the cold) actually can burn as many calories as jogging. The walk will also be stimulating for the baby because it gives new sights, sounds, and smells to experience.
And if all that doesn’t make you want to get outside, walking can be a great way to get your baby to sleep because many babies enjoy the feeling of being rocked in the stroller. Is the cold stopping you from wanting to walk? Don’t let it, just layer and layer and layer your baby. Or you can wear your baby in a baby carrier for the extra warmth. Take a friend with you to enjoy it even more!
Train those Muscles
Instead of lifting weights at a gym, a more convenient method of strengthening your muscles and toning your body would be doing at home body resistance exercises. Push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, planks, wall sits, standing squats, are all forms of using your body weight to build and strengthen the muscle. Muscle training has been proven to burn as many calories as walking or jogging.
The benefits of muscle training are not only calorie burning, but it boosts your metabolism so that you are burning more calories for the remainder of the day. If you’d like some at home body resistance training examples, check out YouTube. The neat part about this form of training is that you do not need any equipment, just your own body weight!
Find Cardio You Love
Cardio is probably the exercise people tend to focus most on, but some find it pretty boring. If you are one of those people, don’t worry! There are plenty of ways for you to do cardio right at home, without machines, and without expensive equipment. There are hundreds, if not thousands of at home INTENSE workout videos. These videos are normally short, but they are designed to fit your body and burn calories as fast as possible. It’s so convenient to just hit play on a workout video and complete it while your baby is sleeping. Find one that works for you and that you enjoy!
Start Some Yoga
Yoga strengthens your entire core, increases flexibility, increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain, increases your stability and mobility, and best of all, releases stress. Also, yoga burns a tremendous amount of calories from isometric poses that put stress on your muscles. Yoga can easily be paired with body resistance training. Many people swear by this form of exercise and there is a lot of research to explain why. Bonus, you get to wear your comfy yoga pants (or maternity pants if you’re still rocking them) while exercising.
The crazy thing about exercising, especially as a new mom, is that even though you might feel too tired to get going, you will feel so much better afterward. Using the limited amount of energy you have towards an activity that needs a lot of energy, will actually gain you more energy in the end. And any of these exercises will help you to lose that baby weight!
It’s normal to want to get the baby weight off immediately, but it’s also important to remember that you grew a human being for nine months. Let me say that again because it needs to get into your thoughts. YOUR BODY GREW ANOTHER BODY! You need to acknowledge how big of a deal and what a miracle that is. Give yourself a break and allow yourself time to lose that baby weight. It took nine months to gain that weight so it won’t be leaving in one month!
For some easy workouts, you can try right away, check out our article here.
