Postpartum Weight Loss Tips & Motivation to Lose Baby Weight

Society and stories in the media place tremendous pressure on new moms to lose weight and get back to their pre-baby bodies. While losing baby weight can be good for self-esteem and physical health, the pressure to be thinner quickly can be damaging to your emotional and mental health. 

What new moms need is positive support and encouragement along with a personal, meaningful reason to lose weight. A healthy dose of reality is also important. Giving birth is a huge deal, and bodies are not meant to return to exactly how they were pre-pregnancy. 

Whether you are a new mom or a trainer of postpartum women, finding and maintaining the right motivation are the keys to successful and realistic weight loss. 

First, Find Your Purpose

People fail at weight loss for a variety of reasons. An important underlying factor is purpose. Whether it’s postpartum weight or not, success at weight loss requires motivation, and motivation requires a purpose. 

Why Do You Want to Lose Weight?

As you begin the postpartum journey, take time to reflect on what you hope to achieve. Be specific about goals, but also consider the underlying reasons. Why do you want to lose weight? Why is a particular number on the scale important to you? 

Here’s a simple, realistic post-pregnancy workout plan you can try now. 

Motivation to Lose Baby Weight Must Be Meaningful

If your answer to the above question is because you want to be thinner, it may not be good enough. This is an extrinsic factor, something outside of yourself that is focused on how others perceive you. If being thinner is your purpose, dig deeper. Why is that important to you?

• You want to feel more like yourself again, like you did before becoming pregnant. 

• Your self-esteem is lower when you have extra weight, and you want to feel better about yourself. 

• Extra weight is connected to chronic health conditions that scare you, like diabetes. 

• You have less energy when you weigh more, and you want to feel physically better and more energized. 

You are more likely to succeed at goals set with these more personal, meaningful purposes behind them. These are factors that contribute to intrinsic motivation, the push to achieve something because it is inherently satisfying. 

6 Tips to Maintain Your Motivation to Lose Baby Weight

The reasons behind losing weight serve as your motivation. The desire to be healthier, regaining your sense of identity, or building self-esteem are all powerful motivators. You’re ready to get started, but how far will these factors take you to reach a healthy weight? 

To lose weight requires discipline, time, and consistency. Maintaining motivation in the face of difficult workouts, lack of time, and the lack of sleep that comes with new motherhood is a big challenge. Take this advice from those who have been there before to stick with it and lose that weight. 

1. Set a Realistic Weight Loss Goal

Goal setting can be highly motivating. With your true purpose for losing weight in mind, start setting small goals that lead up to one bigger goal. 

For example, if you want to lose 30 pounds to reach your pre-baby weight, break that up into smaller achievements, like losing three pounds a month. It’s a time-oriented goal that is small and totally doable. In less than a year, you will have met your overarching goal. 

2. Take the Focus off Weight

There is nothing wrong with setting weight loss goals or using the scale to track your progress, but for many people the motivation wears off quickly with this strategy. If that happens to you, re-focus on something other than the number on the scale. 

Try setting goals that have nothing to do with weight but that support a healthy habit. It’s an indirect and more motivating way to drop pounds. Maybe you have never run a 5k before but want to try. Set that as a goal to feel more motivated to train and eat healthy food. 

Putting your focus on healthy eating is another alternative. Working with a personal trainer or nutrition coach can help you build healthy lifestyle habits that will support you reaching that pre pregnancy weight. Try to cut out more processed foods and added sugar. Use quality proteins and healthy fat to build a healthy meal.

3. Find a Partner

Ideally, you know another recently postpartum mom with similar fitness and health goals. Working out and making healthy choices together provides accountability and extra motivation. You don’t want to let a friend down, and you both push each other. You both win. 

If you don’t have a friend in exactly the same position as you, find someone else with similar goals. They don’t have to be postpartum for you to keep each other going when motivation begins to flag. 

4. Hire a Personal Trainer

Another great tool for both motivation and accountability is a personal trainer. Consider this your professional workout buddy. Not only do they motivate and push you, but a trainer also provides the best, most effective workouts and diet tips for weight loss. 

If time and costs are barriers to working with a professional, consider online training. An online trainer or coach provides all the accountability and expertise at a lower price and with more flexibility to schedule your workouts around the rest of your day. 

5. Track Results

Results can be highly motivating, so keep track of them. When you see that you’ve met or exceeded a smaller goal, that success pushes you to get to the next one. You can use an old-fashioned notebook or journal or try a fitness and nutrition tracking app and smartwatch. 

Just keep in mind that results are likely to go up and down. Don’t let one disappointing week derail you. If you fail to lose weight one week, or even experience some weight gain, look back at your previous results and successes to stay motivated. As you get several weeks into your weight loss journey, make note of your overall progress. While there are ups and downs, you should see an overall trend in the right direction that will push you to keep going. 

6. Make Your Fitness Fun

Nothing is more de-motivating than a boring, routine fitness schedule. It’s hard to stay interested in the plan if all you do is hit the elliptical day after day. You need something to look forward to in your workouts, which will look different for everyone. 

It might mean taking a variety of different fitness classes. Or, maybe you want to train for an obstacle race. Making exercise fun could be as simple as binge watching your favorite TV shows while you do strength training at home. Whatever it takes, remove the dread and boredom from fitness to master your post pregnancy weight loss. 

Learn more: Tips for losing the post-pregnancy pooch, a common concern for new moms.

What Is a Realistic Timeline for Losing Baby Weight? 

If you only consider celebrities with time, money, and a full staff, you might think it was reasonable to be back to your fighting weight within a few weeks. This is not realistic for the vast majority of new mothers. 

In fact, most experts suggest you should wait several weeks after giving birth to lose weight. Here are some postpartum weight loss guidelines to remember: 

• Your body just went through a major ordeal. It needs time and calories to recover. 

• Wait at least until you have your six-week checkup. Talk to your doctor at that time about how and when to approach weight loss. 

• If you are breastfeeding, wait two months or longer before cutting calories too much. 

• If you only breastfeed your baby, you need about 500 more calories per day than you did before you got pregnant. Your body will burn more calories than usual during breastfeeding. Many women find they naturally lose weight during this period. 

• When the time is right, aim to lose only a pound and a half per week, no more. 

• Expect to need six months to a year to lose all or most of the excess weight. 

Losing weight postpartum can be a major challenge. Finding your motivation and maintaining it are essential to success. Also important is being realistic. Be patient, take your time, and be healthy about weight loss. If you train postpartum clients, help them remember these factors. 

The Certified Personal Trainer – Self-Guided Study Program offered at ISSA is a great way to learn all the foundational skills for being a successful trainer. This includes how to motivate all types of clients in all situations, from weight management or fat loss to building strength and muscle mass. 

References

Oudeyer, P. (2007). What is intrinsic motivation? A typology of computational approaches. Frontiers In Neurorobotics, 1. https://doi.org/10.3389/neuro.12.006.2007

Encyclopedia, M., & pregnancy, L. (2022). Losing weight after pregnancy: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. Medlineplus.gov. Retrieved 13 September 2022, from https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000586.htm.