Post-Pregnancy Workouts that Help With Weight Loss

By David Yoshikawa

When you first discovered that you were pregnant, your doctor probably told you to start gaining weight.

Weight gain happens naturally during pregnancy. When you eat for two, it isn’t that hard to gain weight. Now that your baby is born, you probably don’t want to live with your weight gain. You want to get your figure back to its pre-pregnant state. Thankfully, we’ve put together a few ways that any woman can regain her figure after she has given birth. Try any or all of them and you will be bound to get back into your old clothes very quickly!

Leg Kicks: This is a great exercise to get your heartbeat up and strengthens your abs. To start, lie down on your side with your body bent at the waist in a pike position. Bend one leg to help you hold your balance and straighten your top leg and bring it forward as far as you can. Keeping your leg in the air, move it backwards to hover over the leg that is bent. Don’t lower your leg but repeat the movement ten times. Roll over and repeat on the other side. Do three reps on each side and you’ll see results in no time.

Pilates: Pilates might seem slow (or lame) but it helps you burn 226 calories every hour.

That’s lots of calories with very little movement from you. There are videos, DVDs and books that you can use to learn the different moves that you can do while your baby takes a nap. Perhaps the best “post-natal” exercise you can do if you want to lose weight is to lie on your back and keep your knees bent. Your hands should be behind your head and take a breath in. Then let your air out while you lift your shoulders and head off the floor (while simultaneously contracting your abs). Then extend your arms while keeping your palms down and lifting your legs into a 45 degree angle from your body (while keeping them straight). While you take a five beat inhale, pump your arms rhythmically. Then breathe back out for five beats. If you can do 100 of these a day you’ll get into shape faster than you think!

The Bicycle: No, this does not involve riding a real bike. This is a wonderful abdominal exercise that works wonders for post-natal women who want to drop their pregnancy weight. First, lay down so that you have bent knees and calves that are parallel to the floor. Put your hands behind your head as you take in a deep breathe in and out while sucking in your gut. Keep your rear relaxed while you extend your right leg and rotate your right shoulder to meet your left knee. Bring your head and shoulders up off of the ground during this movement. After going back to the beginning position, repeat the motion on the other side. Complete three sets of between twelve and twenty of these and you will soon see that your pregnancy weight is gone. If you do these workouts often enough, you’ll see results in no time at all. You can do this while your new baby takes a nap and you can spread them out throughout the day instead of trying to do all of them in one block of time. Of course, the fastest way to lose the weight is to do them all in a block for 20-30 minutes three times a week. So if you do these exercises as often as your body can handle it you’ll get back to your pre-baby size in no time.

A neonatal nurse looks after infants up to a month after birth, but she is also educated about weight loss for mothers who have just given birth. For more information, please visit: Neonatal Nurse

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Topics: pregnancy | Comments Off

Tags: neonatal nurse, nurse, nursing, pregnancy, weight loss

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