How to Be Realistic about Postpartum Weight Loss

Weight gain has always been a thing with me. I’m always up and down, up and down. When I’m up I’m anxious about getting down, and when I’m down, I’m anxious about not going back up. Until I had kids, I can honestly say there wasn’t just a neutral for me. I was either up or down, and regardless of which, I was anxious.

I got pregnant a few blissful months into our new marriage and was ecstatic. I was at that point in an “up” phase, carrying about 20 pounds more than neutral should be. But I decided that I would not allow weight gain to be a stressor for me during pregnancy. I would not let stress over weight impact my forming babe. And for the most part, I didn’t. I ate what I wanted, didn’t look at the scale at any doctor visits, and continued my regular workout routine.

On delivery day, I had gained 80 pounds…  just a little more than the recommended 30-40. But again, resolved not to let weight consume me, I told myself it would fall off with breastfeeding. But eight weeks postpartum, exercise was still painful (not to mention hard to fit into this new life) and breastfeeding wasn’t panning out for me (despite the batches of lactation cookies I was ingesting). And to complicate matters more, my failed attempts at breastfeeding had delayed the return of my cycle… So at 8 weeks postpartum I learned I was pregnant again.

Add being overweight to being pregnant, postpartum, having an infant, and working outside of the home full-time and you get a very fatigued, irritable, and low energy mama.

I birthed number two, weighing in at the exact same number, nearly 100 pounds away from what my neutral should be. With the postpartum ‘bounce back’ not going as expected with my first, I approached my second from a different perspective: relinquishing of expectations. As I reflect back, now a few weeks in to my third postpartum (this time four years later), there were specific mental shifts that allowed me to approach postpartum and even pregnancy with a healthier, more reasonable approach.

Accept the New Normal

The skin just hangs there, I whined to my friend months after delivering my second. Yes, she said rather matter-of-fact. Soon you’ll get to your new normal and you’ll realize that your new normal is okay too.

Oh – no one has ever talked about that. I see Instagram posts of people flaunting their pre-pregnancy skinny jeans all the time, but no one mentions that they don’t fit in the same way. Hearing these words from her gave me permission to replace my end goal of ‘getting back to my pre-pregnancy self’ with a more mature goal of ‘being the healthiest version of myself.’ I hope you have a friend like her, but if you don’t – at least you can read those words here.

There’s no such thing as bouncing back.

Trust me, if you approach postpartum anticipating a bounce back, you will find yourself very discouraged. I’d venture to say that for the majority of women, the weight doesn’t just fall off you once the baby is born, even if you do breastfeed. And even if you exercised your entire pregnancy, don’t expect to be able to do those exercises that you were crushing 9 months pregnant the day your doctor clears you to resume exercise.

Your birth has altered you. It’s like you’re starting over with a whole new baseline. Respect that. And surround yourself with people who will remind you to respect that when you get discouraged.

Slow and steady wins the race.

While diet and exercise have to go hand-in-hand, if seeking actual well-rounded wellness, neither of them needs to (or should) be done to extreme degrees. Not eating enough and losing weight too quickly can end up causing complications, just as working out too hardcore and not listening to your body can result in injury. Both risks are bad enough in normal life and are even more risky with the postpartum you.

So, against all my natural inclinations to go crazy at the gym and cut back on calories, my much fuller life and still-recovering body forced me to see that there is so much more to life. Honestly there wasn’t time in the day to be hardcore about myself anyway. It wasn’t realistic or healthy to obsess over numbers on a scale, sizes in my closet, and hanging dead skin. So instead of setting a weight loss goal, I chose to commit to simple habits: Stick to a doable exercise goal, and eat reasonably.

With exercise, ‘do-able’ and ‘stick to it’ are especially key here. I had to literally ignore all the literature out there, literature recommending 150 minutes a week, an hour a day, etc. etc. Goals like that would only set me up for failure. For me, three 30-minute sessions was a stretch but doable, so that is what I committed to.

I know myself well enough to know that I am not disciplined enough to do work out videos at home or to go to the gym on my own, so I didn’t even consider those as options. In order for me to be able to stick to something I knew I needed a) someone waiting on me to show up; b) a location that I could fit into my routine; and c) someone who would support me in my quest for well-rounded health, not extreme fitness. So, I researched and found a good trainer whose gym I pass on my way to get the kids after work. I literally stop there on my way to get the kids from daycare. Sure, some days I am tired and generally not exactly excited to work out, but my body has grown dependent on this habit for physical and emotional regularity.

To eat reasonably, I am a firm believer in moderation. I have done paleo, primal, whole 30, etc., and yes, they all work when you do them, but they all blow up when you don’t. When I feel I have lost a grip on my eating, I usually sign myself up for 3 months of Weight Watchers just so I can access the points and re-evaluate how to spread my sustenance across my day and week. Inevitably habits morph and portions can get a little out of hand, and Weight Watchers provides me the structure and parameters that help me barter and get the most bang for my buck (calories speaking).

When I say reasonable, I mean it. I love ice cream, and I love to toss my kiddos in the wagon and walk to get some soft served. I love it, and I am committed to enjoying life, so I refuse to restrict that. On a general basis, I pack a frozen lunch and try to limit snacking at work. At home or when eating out, I try to avoid breads and rice unless I am actually feeling like I need some substance.

My commitment to the slow and steady, to simple habits that, done consistently (not perfectly), over three years got me to my healthiest self, helped me have my healthiest pregnancy, and they are helping me to have a healthy third postpartum experience.

Accept that set-backs are inevitable.

Self, did you read that? Let me state it again. Accept that set-backs are inevitable. I hate, hate, hate set-backs. Postpartum in my mind felt like a setback. Financial constraints, work demands, yard work, kids school functions – it’s life, and there will be things that get in the way, and there will be set-backs. They are a pain, but they are not the end of the world. But habits can be tweaked and commitment honed to find new methods to work around the set-backs. SO, self and readers – accept that set-backs are inevitable, and don’t let them get the best of you.

Take time to acknowledge successes. 

Especially when on the slow and steady route, it is important to take the time to notice success. Progress happens with slow and steady, and progress is much more lasting with slow and steady, but because it doesn’t happen instantaneously, sometimes changes aren’t as noticeable along the way. Losing 30 pounds in one month will look much more noticeable than losing 30 pounds in a year; but I guarantee 30 pounds in a year is more likely to stay off for good. So take time to reflect and acknowledge successes, no matter how small.

After three years of my slow and steady, of committing to my habits and re-grouping after set-backs, I looked up and realized that I had lost 100 pounds. I stepped off the bench at the gym, pulled with all my strength and got my first legit pull up. These successes were huge to me, but I’d be lying if I told you that I never felt like it was taking way too long. Sometimes I think gosh – it took me three years to lose my pregnancy weight… Three years… Three years is a long time. But in three years, I lost 100lbs, and that is a big deal. If I had set out to lose 100lbs leaving the hospital after baby #2, you can believe it wouldn’t have happened.

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I have toyed with this article for over a year. I finished my first draft, relishing over being the fittest I had ever been in my life. And then I found out I was pregnant and worried for many weeks that my progress would go out the window. Life is funny that way – challenges come at just the right time to remind you that you’re human. I didn’t touch my blog that entire pregnancy; I worried I’d fail at what I had just grown to believe was true success. But I can honestly say that the lessons I wrote about here helped me to approach my pregnancy more realistically. I again resisted the urge to obsess over weight gain but also kept my eating more in check. I tapered back from three workouts to two, and kept my same diet routine during the week with the addition of healthy snacks throughout the day. On delivery day, I weighed fifty-five pounds less than with my first two pregnancies. It wasn’t easy and it definitely wasn’t fret-free, but in the end, it was a much healthier pregnancy physically speaking with my reasonable habits in tow.