Listed below are 25 tips for losing weight for you to peruse and think about. Pick a handful of these techniques and make them a part of your daily life. Permanent weight loss is the result of disciplined changes you make for yourself… and disciplined changes can only come from good information. Here’s 25 ideas that should give you plenty to think about as you decide what is best for you.

Make A Plan

Proper planning prevents poor performance… establish a plan for your new lifestyle and use it as your daily roadmap.

Snack On Raw Veggies

Keep a small, daily supply of raw veggies to snack on throughout the day. Celery, carrots, and  broccoli work just fine.

Get A Workout Partner

A good workout partner can help create accountability that is often needed when you’re tired and don’t feel like going to that aerobic class.

Choose Low Glycemic Foods

Low glycemic foods are carbohydrates with slower burning sugars. These slower burning sugars are much better for maintaining steady energy levels without converting to fat.

Change Your Lifestyle

People that are successful in maintaining their optimum weight for the long term make lasting changes in how they eat, exercise and live.

Embrace Your Hunger

Train your mind to know that feeling hungry means you are burning fat. If it worked for Oprah, it might just work for you.

Monitor Your Portions With Your Fist

This is a very simple technique that works really well. Just use the size of your fist to approximate the portions of everything you eat.

Choose Fibrous Carbohydrates

If given the choice between two carb sources try to select the one with more fiber. Select beans over bread as an example.

Drink Regular Coffee

Fancy coffee drinks are filled with sugars and empty calories. Switch to regular coffee with non-dairy creamers and no calorie sweeteners.

Treat Yourself Once A Week

Reward yourself with a treat meal once a week. It’s nice to have pizza or ice cream once in a while and it confuses your metabolism.

No Carbs After 8:00PM

Usually your body’s metabolism is slowing down by then… with less activity why fill your tummy with carbs?

Cut Back On The Sodas

Regular, sugar filled sodas should not even be a part of the equation here. We’re talking diet sodas and they should be cut back to no more then 2 or 3 per week if you have to have them.

Do Cardio First Thing In The Morning

Doing your cardio on an empty stomach when you first wake up is a great way to burn fat for energy because your body is in a carb depleted state with very little sugars in the bloodstream to burn as fuel.

Drink Ice Cold Water

Drinking really cold water creates additional stress to your system causing it to burn more calories then if you were to drink water at room temperature.

Eat Fruit Instead Of Drinking Juice

There’s nothing wrong with a glass of orange juice… but many juices are filled with simple sugars and very little fiber or other nutritional value.

Eat 4 To 6 Small Meals A Day

Probably one of the best lifestyle changes you could make. Eating smaller meals throughout the day maintains even energy levels and keeps your metabolism running high.

Keep A Daily Journal

Keeping a written record of what you eat creates personal accountability for what you consume and is a great way to analyze what foods contain when counting calories, fat grams, carbohydrates and proteins.

Start Drinking Green Tea

Adding green tea to your daily routine can serve as an excellent substitute for sodas, juices or sugary coffees. Filled with antioxidants and other compounds that boost metabolism and help with anti-aging, green tea is a winner for healthy weight loss.

Take A Before Picture

If you will actually look at it it’s an excellent motivator. Put one in your wallet too and look at it before walking into that fast food restaurant.

Consume Most Of Your Calories Before 3:00PM

This one’s kind of self explanatory really… just try to taper down the amount of calories you eat as the day progresses. The idea behind this is to consume the most calories while you are burning the most calories.

Up The Intensity

If you seem to have plateaued in your weight loss, try increasing the intensity in what you are doing. Run if you have been walking, sprint if you have been running… you get the picture, right?

Count Your Calories

If having a way to measure and quantify what you take in every day works for you, then give this a try. There’s a little bit of Rain Man in all of us!

Lift Weights

Wow… this one may be way down on the list but it shouldn’t be. Muscle burns more calories sitting still then fat does. That alone is reason enough to get our butts to the gym.

Drink Lots Of Water

This old school technique is still as important as ever. Make sure that you consume at least 6 to 8 glasses of water each day and try to have a glass about 10 minutes before each meal.

Walk 45 to 60 Minutes A Day

If you are not already doing some form of cardio then a brisk 45 to 60 minute walk every day is a wonderful way to burn some calories.

Choose And Go

This list is nothing more then a menu of tips and tricks that all work. Put any number of these into your daily routine and begin developing some long term changes in how you eat and in how you exercise. By changing your lifestyle you will be able to finally experience what it’s like to be slim, trim and healthy without having to go on another diet.

Yet for some reason, I would lose that determination, completely forgetting why I was so motivated to lose this weight in the first place. What I came to realize though, was that every time I gave in, it seemed to be for the same three or four reasons each time. Years later, after having taught aerobics for more then a decade, I learned that many of my students had the same reasons for quitting that I did when I was on the dieting roller coaster too!

Staying motivated requires daily reminders, baby steps, mental tricks, and rewards along the way. In this article I’m going to share with you some tips and tricks that I’ve discovered that will help you in staying focused and motivated to stick with your new lifestyle as a slimmer and healthier you!

Take Two Before Shots

Let’s face it, photographs don’t really lie… they’re sort of a de facto truth serum as to how we really look. Taking a before shot will remind you every day of the reason you made this commitment. It will keep fresh in your mind how important this decision is to you. Pain is a tremendous motivator… and if looking at your before shot brings back even the slightest cringe of disgust, well then it may be all you need to stay strong and determined for another day.  Keep one at home and put the other one in your wallet or purse. Don’t ignore yourself, look at it before you order at a restaurant and use it as the tool and motivating reminder it was intended to be.

Set Realistic Goals

Trying to set unrealistic goals for yourself is a sure fire way to disaster. It’s easy to get discouraged when you never meet the goals or see the results you set for yourself. This is a journey remember? Not a quick jog around the block. OK, so here’s what I want you to think about…. our bodies can naturally adjust to an average weight loss of approximately 2 lbs per week. If you want to end the ups and downs of losing weight and gaining it back just as fast… then establishing a goal of 2 lbs every week is the best way to do this. Not only is this a safe and effective approach, but psychologically, it prepares your mind to accept these baby steps as part of your progress. Go into this with the understanding that water weight accounts for much of the weight loss seen in the first few weeks, and that 2 lbs of real fat loss (each week) is what you are really after.

Play Mind Games With Yourself

Feeling hungry is another huge reason why many of us cheat on our diets. During the first three weeks of any diet program, our bodies are still adjusting to less calories and it makes us hungry! The growling in our stomach is non stop, and lets face it…it’s tough to persevere day in and day out like this. But there is a little mind trick that works really well and I encourage you to give it a try.

If we can stop for a moment and look at the reason we are hungry and what this means to our bodies, we can begin to understand that hunger is necessary for us to lose weight. Therefore, hunger is good. Hunger is our friend and we should be happy knowing that every time we feel hungry we are losing weight!

Now before you role your eyes at this, I suggest you give it a try. I learned this technique from Oprah as she shared with her audience one of the things that worked the best for her in overcoming hunger day in and day out as she lost weight. Trick your mind into embracing hunger because it is proof that you are doing it, you are losing weight as we speak! Yea for Hunger!

Reward Yourself

Motivation can be even more difficult when we are looking at long stretches of time with less food. Let’s face it, just the thought of never having any ice cream for months can be overwhelming.

Not only that, but from a metabolic stand point, going a long time eating less food every day, can actually cause our bodies to adapt to this reduction of calories and actually slow down our metabolism in order to counter it. So, if you are a big fan of fast burning metabolisms… then you would be wise to give yourself one cheat meal per week. Not only will this break up the long term drudgery of most diets, but it will trick your body once a week and will really help with keeping your metabolism burning hot, hot, hot.

Putting It All Together

Planning your diet properly by addressing the psychological side of your weight loss journey is not only a smart thing to do, it’s probably the best way to really achieve your goals. There are many other ways to stay motivated, and I encourage you to look at whatever techniques will work for you. But these four ideas are simple to do and should be a part of your overall path to success. Just acknowledging the mental and emotional side to your weight loss program is key and will put you light years ahead of the rest of the crowd.

But hold on, don’t give up just yet… More then likely, your approach to fat loss simply needs to be tweaked a little to kick start your fat burning furnace up a notch. And ladies, if you’re reading this article, well consider this your lucky day… because these three principles work equally as well on women as they do for men.

In this article, we are going to take a close look at three advanced principles to fat loss. Once you implement these proven concepts into your daily routine, you’ll see results that go way beyond what is normally achievable. These principles are grounded in science and are known methods, or secrets used by professional athletes, celebrities and fitness experts. Take each of these techniques, use them in your personal program and I assure you…. one day you’ll wake up and say, “Hey, I don’t have a gut anymore!”

Fat Loss Principle #1: Spot Reduction is Impossible

Ok, I lied…. spot reduction really is possible, but you’ll need liposuction for it! And besides, when you take into account the cost and recovery, most people could have achieved the same result through diet and exercise for a lot less money. But, all kidding aside, spot reduction of body fat is physiologically impossible. In other words, you cannot lose inches in your belly faster by doing crunches or some other abdominal exercise.

These exercises have their place in your routine for sure, but doing more of them will not “spot reduce” body fat in your mid-section any faster. The fat around our waistlines and stomach, visually, is the last place to disappear. Why? Because this part of our body holds the highest percentage of fat cells relative to other parts of our body. And since we burn fat at an even rate over our entire body, then those pesky love handles will be the last to go. Stay the course and give it more time…It’s just a reality that you must understand in order to remain motivated and not get discouraged.

Fat Loss Principle #2: Eat By The Clock, Not by Hunger

Everyone knows that metabolism plays a big role in the long term effects of fat loss. Every time we eat a meal, our metabolism kicks into a higher gear in order to digest our food. At the same time, when our body is deprived of food, it senses starvation… and the metabolic process slows down. Funny how nature tends to take care of us this way, isn’t it?

Skipping meals is one of the worst of things you can do if you want to lose weight. Sumo wrestlers in Japan skip breakfast as a part of their training so that their metabolism will remain low. Think about that the next time you turn down breakfast!

The secret to maintaining an even, fat burning metabolic rate is to consume some form of calories every two to four hours. Instead of eating three large meals a day, break down your meals into smaller feedings every three hours, so that you are eating four to six small meals per day. You can easily accomplish this new routine by snacking on apples, or bananas, protein bars or smoothies in between your normal breakfast, lunch and dinner time slots. Once you get the hang of it, you will be amazed at your energy levels and how much better you feel, not to mention the fact that this will pay dividends when it comes to maintaining low body fat levels.

Fat Loss Principle #3: Do Your Cardio on an Empty Stomach

This secret to getting ripped is extremely effective and makes perfect sense when you understand the logic behind it. Essentially, our bodies derive energy from three primary sources, sugars, oxygen, and fats. By doing your cardio with little or no carbohydrates (sugars) in your bloodstream, you are forcing your body to use either oxygen or fat as an energy source. This creates an environment of maximum fat loss as our bodies will reach for fat cells to burn because it has no other energy source. You can further enhance this effect by making sure that you are slightly out of breath while exercising. Being out of breath, obviously, signals a minor state of oxygen deprivation as well… forcing your body to reach for even more fat cells as it’s energy source.

Wait a minute though… how are we supposed to do this if we have to eat every three hours?

It requires some planning, but its not that difficult. The best way to do this is to do your cardio on an empty stomach as soon as you wake up. Obviously, your body has been in a state of fasting after an eight hour sleep and the sugars in your bloodstream should be very low. Another way to accomplish this is to do your cardio immediately after you lift weights. When you are strength training with weights you are using the sugars in your bloodstream for energy during what should be an intense work out. By doing 20-30 minutes of cardio immediately following your weight training you are burning fat in a more carb depleted state then if you did your cardio first… like everyone else does, with usually mediocre results!

Put These 3 Concepts Into Your Weight Loss Plan… Because They Work

If your weight loss has hit a plateau, and you feel the need to kick it into another gear, remember these three principles. Give yourself the time it takes, as we discussed in principle one. Change your caloric consumption and learn to eat small meals throughout the day, and finally… Throw in some intense cardiovascular work on an empty stomach to really turn your body into a fat burning machine!

Do fad diets really work? The answer to this is no! I recently overheard two of my friends talking about a zero carb diet the other day, when one of them said, “The Atkin’s Diet worked for me, I lost fifteen pounds three times with it.”

Now, I love my friends dearly, but I had to chuckle at what she said because within her own testimony of sorts… it seemed obvious, at least to me, that it didn’t really work. How in the world does something work if you have to do it three times to get the same result?

When you step back and think about it,  all this diet did was create a temporary result from a short-term lifestyle change that she could not maintain. So what happens next? She gains her weight back soon after quitting her diet because it was impossible and unhealthy to stay on. Unfortunately, by sharing her multiple times of losing weight, she has unwittingly become a proud member of the Yo-Yo Diet Club.

Fad Diets Are Big Business

People are always looking for a faster, easier solution to losing weight. Fad diets are big business and they may seem appealing to someone who is looking for answers, but more times then not, these programs are extreme in their caloric and nutritional restrictions. They are usually based on flimsy science mixed with slivers of truth that can be dangerous to your body by significantly reducing important nutrients that our body’s rely on to keep us healthy.

Here’s A List Of Some Of The More Popular Fad Diets:

• Grapefruit diet
• Cabbage soup diet
• Keto diet
• Caveman’s diet
• Low carb diet
• Low fat diet
• Liquid diet
• Juicing diet
• Macrobiotic diet
• Food grouping diet

Dieting Versus Lifestyle

By following one of these fad diets you may very well lose weight, but once you stop, the weight is gained right back. If you stay on the diet long term, your body may suffer serious and damaging health consequences from a severe lack of vitamins and minerals. When your body is not given essential nutrients over time, side effects can result that may include hair loss, dry skin and many other medical conditions.

The best diet is not a diet at all, but rather a lifestyle change. Our bodies need a variety of foods for us to remain healthy. A balanced approach that provides us with the right protein sources, enough carbohydrates, essential fats, fruits and vegetables are important in fueling our bodies with all the vitamins and minerals we need to live a healthy life.

Learn About Nutrition

Begin by educating yourself on all of the different ways that your body utilizes food for fuel and nutrients. Become knowledgeable of dietary nutrition so that you can better understand how different foods will affect your weight and your health. Investing a little time in your own education will pay dividends in helping you to stick with a long term  change in the way you eat.

A great way to help you learn more about what you are eating is to keep a journal of anything you’ve eaten for the last 3 days. Take this information and look everything up on-line to familiarize yourself with the different foods you are eating.

Look at the number of calories for each food item, the carbohydrate count, and the total grams of protein consumed. Take your analysis a step further and look at the vitamins and minerals of these foods to see if you are getting the proper nutrition you need.

Dig deeper, and look at the fiber intake from those foods, start learning which of these carbohydrates are high glycemic or low glycemic. Become a student of nutrition by using your journal as the springboard for a better understanding of what you have eaten for the last three days.

Empower Yourself for Permanent Changes

Fad Diets and the marketers who promote them are preying on the desperate and the uninformed. You don’t have to be reliant on the next flavor of the week if you will take the time to learn. Treat yourself to your own home schooled master’s degree in nutrition and you will be better equipped to make the right choices for a more permanent and healthy lifestyle at staying trim and fit.

The good news is that you don’t have to sit back and just accept this. With a few simple changes in the way you eat and in your exercise program you can take control of your bodies fat burning slow down and re-ignite it with some easy to follow adjustments that can trick your body into burning more calories then ever before.

In this article we’ll take a closer look at four different ways you can speed up the metabolic rate of your body. I encourage you to read on and use these techniques as a part of the healthy lifestyle changes we all must make as you hit the new 30. Staying fit, keeping the fat off, and feeling young doesn’t have to stop at any age… but you do have to be smart and make the adjustments in your daily routine to win.

Muscle Burns More Calories Than Fat

I know, we’ve all heard this before… but it’s so important that it needs to be said again! Muscles really do burn more calories then fat, even when you are sleeping. As our bodies age, our metabolism is just one of the body’s functions that begin to change. Hormonal changes after the age of 30-35 are also responsible for a medically proven decrease in lean muscle every year. This muscle loss plays a huge role in your metabolic rate, yet it is one of the factors that you really can reverse by adding a weight lifting program to your ant-aging blueprint.

Add Intensity To Your Workouts

Long walks and aerobic work outs are great for burning calories, but if you really want to get your metabolic rate fired up it’s time to step away from mediocrity and start to really pick up the pace. What worked 10 years ago is probably not working so great anymore is it?

Pushing yourself to an uncomfortable level is what has to be done if you want to slow down this whole body clock thing. Try jogging instead of walking. Look into more advanced, intense aerobic classes, or simply up the notch on your stair-stepper three days a week.

Researchers at Penn State University have released a number of studies consistently linking the release of growth hormone from high intensity exercise. The point in all of this is that you need to be sweating, exhausted, and out of breath when you are finished with your work-out.

Start Snacking Between Meals

Eating three meals a day is disastrous for our metabolism, particularly as we get older. By going hours between meals a defense mechanism within our bodies starts to kick in signaling a need for self preservation. It’s our bodies ingenious way of trying to protect us from starvation by slowing down our metabolism in order to survive whenever it begins to sense that food is not on it’s way!

Interestingly enough, hunger pangs with small amounts of food in our bodies do not trigger this slow down, but hunger on an empty stomach will. By conditioning ourselves to eat a healthy snack in between meals, we shut off our bodies natural tendency to begin storing food into fat cells. At the same time, it can help with having a reduced appetite and help you to eat smaller portions during your three main meals.

Increase Your Protein

I’m not advocating an Adkins, or Keto style diet where virtually all carbohydrates are eliminated. However, it is a fact that proteins require approximately 27% more caloric energy to digest than carbohydrates. So the very act of just replacing a carbohydrate with a protein source will help us to burn more calories.

Increasing the portion of healthy proteins like, tofu, fish, nuts, turkey and lean meats… while slightly decreasing the carbohydrates and fats is a great way to nourish lean muscle while increasing our metabolic rate at the same time. You could also take this a step further by making sure you have some protein with your between meal snacks to really maximize this technique.

Simple Healthy Choices

Being over 40 doesn’t mean we have to accept a middle aged body if we don’t want to. Maybe a little more is being asked of us in order to get the same outcome… but what’s the alternative? These four ideas will require some effort and some lifestyle changes, there’s no doubt in that. But considering how much better you will look and feel, a little effort is probably worth it.

What Is A Detox Healing Crisis?

Not to worry, you were doing something good for yourself. The symptoms you’re experiencing is simply something known as a “Detox healing crisis,” also called the Herxheimer reaction. Healing crises happen to people when they’re undergoing a purifying process. A detox crisis most often occurs because of the amount of toxins being released into the bloodstream during the detoxification, and in concert, the body is also trying to get rid of waste by utilizing all means possible and also regenerate.

Symptoms and Common Experiences

One of the things that happens regularly during a healing crisis is that many past conditions the person has experienced will resurface again, causing many of the symptoms felt by the person. Some of the most common symptoms are:

• Cramps
• Arthritis flair-ups
• Insomnia
• Congestion, including sinus congestion and bronchial congestion
• Low grade fever or chills
• More frequent urination
• Anxiety
• Phobias
• Evidence of memories previously suppressed
• Skin irritations, including boils, hives, and rashes.

Many people who experience a healing crisis are surprised to find they’re experiencing these symptoms sometimes weeks after they’ve undergone the detoxification. Some people experience a small crisis shortly after beginning, since this is the point the toxins are dumped into the blood and are finding their way out. Unfortunately, some people experience a small crisis in the beginning and then also another in a few days or weeks, often experienced right after they were feeling their best.

How To Avoid A Detox Healing Crisis

There are some things you can do to prepare for the fact that you may suffer a Healing Crisis. Although there’s not one single thing you can do to prevent this from happening, you can attempt to avoid it and perhaps lessen its effects by preparing adequately.

• Get plenty of rest
• Drink plenty of herbal tea or chemical free, purified water in order to flush out your body. Some professionals recommend using distilled water and drinking 2 to 4 quarts a day. This can help speed up the process.
• Use special herbal formulas
• Have trigger point injections or acupuncture done beforehand
• Utilize an infrared sauna

One of the final, most important things you can do to avoid a Healing Crisis is to do your detox in phases so that the body isn’t receiving such a shock all at once. This is one of the most important things you can do to avoid a Healing Crisis. Although regularly used in Chinese medicine, many people fail to utilize this method because they either don’t know better or they’re in a rush. By doing a detox in phases, your body is more easily able to clean itself in stages and it isn’t such a big rush to the body, meaning there’s less of a chance of a Healing Crisis.

Alleviating A Healing Crisis

If one uses many of the aforementioned ways to avoid a crisis, then they may find the experience much more pleasant. Sometimes these things are not options though, either due to availability or money, and ultimately, there’s no way to 100 percent avoid a Detox Healing Crisis. There are plenty of things you can do to alleviate the symptoms though.

• Listen to your body
• Get plenty of rest
• Encourage Regular Bowel Movements
• Continue to drink plenty of fluids to encourage the passing of toxins and chemicals
• Don’t completely negate any symptoms: if symptoms are severe, visit your doctor as they could be indicative of another medical condition.

Going through a Healing Crisis can seem like an unfair thing since you’re simply trying to improve your body, and it may seem as though your body is punishing you, but in fact, it’s a good sign, as it means that your body is simply letting go of the old and rebuilding itself. If you do have to go through a Healing Crisis, the good news is that the outcome will be worth every moment of it when you’re in fantastic health and in a better place.

Diet and Lifestyle For A Flat Stomach

While exercise is important for toning and maintaining any muscles, it’s also important to note that many people gain abdominal weight purely from poor lifestyle and diet choices just as much as they do from not exercising. Studies have continuously shown that things like poor sleep hygiene contribute greatly to belly fat, and people who don’t get the recommended six to eight hours of sleep are more likely to gain stomach weight. One of the first things you can start doing to get a flatter stomach is to make sure you’re getting the suggested amount of quality sleep.
Secondly, obtaining a flatter stomach isn’t going to be possible at all if you don’t watch what you eat. Foods full of sugar and flour greatly contribute to a less than flat stomach. You can be proactive about a flatter stomach by avoiding these foods and sticking to a low carbohydrate diet.

You can also consider going on a low glycemic diet, which means you’ll not only be giving up sugars and white foods like pasta and bread, but also alcohol and soft drinks that cause you to store fat in your stomach area.

Exercise and Fitness Tips For A Flat Stomach

Of course, you will have to get active in order to flatten your stomach and strengthen your abs.

In addition to the regular ab exercises, make sure you’re completing a whole body workout. In doing so, you’re likely to strengthen your abs even when you’re working on other parts of your body; killing two birds with one stone. Since your abs are essentially your ‘core,’ you’ll find that so many all over workouts require you to keep your core flexed and strong while you’re working out. Keeping this core pulled together and strong will also help you be on the way to a flatter tummy in no time. It’s also helpful to practice this idea all day long: make it a habit to constantly keep yourself pulled together at the center, keeping your abs flexed even while you’re doing things like riding in your car.

In addition to regimens like running, pilates, and yoga, which are all great for flattening abs and for strong muscles, there are also simple exercises to do.

Reverse Crunches

This simple exercise is an oldie but goodie, and is great for working out your lower abs. The best way to do reverse crunches is to do so slowly and with much control. Although there are several variations to this simple exercise, the more common way would be to lay on a bench press or floor. If on a bench press, put your hands on the rack for support, bend your knees (just enough so that your behind is off the bench) and then bring your knees toward your face as close as you can. The key here is to try not to lift your pelvis at all. Round your back as you do so and lean upwards, holding the position for as long as you feel necessary and then contracting your abs.

Bicycle Exercises

This is also a great exercise for your lower abs, and it will help develop your lower abs, your obliques and your intercostals. This is great to do at the end of your whole workout, and it’s best to do by counting for 30 to 60 seconds on each one instead of using reps.

To do bicycle exercises, just lay on the floor with your hands behind your head and put your knees bent so that they’re slightly off the floor. Begin pedaling, bringing each knee one at a time to its opposite elbow, and once your foot is reaching the ground from that time, repeat the same on the other side with your other knee and elbow.

Leg Raises

Leg raises should always be a part of any ab exercise routine. There are several ways to do leg raises, although the most beneficial and popular is using a wall for support against your back, although finding what works most comfortably for you is important. No matter which way you do leg raises, you’ll be working out your lower abs greatly and you’ll be flexing them the entire time as you go through the motions.

Your body has also been accumulating brown fat and storing it for breastfeeding reserves during the later months of your pregnancy so you can’t be too hasty to get rid of it.

Iron Supplements

Continue taking your iron supplements after childbirth, especially if you are nursing or if you had a significant blood loss during the birth. Low levels of iron are associated with fatigue, low energy levels and anemia. Many iron supplements can cause constipation which is really uncomfortable, especially if you have had a caesarian section so supplement your diet with linseed for a natural digestive aid.

Many doctors recommend that you continue to take your prenatal supplements for the first six weeks after the baby’s birth as an added nutritional boost.

Get Your Sleep

Yes, it’s definitely easier said than done but it’s crucial. Being a new mom is demanding and tiring, whether it’s your first child or your fourth! Make sure you get enough rest to keep up with your newfound responsibilities. A lack of sleep can complicate your attempts at weight loss if your body is constantly secreting adrenaline or cortisol and feeling tired and tense all the time.

Healthy Snacking

Following a healthy diet is especially difficult when your world turns upside down and you suddenly have to accommodate a new little person in your life. Make sure you are always well stocked on healthy snacks for those emergency moments. Low fat plain yoghurt, avocado and raw nuts should be included in your diet. Reduce your caffeine intake, or cut it out altogether. Apples and bananas are breast feeding-friendly fruits; many others contain a lot of fructose and might make your baby gassy.

Sweets and chocolates are not only high in calories and fat but they can also cause gas in your baby. Chocolate also contains caffeine, which won’t go down well with your little’s one digestive system.

Try and eat low-GI carbohydrates to give you sustained energy. Oats are brilliant, as is wild brown rice which you can warm up when you need to. Potatoes are also highly nutritious and worth incorporating but refined carbs can cause gas and discomfort for the baby if you are nursing, so stay away.

Eating regularly is important to help you get fit and lose weight after pregnancy, so you do not starve yourself and end up over-eating or snacking on unhealthy choices.

Slowly Does It

You should wait until your six-week check up with your doctor to see if you can start an exercise program. Most women can start exercising at this time, but it is always best to check that your body has recovered and that you will cope with the strain.

Walking is the easiest form of exercise, and doesn’t require any equipment. A gentle stroll for 40-minutes three times a week will burn calories, ease stress and taking baby out in the stroller will give her some fresh air and often soothe her to sleep. And you don’t need a doctor’s go-ahead to walk.

Once you have recovered consider gentle, low impact exercises like cycling and swimming. Pilates will help you to recover your core strength and yoga can help you to unwind and de-stress.