Monica Bearden - The Baby Fat Diet

Table of Contents

Introduction

Having children changes your life in countless ways. A post-pregnancy body may be the first indication that you yourself will never be the same. After enjoying the freedom of eating for two, your body probably doesnt even resemble the shape you left it in more than nine months ago. You may have gained upwards of 35 pounds and delivered a 7- or 8-pound baby. So what happens with the rest of the weight? Unless you do something about it, you will probably end up keeping some of that extra padding. In fact, your child may be approaching kindergarten (or even college), and youll still be working on losing your pregnancy weight. Statistics show that women tend to hold on to 5 to 15 pounds from each pregnancy.

All is not lost. You can go back to being the woman you used to be. The trick is learning how to eat againnot just as one person with only one persons caloric needs, but as a mom who has 10 million things to do for everyone else and whose own name never even makes the to-do list.

In The Baby Fat Diet, as two moms who have the benefit of being dietitians, we give you short, easy tips that you can incorporate into your busy life. And believe us, we can relate to busywe each have two small children, a household, volunteer activities, and work obligations, too. Nothing that takes excessive time or preparation made it into this book; we included only the real stuff thats possible to do. Weve spent the past decade talking to moms just like you in weight-loss groups, fitness classes, and one-on-one sessions, listening to their challenges of taking off baby weight. And because we have our own children, we really understood what works in a real-life moms world.

Whether you just had your baby or youre well past changing diapers, small changes in your behavior and eating can be the key to taking off the baby fat. Small tweaks can really make a big difference. By making changes to your routine on a daily or weekly basis, youll see the pounds come off10, 20, and even more. You dont have to completely overhaul everythingjust pick the changes that make sense for you in your own circumstances.

And thats where this book comes in. Its the most simple approach to taking off the pounds youll ever encounter. The Baby Fat Diet offers tried-and-true advice. Our lifestyle and eating tips are easy to use for busy moms. Instead of just giving you a diet to follow, we also provide lifestyle tips for changes that work. They work because they stick. To lose weight successfully, you have to be able to keep it off, so the changes you make must work in your life and stick with you. And, since most of a moms me time comes in short spurts, we have written the book in short chapters, none of which need to be read sequentially. We recommend that you pick the chapters that pertain to you on a given day, or simply the ones that catch your attention. Reading in short doses will help you absorb the information and enable you to make more changes over time.

Each chapter provides tips that focus on one area of your life that will not only help you lose your baby fat, but also keep you and your family healthy. To help you reach your goals, at the end of each chapter, we invite you to write down one or two changes that you will make based on the information youve just read. Additionally, weve included some funny, frustrating, and even embarrassing stories and anecdotes from some of the hundreds of women weve encountered who face many of the same challenges youre experiencing, along with realistic recommendations for what to do in those situations. By taking a little wisdom here and gaining a little insight there, youll find solutions that will help you take off the weight. And that brings us to our ultimate goal, which is to help you look and feel fabulous.

We hope you enjoy the book and find the tips and stories useful and relatable. You may also chuckle as you see yourself in the real-life situations we use to illustrate the tips. Through the years, we have learned that even dietitians can use the insight of others when trying to maintain a healthy weight in a world where time is not your own anymore.

Not Eating for Two

Although many women dont think much about taking off pregnancy weight until after theyve had the baby, what you do during pregnancy can be most important to successfully losing the weight afterward.

Heres a scenario weve seen happen (extreme, we know, but it does happen): the stick indicates pregnant, and the woman grabs the TV remote and a bag of Doritos, swings by the freezer for a pint of Hagen-Dazs, and plants herself on the couch, where she practically lives for the next nine months. Then theres the other extreme, where the woman feels panicky about gaining weight, counting every calorie and ramping up her exercise routine. Now, neither of these scenarios may fit you exactly; youre probably somewhere in the middle, allowing yourself to indulge more while still concerned about gaining weight and losing your figure for good. Dont worry, we arent here to dampen the excitement and take away certain freedoms that traditionally accompany pregnancy. Every pregnant woman should feel free to indulge a bit more, but going hog wild (and we mean in a pork rinds kind of way) can set you up for disaster. Although you do need to eat more to nourish the needs of your growing baby, eating for two is a misconception. Instead, think of your pregnancy as an opportunity to eat more of the healthier foods, and save some of the more indulgent foods as reward for eating healthy most of the time.

During pregnancy, a few hundred extra calories from healthy foods is all the extra you actually need. Since certain vitamin and mineral needslike calcium and irongo up, adding foods rich in these nutrients is also best for your body and the babys. To successfully stay within the recommended guidelines and gain about 25 pounds, eat the same way you did before pregnancy, but add a glass of milk to lunch and dinner and a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts to your breakfast. You might also pick one of the following suggestions for an afternoon snack. An occasional small piece of chocolate wont do you any harmin fact, one study showed that women who ate a little chocolate every day while pregnant had happier babies than those who didnt! I can attest to that: when Shara was pregnant with her oldest, she was working for a chocolate company and had two bite-size pieces of dark chocolate every afternoon. Not only was her son a really contented baby, but hes now a very happy 5-year-old.

Heres what a few hundred nutrient-rich calories look like: