For some women, that joyful time when a warm and snuggly newborn has finally arrived can be mixed with emotions about the changes in their own bodies, and many of these women have questions about how they will lose the weight they put on over the past nine-plus months.


Studies show that many women appear to hold on to at least a couple of pounds postpartum, and a quarter of women retain 11 or more pounds (5 or more kilograms) a year after giving birth. After having a baby, a woman retains, on average, 2.5 to 5 lbs. (1 to 2 kg), said Kathleen Rasmussen, a professor of maternal and child nutrition at Cornell University. That may not seem like much, but if a woman goes on to have more children or gains more weight for other reasons, the pounds can add up, she said.

Holding on to pregnancy weight can lead to serious health consequences down the road, putting moms at risk for chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes. And losing the pregnancy weight is important not just for new moms, but for babies, too. Going into a future pregnancy at a higher weight can put both the mom and the developing baby at risk for medical complications, such as gestational diabetes and hypertension.

To determine the best practices for women who want to shed the baby weight, Live Science dove deeply into the data, reviewing the best studies on postpartum weight loss and talking to key experts in the field. Ultimately, we found that losing weight after pregnancy boils down to three main points, starting before you even give birth:

Weight gain during pregnancy
Diet and physical activity
Breast-feeding
For women worried about extra pregnancy pounds, the experts we spoke with agreed that it’s certainly possible to return to your pre-pregnancy weight, and indeed, that should ultimately be your goal.

“Most women naturally lose much of the weight they gained in pregnancy without much effort,” said Dr. Emily Oken, a professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. And although it’s possible for women to lose all of their pregnancy weight without making major changes in their lives, the natural shift in women’s lifestyles that happens after they give birth certainly introduces new challenges.

“It’s not so much that [women] need to make major changes, but that they need to figure out how to fit in the healthy eating and activities they used to do,” Oken told Live Science.

Weight gain during pregnancy

There’s no getting around weight gain during pregnancy, of course. But it’s important to understand how much weight you should gain, why your body is putting on pounds and how it plays a role in what happens after the baby arrives.


So, how much weight should a woman gain during pregnancy? It all depends on her body mass index (BMI) before she gets pregnant.

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), women who are considered underweight should aim to gain 28 to 40 lbs. (12.7 to 18.1 kg); women with a normal BMI should aim to gain 25 to 35 lbs. (11.3 to 15.9 kg); women in the overweight category should aim to gain 15 to 25 lbs. (6.8 to 11.3 kg); and women in the obese category should aim to gain 11 to 20 lbs. (5.0 to 9.1 kg). (For women who are pregnant with twins, the recommended weight gain amounts are higher.)

Weight gain during pregnancy

And although a weight gain of 25 to 35 lbs. for someone with a normal BMI may sound like a lot — certainly, a newborn baby doesn’t weigh that much — those extra pounds do serve a purpose. As illustrated in the infographic below, pregnancy pounds also come from the placenta, the growing uterus and growing breasts, and increased blood and fluid volume in the woman’s body. And yes, added fat also weighs in.

Weight gain during pregnancy

In addition, some studies suggest that gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the likelihood of a cesarean-section delivery, according to the review. (While C-sections are generally considered safe, they do carry additional risks compared with vaginal births. For example, a C-section is a major surgical procedure, and having a C-section for a first birth can often lead to repeat C-sections in future deliveries.)

According to the IOM, one of the major reasons women should limit their weight gain during pregnancy is to reduce risks to the baby’s health. Gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the likelihood that the baby will have a high birth weight, which can put the baby at risk for obesity and metabolic syndrome during childhood, according to a 2015 review published in the journal Expert Review of Endocrinology & Metabolism. (Metabolic syndrome is a combination of medical issues that include high blood pressure, a large waist circumference and low levels of “good” cholesterol.)

Finally, gaining too much weight during pregnancy also may be associated with preeclampsia, the authors wrote. Preeclampsia is a serious complication that can develop during pregnancy when a woman has both high blood pressure and excess levels of protein in her urine. It can put both the mother and the baby at risk.

But the amount of weight a woman gains should not be spread equally over the three trimesters of pregnancy. The IOM advises women to gain between 1.1 and 4.4 lbs. (0.5 to 2 kg) during the first trimester. Then, during both the second and third trimesters, women are advised to gain 0.5 to 1 lb. (0.23 to 0.45 kg) per week, depending on their pre-pregnancy BMI. The IOM advises that, during these trimesters, underweight and normal-weight women gain 1 lb. per week, that overweight women gain 0.6 lbs. (0.27 kg) per week and that obese women gain 0.5 lbs. per week.

How fast should a woman gain weight


But a key point for expecting women to keep in mind is that the amount of weight gained during pregnancy is associated with the amount of weight lost afterward — quite strongly, in fact.

“Weight gain during pregnancy is the single biggest predictor of... http://www.healinghealthteas.com/best-ways-lose-weight-pregnancy/