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In this episode, I share ten simple tips that have helped me feel stronger, more energized, and more like myself after having a baby. From easy workouts and nourishing meals to sleep, stress relief, and hormone support—this is all about giving your body grace while rebuilding in a healthy, realistic way!
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE.
What is Fit for Hiking?
Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the fit for hiking podcast. It feels really good to be recording again because the last three months I have not recorded a single episode. I have been on my maternity leave and I kind of just recorded a bunch of episodes leading up to that so that I could fully step back and be present after having my I second daughter, whose name is Quinn. Um, so it's been a minute for me. And you might have noticed, if you're an avid listener, we've just been doing. Um, every other week. Episodes have been rolling out instead of every week, so it's been a little bit less frequent. So thank you for your patience. If you are an avid listener, um, I appreciate you sticking around. While I have been taking care of business, having a baby, all the things. Um, so that being said, I wanted to talk about postpartum weight loss, this bounce back culture because I'm very much in this season right now of navigating my fitness and my health postpartum. And I know that a lot of other moms are either anticipating facing this or are currently facing this. Um, maybe you can relate in certain ways. And so I wanted to talk about this topic of postpartum weight loss, losing the baby weight, Wait, um, all of that good stuff as I'm recording this episode, I am about nine weeks postpartum, so Quinn just turned two months old a few days ago. Um, it's gotten so much faster the second time around. You know, it's interesting. Like when you have your first baby, you can kind of be in this beautiful little newborn bubble because there's no other kids running rampant through your home. Um, you can just, like, sit and breastfeed peacefully and go on the, you know, beautiful walks and your stroller and all that good stuff. And it it's it kind of allows you to stay in the bubble for a bit longer. But then when you have your second kid or, you know, subsequent children, you're also having to keep up with your toddler or older kids and run them around and like, do the things that help them get their energy out. And the peacefulness is not at all the same as the first time. So I definitely experienced that this time. I think it made these past few months go by a lot faster. So I really cannot believe that I'm already over two months postpartum. And so, you know, I've been cleared to work out. I've started exercising again. So this is very top of mind for me. Um, and I wanted to share, um, just a little bit about kind of the factors that will affect your body after having a baby and a little bit of the common hormonal effects. What's going on hormonally at this time? Because oftentimes when we're talking about postpartum, um, in terms of our health or weight loss or body recomposition, people are talking about just all the hormone changes. But what does that really mean? What does that look like? What's actually going on? What hormones are at play here. So we'll talk about that. Um, and then I want to talk about the top ten main things to focus on postpartum, to lose the baby weight in a healthy manner. Maybe it's not even about the weight. Maybe you just want to focus on feeling your best, getting some energy during this time that can otherwise be very draining. Um, feel good in your body again. Maybe your clothes can fit a little bit better. Build back some of the muscle that you lost. So those are the things that we're going to be addressing today. So let's get into it. Some of the factors that are going to affect how your body looks and feels after having a baby. First of all, initially just your general recovery, your uterus is still shrinking for quite a while and you're going to have some swelling. So in general, the first week plus you can expect to still look pretty pregnant. Like this kind of varies person to person. Um, for me, I found that my swelling went way down after about a week. Some people say it takes a lot longer. Usually with each child it takes a little bit longer. Um, with juniper, my first daughter. Um, I feel like my body kind of just bounced back. Shrunk back afterwards a lot faster. And that slowed down quite a bit with the second. Just my total overall recovery, as well as kind of getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight and just that initial shrinkage, um, those first few weeks. Number two is the lack of sleep. This is definitely going to affect how you're feeling, um, because you're not going to have the energy that you used to have, and that can kind of feed into how you're spending your time, your activity levels, um, how sedentary you are, and also your hunger hormones, because sleep does affect your hunger and satiety hormones. So a lack of sleep is going to affect how you feel. It's almost inevitable. No baby is going to be sleeping through the night, especially right away. They're going to be eating every 2 to 3 hours. And it really depends on if they're like colicky, how they do with sleeping overall. If that starts to improve after the first few weeks. Um, mental health, this is a really big part of how you're going to feel and how well you're going to want to move your body after having a baby, because your mental health is going to affect your activity level, your motivation. Um, I to be honest, I could do a whole episode just on this, but I've really struggled with postpartum depression in a big way this second time. Um, that I didn't the first. And it's really, um, really affected my ability to just do my daily life, like, do the things that make me feel good, um, like working, working out, getting out of the house, going for walks, going for hikes, even just doing the basic things. I think when that postpartum depression hits, you feel so overwhelmed that like doing anything feels like too much. And thankfully, that's really started to improve for me. Um, I definitely feel for the women who this is like an ongoing struggle because it is so debilitating. So just know that there is a possibility postpartum that you will struggle with some type of mental health issue, whether that be postpartum anxiety or depression. And that can definitely affect how you feel in your body and your ability to do the things that help you feel healthy. Um, new schedule demands. It's also inevitable that you're going to have to readjust your expectations around your workout schedule, especially if you're someone who's always abided by a really strict schedule. It might have to just look a little bit different during this season. Uh, breastfeeding hunger slash calorie needs while breastfeeding. If you're breastfeeding, you're going to need more calories. So that can really increase your hunger and that can make it harder to lose weight. And that's why just hardcore focusing on weight loss, especially in the first few months, is not always the best route because you need enough calories and enough food to sustain your breast milk supply. And if you stop feeding your body appropriately, you're going to notice a huge tank in your supply. Inability to train for a little while. Obviously, you're going to have to take those six weeks off before you get cleared by your OB to get back to exercise. So while you can do some like pelvic floor breathing exercises, things like that, very gentle movement walks, hikes, maybe you're not going to be able to do your standard training. So just know that for a while you're not going to be hitting it hard in the gym, um, at all. And then even once you get cleared, it's going to look a little bit different. Even if you trained your whole pregnancy. Um, hormone changes, which we're going to talk about here in a second. Weight gain and exercise during your pregnancy. So if you gained a lot of weight during your pregnancy, which is normal, um, it just is going to take a bit longer for your body to maybe get back to your pre-pregnancy size. So that's why it's really important to not always measure your progress against your pre-pregnancy self, because you gained weight across nine months. And yes, you're losing a lot of that weight initially, when you have the baby and expel the placenta and the fluids and all of that, but there's also just going to be a bit of a. Expected time frame where you're going to need to give yourself some grace and don't expect it to happen overnight. Also, if you exercised or didn't exercise during your pregnancy, that will affect your muscle mass, your body composition. All of these things. If you just went cold turkey and didn't do any exercise or weight bearing activity during your pregnancy. Um, yes, that will be a bit more of a struggle. You will have lost some muscle, and you will kind of be starting at more of a beginner position versus if you train your entire pregnancy, continue doing some weight bearing activities as often as you could, then you're going to still have quite a good deal of muscle mass, and you're starting from a slightly better place postpartum and just your overall movement during the day. Are you super sedentary? If you're breastfeeding, you are going to have to sit down a lot. Um, that is a kind of a frustration of of breastfeeding. I find that I'm just sitting all the time. Um, so that's definitely a consideration. All right. So let's talk about common hormonal effects. So first of all what are these hormones that are affected postpartum. And then what does that actually look like. How does it really affect us as far as body composition and how we're feeling muscle mass all of that. So first of all estrogen and progesterone not a shocker there. These are some of our top sex hormones. So of course they're going to be affected in the postpartum window. And typically when we're talking about hormone effects we're talking like the first six months postpartum okay. So if you are breastfeeding longer than that then this might be elongated for you. But if not then typically things start to normalize a bit after the first six months. So after birth estrogen and progesterone levels both drop. They really just plummet because they're so, so high during pregnancy. Um, so this can cause a lot of different kind of like a, you know, domino effect. Um, and so the sudden drop can lead to water weight loss, which is great. We're going to lose some of that swelling that we've accumulated, um, mood swings. Um, this can definitely contribute to some of the postpartum, um, mental health issues, postpartum depression. And then also how it affects our muscle mass. Estrogen helps maintain muscle and connective tissue. So after you deliver, an estrogen plummets. You might notice when you're breastfeeding and just overall postpartum that you lose a lot of muscle mass. This is why I'm such a big advocate for continuing to train and do weight training your entire pregnancy as best as you can. If it's okay with your doctor, if you don't have any circumstances that would make that unsafe, then do it for sure because this is going to absolutely make all the difference. Then when you head into postpartum and inevitably you do lose some muscle mass, it's going to help you not lose as much. If you have spent the last nine months working to maintain as much muscle as humanly possible while pregnant. Okay, let's talk about prolactin. So this is another hormone at play. And this is going to be high if you're breastfeeding. So this is going to affect ovulation and mood. It's going to affect your milk production and supply. But it's also going to increase your appetite and cravings which will make it harder to stay in a calorie deficit. So this is again why it's not necessarily advantageous or recommended to try really hard to be in a calorie deficit or lose weight intentionally in those first few months, unless you are okay with your milk supply going down drastically. This is something I'm constantly battling with, especially the second time around having a toddler running around. I feel like I'm just constantly on the go, and for me to actually sit down and have like a really calorie dense meal, I've found that that's really hard. Like, I'm busy, I'm exhausted. I'm constantly breastfeeding one baby while helping the other one with her potty training or her activity that she wants to do, or running her to preschool. So yes, this is going to be easier said than done to keep your milk supply up and eat enough, but it definitely will affect your supply if you're not eating enough. It can also make your body hold on to fat, especially around your hips and thighs. To keep your milk supply higher. So you might hear some women saying, I feel like I can't lose weight while breastfeeding. And then others are like, I lose so much weight while breastfeeding. And both can be true. So it really just kind of depends on how your body responds. Some bodies are going to hold on to more of the body fat while breastfeeding, and then once you stop, your hormones regulate and it might be a little bit easier to lose weight. Plus you're not as hungry, so you're not going to be eating as much. And then other women find it really easy to lose weight while breastfeeding because your calories are getting eaten up to make that breast milk. It also may delay your period, which will keep estrogen lower for longer. Um, a lot of women don't have periods while their rest feeding. Although this is not true for everybody, and I personally always get my period back even when I'm breastfeeding, which is really sucky. All right. Next hormone we're talking about is oxytocin. Um, this is just all good things. This helps with bonding. And it's released during nursing. So this really doesn't affect anything body composition wise. This is just all you and your baby. Um, cortisol is the next one. So this one can tend to stay high postpartum simply due to the high demands that you're under all the stress and the sleep loss. So sleep deprivation, physical healing and just general new mom stress can keep cortisol pretty dang high during those initial postpartum months. So this can make it a little bit harder to lose abdominal fat. It can affect your metabolic rate, maybe making your basal metabolic rate a little bit slower. Um, it can also trigger stress eating or sugar cravings. And the impact on muscle mass that high cortisol has is that it is catabolic. So it can break down muscle tissue and make it harder to retain muscle. And then our final one is thyroid. So thyroid can become a bit imbalanced postpartum. Just one of those fun effects that you don't think about. Not for everybody, but some women do experience postpartum thyroiditis, which causes the thyroid hormones to swing from high to low. So if you're constantly feeling really exhausted, which might be hard to decipher from just your general lack of sleep but feeling cold all the time. Um, brittle nails. Hair loss. Not to be confused with the four month postpartum hair loss, but also if weight loss is really slow, even though you are actively eating in a calorie deficit and back to your exercise regimen or experiencing big mood changes, those are all signs that something might be off with your thyroid. Could be something to look into with your doctor. Okay, so now I want to dive into the ten main things to focus on postpartum. If you do want to feel your best, focus on somebody recomposition, whether that's losing the baby weight or just getting more muscle back in a healthy manner. Okay, right. We're not taking extremes. If you listen to this podcast for any amount of time or been in my program, you know that I am so anti extremes because these things are harmful, especially for the women, women's bodies, our nervous systems, and they're not doing us any favors long term okay. So let's focus on the long game here. Remembering that again it took you nine months to build a human. And you're not going to just lose all of that weight overnight. So here are the things we want to focus on. Number one is food quality, especially if you are breastfeeding. You need to focus on your good food quality. And this will also be advantageous for your body composition. So what do I mean by food quality? This means that you're minimizing just the processed foods are mindless eating tons of like fast food, junk food, things like that. Yes, you need the calories if you're breastfeeding, but you want to make sure that you're getting good quality, uh, fats, plenty of protein. And then there are certain carbohydrate sources that are actually going to be better than others for breastfeeding, such as oats or flax seed. So we don't want to just only focus on how much we're eating. We also want to focus on the food quality because this will also affect how you're feeling, your energy levels, your blood sugar which affects your energy, and your ability to kind of get back to a body composition that feels good. So you really want to try to get a balance at each meal of a protein, a carbohydrate, a veggie and a fat. Okay. If you're unsure of what those look like, um, this is something that we go over in Mountain Metabolic coaching. And if you're needing help with your breastfeeding nutrition, this is something we can definitely help with. Um, so making sure that you're getting a good balance of those at all of your meals. Um, and we don't want to fail to eat enough protein and fiber because then we're going to tend to overeat or binge, especially when breastfeeding hunger is high. Um, you're more likely to just kind of turn to those highly palatable things that you crave when you're constantly hungry, if you're not getting enough protein and fiber. Number two is to track your intake, and you might want to take a few months to do this, because your brain might just be exploding with all of the things that you need to focus on. But when you're ready to enter a brain space of of, you know, really taking care of your health, again, it can be helpful to track your intake because like we've talked about, breastfeeding is going to affect your overall calorie needs. So then you can factor that in. Typically, it's recommended that you have about 500 extra calories per day over your baseline if you are breastfeeding. So even if you are trying to focus on being in a deficit, you're still going to want to factor that in to what your baseline is and what you're subtracting from to create that deficit. Again, working with a coach might be helpful in this regard because you might not have the brain space to work on this right now. So again, if you're not like a mechanic, why would you try to fix your own car if you have no idea what you're doing? This is just going to make everything take so much longer. There's a whole lot more room for error. The same goes for working with a fitness coach or a nutrition coach. If you have no idea how to do this yourself, or you just don't have the brain space right now to try to figure it out. Working with someone who can take the guesswork out for you go such a long way. And that's one of the top things that our clients within Metabolic coaching, um, remark about, how it just really helps them to kickstart things on their own. Figure out how to do it on their own in a way where they learn the fundamentals, and then they can go from there. Um, okay. So number three is strength training even a few times a week. Okay. I know that training is hard when you have a little baby and you're trying to figure out your schedule again, but even just doing some bodyweight exercises banned things at home. You might need to adjust from being a gym girly to a home workout girly. However, this looks for you. Um, try to get at least two good full body strength training sessions in um to help maintain some of your muscle to mitigate the muscle loss during this time, and this will help with your overall body composition. Four go for walks with your little one. This is not only going to be so helpful for your mental health, but also your physical health, and also will help to reduce the amount of muscle loss that you experience. So get out for walks, whether you're baby wearing or using a stroller. Try to work this into your routine every single day if possible, especially during the warmer months. Um, number five baby wearing when you're even. Just like doing things around the house, this is going to help you be able to do more. You're going to be sitting less and you're getting like a weighted vest benefit. So best of both worlds. Um, also active hobbies that you can do while baby wearing or with kids. So for me, my top one is hiking. Not a shock there, but I have found that it's one of the most kid friendly activities that I also enjoy. So it's one of my personal hobbies. And I can wear my baby and my toddler can walk at this point and we just do. Easy 1 to 3 mile trails. Nothing crazy. I let my toddler explore. We try to go on hikes that are doable for her, and I'm able to wear my baby the whole time. She does great. I know this is not the case for every single baby. Some babies don't love being in carriers, but if you can find activities where you can do the things that you love that fill your cup and they're active with your kiddos, these are going to be hobbies that carry you through these young years that are otherwise really kind of draining. They can be lonely and quite sedentary, so I definitely recommend finding a few hobbies that you can do with your kiddos. Um, number six getting extra pockets of sleep when you can. Easier said than done. I'm in this right now. I totally understand, but prioritize your sleep when you can. You don't want to always be running on 3 to 4 hours of sleep. This is going to really affect your cortisol, your recovery, um, your leptin and ghrelin hormones, which are your hunger and satiety hormones, like I mentioned previously, um, which will affect your food choices and just overall how you feel, your motivation, your mental health. We need to prioritize getting some sleep when you can. So if you can work out a schedule with your partner, maybe like you get a nap on one of the weekend days, they get a nap on the next one. Trying to work out sometimes where each of you can get good quality sleep is really important. Number seven have a few stress coping mechanisms to regulate your nervous system. I was shocked at how tough postpartum was on my nervous system after I had my first. She was a big crier, very colicky, had upset tummy and she just cried almost all the time for months. On top of that, she wasn't a good sleeper, so we were all so exhausted. So her screaming and crying really triggered my nervous system. Sent me into fight or flight almost all the time and it was really, really tough mentally. So trying to have a few coping mechanisms, things that you can do for yourself. Ways that you can get yourself out of a stressed out nervous system that calm you. Again, that's very, very important. So kind of talk through that, maybe even with your partner so you can understand each other's and you can help say, okay, it seems like you're really dysregulated right now and you need a moment. Why don't you go to do one of your coping mechanisms and I'll take the kiddo for a little bit. You can do that for each other. Number eight. If possible, find time to do the things that help you feel like yourself. Mental health is so crucial and so many moms, new moms especially, are fighting this silent battle and nobody even knows. And you're just kind of a martyr in a way, like constantly doing everything for everybody else. And that's just almost expected of moms for some reason. Like, we never need a break. And that's so false and really harmful for new moms mental health. So please, please, please prioritize doing things socially. Um, having time to do things by yourself that really fill your cup, or with friends getting out for girls nights, whatever that looks like for you. And that can include activity. But also, even if it's nothing to do with activity, this is still so important for your health and for your mental health. Number nine focusing on healthy habits that are going to fit into your new life long term because everything is different after you have a baby. Let's just be real. It changes a lot. So what worked for you before and all of your habits, even if you were the most on top of it, healthy person ever. It's going to change after you have a baby, so you're going to have to kind of go back to the drawing board and figure out what are some things that I can still do in this season of life that aren't going to totally overwhelm me. It might be cutting this list in half that you've had for yourself in the past. Maybe you used to work out six days a week and now you're like, I can maybe do 2 or 3. Maybe you used to like, fully meal prep and and do all these things, and now you're like, okay, I just want to focus on getting. Three servings of protein every single day. Okay. So you're going to have to kind of recalibrate and talk about this with your significant other or even just if it's only you you need to write this stuff down. Talk to somebody. Have an accountability partner. But talk through what does this look like for me now and focus on sustainable, healthy habits. If you try to do too much, you're going to burn yourself out because you're now responsible for another human. And that's a lot of pressure. And number ten not rushing or taking extremes. So please, please, please do not just try to cut your calories super low or do all these crazy workouts or, uh, you know, attempt some crazy crash diet with the goal of getting you back to your pre-pregnancy weight? If you establish these habits that we've just gone over and consistently do them day in and day out, over time, you will see the results that you want and your body will normalize, especially after that first six months after your hormones kind of start to get evened out, your body's going to find its set point. It's happy medium again, and you don't need to try to force the issue. Okay, you guys, I think we've gone through everything that I wanted to talk about. If there's anything else post-partum wise or pregnancy or birth that you guys want to hear about. I love talking about this stuff because it's very prevalent in my life right now. Um, so shoot me a DM at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page and let me know what you guys want to chat about. I also want to let you know that we do start our 60 day Summer shred challenge within Mountain Metabolic Coaching on Monday or Sunday. Sorry. Sunday, June 15th. So in less than a week. So definitely if you're interested in that, the clock is ticking. We only have a few spots left and we only have a few days to get you signed up. And I'm going to give you a super awesome podcast listening discount. Okay, so you don't want to miss this. If you're interested in the challenge and learning more, then make sure that you DM us. Challenge at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. And I'm going to give you $200 off of the challenge just for being a podcast listener. This is a pretty big deal. And you also have the ability to win another free month of coaching if you win the point goal in the challenge. So literally just by reaching your goals and doing the things that your coach is helping you to do to get the results that you want to get. Getting leaner, getting more shredded. You're going to also win a three month of coaching. So it's pretty awesome. It's going to kick start your goals this summer, help you get some momentum going with your habits. If you're struggling to do this stuff on your own. The challenge is a perfect opportunity to get things going and start seeing some results quickly. Um, so again, send us a DM at the fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. Just send us challenge and we will send you the info help you get signed up with that $200 off discount. Thank you so much for tuning in today, you guys. It's so great to be back with you and I will catch you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.