One would assume that with all the technological advancements and the conveniences that came with it, a 21st century mom would have more time on her hands and be the healthier for it. On the contrary, these days moms have less time and are not scoring too high in the health department. Part of the problem to losing pregnancy weight is that many moms go for the fad diets because they nicely blend into our convenient-driven society with the promise to burn the baby fat quick and easy. Fad diets are like fairytales full of promise and hope for our weight loss dreams to come true. The reality is that most fairytales don't end up happily ever after and the same is true with dieting.
We are told to eat a balanced diet, which seems simple enough but nowadays we don't have or make the time to do so. And to make matters worse, we are getting more and more over weight for lack of trying. If you want to burn the baby fat, the natural thing to do would be to cut back on your caloric intake. All diets do this but the majority of them are missing the nutritionally balanced part.
Starvation Diet
Your body needs food to give it energy to keep you the wonderful, busy mom that you are. On average a person can survive without food between 4 to 6 weeks. And depriving your body of its nutrients puts a lot of strain on your body's resources making you irritable and physically weak because it slows down your metabolism to conserve energy.
Severely reducing your caloric intake to burn the baby fat will gear down your metabolism into starvation mode and instead of burning the baby fat quickly, your body will hold on to your body fat by burning it slowly. As soon as you return to eating a regular diet, your body will still be working to save energy resulting in you gaining back more pounds than you started with. Burning the baby fat requires that you do the opposite of starving yourself which is eating a balanced diet in which you eat more often but fewer calories.
Celebrity Diets
Going on a Hollywood diet to lose the pregnancy weight is like putting a band-aid on a serious wound. With the assistance of their secret ingredient(s), Hollywood diets promise quick weight loss. But once you're off the diet, the weight "lost" will soon become the weight "re-gained" with a few extra pounds added.
Sacrificing being thin over being healthy for a few weeks or months may be accepted in Hollywood but such reckless vanity can't sustain itself in the real world of a busy mom. Hollywood diets are unhealthy quick-fix solutions to weight loss because we all know that limiting your food to some supposedly magic ingredient is never a good idea.
Natures Diet
As tempting as a starvation or fad diet may appear to be, the answer to solve your battle to burn the baby fat will only be weight re-gained and time poorly spent. Why not use your precious time and pour your energy into taking steps to learn the tools that foster healthy living? Living a healthy lifestyle involves taking care of your mind, body and spirit. True weight management is an on-going activity. Gradually losing pregnancy weight through eating right and exercising regularly will increase your success rate at long term weight loss. Dump the diets. Eat healthy and live healthy.
Stop dieting and start losing pregnancy weight the right way with a lifestyle change to health and wellness. Losing the baby fat for the long term takes more than just dieting but involves adapting to a healthy lifestyle and committing to it for life. Here's to your health!
Suzanne M. Brown is passionate about health and wellness and write to bring more awareness regarding women's wellness.
