3 Essentials to Getting Your Pre Baby Body Back
So baby has arrived and you’re ready to start whooping your butt back into shape. You're motivated and raring to go... but what exactly is your plan? Let me help.
1. Get your nutrition right
Before even worrying about exercise, you need to get this right. I can’t stress enough how important good nutrition is to your health, your mind, your baby and of course your body. Poor nutrition sucks your energy, inhibits fat loss and also creates a build up of toxins in your body. Apart from storing themselves in fat cells, (making it even harder to lose fat) toxins can release through your breast milk. So stay away from processed foods, alcohol and high amounts of caffeine. If you're not sure what to eat, there are loads of articles on this site, including lots of yummy recipes.
2. Do the right training
Being a new mum your energy levels can be low at the best of times, but exercise will actually help increase your energy. The longer you put it off, the harder it gets so as soon as you feel ready get started with something easy like walking.It's also important to start working on your pelvic floor and core straight away. Conditioning these muscles is absolutely essential to getting your belly flat and toned. Talk to your doctor about diastasis recti (whether or not your abdominals separated during pregnancy) so you can further focus on bringing them back together if this is you. Either way, crunches and conventional core work will not work here, in fact that can make separation worse! Instead, focus on your deep core muscles to start rebuilding (or creating) a wonderful strong core! Check out the video below to get you started.https://youtu.be/X47WQ1Ss63EOnce you're back into the swing of things, aim for four sessions a week, three of which should ideally involve some kind of interval training (rather than a long, slow jog) with the fourth depending on how you’re feeling for that week. Consistency is the key! So even on days when you feel like your body would crumble under a 1kg dumbbell, take a refreshing walk in the sun instead. You never regret it!
3. Get the right support
Achieving any goal is so much easier (and SO much more fun) which the help of a great support network. This means your family, hubby, friends, mums group, etc. Working out together will help enormously with keeping you on track.If you want to take it one step further, Bottoms Up! Fitness are launching a new post-natal program starting 9 April 2013.