Ihiretherapy

I am a 30 year old mother of three beautiful girls and am 6 weeks postpartum. I wished that I would have known more about losing my baby weight after having my first daughter. I struggled with losing weight with her for years. It wasn't until after I joined the Army and exercising regularly that the pounds started coming off and I was finally able to fit back into my old size. I want every mother to feel good about themselves after giving birth to their child. I know that there are so many emotions that take place after delivery that I would like for every mother in the post delivery state to follow the following tips on shedding the baby fat pounds.

1. It all starts while you are pregnant. When you are pregnant with your little bundle of joy, you need to think about eating healthier and don't listen to the myth that you are eating for two. This is where most women make the mistake of thinking that they need to eat more because they are pregnant and make the mistake of doing so. Eating healthier and incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your diet will help you make a healthy weight gain during your pregnancy that will be easier to shed after delivery.

2. While you are pregnant continue your level of activity. Don't just become a couch potato. Don't run any marathons but take walks around the block. If you have other children then take them with you. Or if you need fresh air then the walk will do you good. No matter what, the small bit of exercise will help make you and your body feel better about themselves.

3. Breastfeeding helps you to shed your baby weight faster. I didn't breastfeed with my first child but I did with my second. Breastfeeding helps your uterus to contract back to its normal size faster and you experience less bleeding. While you are breastfeeding, your body loses more calories to produce milk for your baby. Think about giving breastfeeding a try if you haven't thought about it.

4. If you can't breastfeed due to medical reasons or just by choice then make sure you stick to a healthy diet. For my third child, I was unable to breastfeed because of health issues. However, to help me lose weight I stuck to a low sodium diet. I watched my sodium intake and ate less meat and sweets. I practiced portion control and substituted fruits instead of candies.

5. For light exercise during my immediate postpartum period, I took walks with my new baby in her stroller during the day. I would walk a couple of blocks and even to the nearby Wal-Mart which is a few blocks away. The fresh air did me and the baby some good.

6. I have enrolled with my toddler daughter in a mommy and me dance class. Every Wednesday for an hour we both learn tap and ballet moves. This gets me moving and I get to spend time with my older child so she doesn't feel left out.

7. Low impact aerobic exercise is great to start off with. My husband bought me an elliptical for indoor use. I get on the elliptical for about 30 minutes at a time on various levels of difficulty. This is great for when the weather is bad or you have extra time while the baby is sleeping and you are watching television.

8. Bike riding is another good exercise to help you shed that baby weight. My toddler daughter is learning how to ride a big girl bike and sometimes I take her on rides with me on my bicycle. We both enjoy the time together.

9. Being prior military, I enjoyed running. Once you are cleared for more activities after your 5 week checkup, then you are free to do more high impact exercises. Everyone is different but running 2 miles in the morning helped me to lose weight. It was definitely hard to get back into it but once you are in the zone then running and getting back into shape is easy.

10. Swimming is a good exercise to lose weight. You can take the whole family to the pool. Swimming can be done inside when the weather is bad or outside when it is sunny. Either way swimming a few laps will firm parts of your body up.

I certainly hope that these tips helped you get a grasp on losing weight after giving birth. I think that the most important thing that you have to do is choose a program and stick with it. The above are tips to get you started. No one tip is going to work alone. For example, breastfeeding is not going to shed all your excess baby fat. You have to use a combination of breastfeeding, eating healthier and implementing exercise into your daily life. I know that it sounds like a lot but if you have the will power to stick to a program that fits your lifestyle then you should see the weight slowly but surely come off.

Kourtney Kardashian Losing Baby Weight With Corporate Sponsorship

Tuesday January 19, 2010

KOURTNEY Kardashian will lose her post-pregnancy pounds with the help of corporate sponsorship.

The reality TV star — who welcomed son Mason in December — has teamed up with Belly Bandit in a bid to ditch her excess baggage following the birth.

“I’m so excited to announce my collaboration with Belly Bandit,” Kourtney wrote on her blog. “I designed a limited-edition Belly Bandit that I have been using successfully since giving birth.

“One of the first things my friends with kids told me when I got pregnant was ‘buy a Belly Bandit!’ so I was thrilled to team up with them and actually get to design one so that it is sexy, stylish and actually helps tighten and shrink your belly after giving birth.

“It also totally helped support my back and all the changes my body is going through getting back to normal. It helps you lose inches faster and I definitely notice a change in my tummy every time I take it off.”

Kourtney recently insisted she’s smarter than her sisters Khloe and Kim.

Losing weight and getting fit preoccupied Americans in 2009:

• Nearly one out of two American women, including high school girls, were on a diet.

• Over 40 billion was spent on branded diet plans.

• Children as young as 9 to 11 years old were sometimes or very often dieting.

Yet an epidemic of obesity continues to affect more people than ever before:

• Less than a third of adults enjoyed normal weight.

• Children were two to three times more likely to be overweight today than they were 30 years ago.

Can we begin to reverse these worrisome trends in 2010?
We can if we update our old views with new ways to look at fitness in the coming year.

Old View: It's hopeless! Efforts to lose weight are inevitably doomed to fail. Even if a person manages to lose weight, he or she will eventually regain the weight and add back even more.

New View: You can do it! Strategies for making healthier choices involving diet, physical conditioning and improved self-care are available to you and can be learned. Championing this view is Kelly Brownell, Ph. D., who heads the LEARN Program for Weight Management at Yale University. And thanks to widespread access to the Internet, peer counseling in online communities is expanding. Internet support may include food and exercise diaries, weekly counseling, online weight-loss lessons and motivational phone calls.

Old View: Thin is in! Most individuals, especially women, seek to lose weight because they have internalized the media's ultrathin ideal.

New View: Healthy is in! Health is replacing vanity as the primary reason for pursuing fitness and weight loss. In 2009, researchers reported that four healthy habits could reduce or eliminate 80 percent of major medical problems: eating a healthy diet, not smoking, exercising regularly and maintaining a normal body weight. This insight, combined with rising medical costs, is triggering a focus on fitness.

Old View: If you are fat, you are a bad person. Obesity is a personal problem caused by a lack of willpower.

New View: Obesity is a disease that is treatable. The cost of providing medical care per person has skyrocketed from $356 in 1970 to $8,160 in 2009. Moreover, in 2009, the cost of treating obesity-related medical problems reached $147 billion. Given these costs, obesity has become a public health concern requiring a multifaceted community-based approach. In response, community leaders in Albert Lea, Minnesota, implemented a comprehensive lifestyle program to improve the health and longevity of the city's residents. To increase employee productivity and reduce health insurance costs and absenteeism, corporate wellness programs are proliferating.

Old View: Low-fat diets are required to lose weight. Eating fat makes a person fat. To lose weight, a dieter needs to stick with low- or no-fat foods.

New View: Total calories actually determine weight. The total calories consumed by a person, whether from carbs, fats or proteins, determines weight. Since the goal is a balanced diet, the Mediterranean diet, which includes healthy fats, is recommended by the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association as a nutritionally sound and healthy eating plan. Nuts, which until recently were on dieters' "do not eat" lists, are making a comeback because of their health benefits, especially almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans and macadamia nuts. Momentum is growing for mandating information on the caloric content of fast foods and food products.

Photo courtesy of everystockphoto.com

Old View: Medical intervention is needed. Weight-loss drugs or bariatric surgery can solve the problem of surplus pounds for many people, and advances in medicine can address obesity-related problems such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer.

New View: A healthy lifestyle is the best way. Prevention, rather than treatment of obesity-related medical problems, will move to the forefront because of the rising cost of medical insurance and healthcare. While the number of bariatric surgeries will continue to skyrocket, family physicians will increasingly write exercise prescriptions in lieu of drug prescriptions.

Old View: Ignore overweight children. Children who are overweight will outgrow their chubbiness, so kids' surplus pounds can be ignored.

New View: Help overweight children now! Dr. Robert Murray, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health, is alarmed that nearly half of kids and teens are overweight or obese and, as a consequence, children's life expectancies are lower than their parents'. Treating childhood obesity is a serious medical problem that if ignored will place the child at risk for heart disease, diabetes and other serious medical conditions.

Old View: Don't ask, don't tell. Asking employees to modify their unhealthful behavior is an invasion of privacy and violates employees' right to choose their own lifestyle.

New View: Offer help, incentives and access to experts. In 2008, medical insurance premiums reached a record $15,609 for a family of four. Employers are proactively seeking to reduce costs (medical insurance, workers' compensation claims and absenteeism) by restructuring benefit programs. In increasing numbers, employees are being offered incentives to quit smoking or lose weight. They face penalties if they refuse to change habits that drive up the cost of healthcare.

Old View: Hard-core exercise one hour daily. Going to a gym daily for a 60-minute workout on a treadmill and resistance equipment is the best way to exercise.

New View: Diversity, fun and enjoyment. Thanks to popular television programs, dancing for fitness is back, particularly Zumba, a one-hour workout that fuses Latin rhythms with calorie-burning dance movements. Exergaming, such as Wii and Dance Dance Revolution, continues to grow in popularity with young and old alike. Michelle Obama has made the Hula-Hoop popular once again. The use of technologically sophisticated feedback gadgets, from pedometers to heart monitors, will expand. To attract members to the gym during tough economic times, more fitness centers will offer cardio cinema so members can watch a movie while exercising.

Will we continue to get fatter until 2018 when, according to research by Kenneth Thorpe, PhD, of Emory University, 40 percent of us will be obese (and another 33 percent overweight)?

If we are to succeed in reversing the obesity trends and mounting medical care costs, we'll have to find new approaches. And the more readily we learn from the past and update our understanding of the complex nature and causes of obesity, the more quickly we can successfully move into a healthy future.