Six Months Postpartum Update (How to Lose Baby Weight)

It’s taken a lot longer to lose baby weight with my second baby than it did with my first baby. With Hudson, I stepped on the scale at my 6 week postpartum checkup and I had lost 35 pounds. I hadn’t done a thing except walk a few times and breastfeed. At my 6 week postpartum with baby #2 I had only dropped 20 pounds (I gained 40 pounds total with baby #2). I was pretty disappointed, but it was a huge wake up call to clean up my eating and start exercising again.

I’m 5 pounds away from my pre-baby weight now (down 35 pounds total) and I’m feeling pretty good! I wanted to share some of my progress photos and a few of the tips that have picked up along the way.

Exercise
As a mom of two, I don’t have a lot of time to workout everyday. So I love to do intense workouts for 15-30 minutes to maximize my time. Here’s a quick outline of how my weekly workout routine looks:

Monday
Leg day 30 minute resistance workout
Examples of workouts: weighted squats, jumping lunges, weighted walking lunges, burpees

Tuesday
HIIT 15 minute workout
45 seconds on 15 seconds off
2x 
Running stairs
Jumping Jacks
High Knees
Skaters
Butt kicks
Square jumps
Side taps

Wednesday
Arm day 30 minute resistance workout
Examples: pushups, decline pushups, lay down push ups, mountain climbers

Thursday
HIIT 15 minute workout
Love the workouts from this YouTube channel

Friday
Ab day 30 minute resistance workout
Examples, ab bikes, Russian twists, side crunches, twisted situps

Saturday
Free day
Love the workouts from this YouTube channel

Exercise is so important for toning and keeping your heart healthy, but I’ve also learned that what you eat is as important if not more. Before I got married I was trying to lose weight for my wedding. I was working out pretty consistently, but I was still eating garbage. It wasn’t until I changed my eating habits last year that I finally started seeing results. The hardest part for me with eating healthy is knowing what to make for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so I’ll list a few of my favorite meal ideas below.

Breakfast
Plain cheerios with bananas, blueberries, strawberries
Peanut Butter toast with bananas
Scrambled eggs
Banana Pancakes

Lunch
Avocado with cottage cheese
Deli meat, crackers, and cheese

Snacks
My favorite afternoon and evening snacks

Dinner
Tacos (use a lettuce leaf instead of a tortilla and ground turkey instead of ground beef)
Jambalaya 
Zucchini bean skillet
Cheesy chicken, broccoli, and rice

Cutting out sugar has been pretty hard for me since I have a huge sweet tooth, but I feel so much better when I don’t have all of that refined sugar in my diet. I do allow myself one cheat day a week to get in my sugar fix, but I usually feel pretty sick the next day, so I find myself still wanting to eat healthy for the most part that day. 

These are just a few of the ways I’ve lost my baby weight. If there’s one thing I would tell anyone starting out it’s that change is slow. If you do the math, 20 pounds in 5 months is only a pound a week! There were some weeks when the scale never budged. Some weeks my weight went up! Don’t feel discouraged. Just keep going! I’m hoping to lose the last 5 pounds of baby weight plus 10 more pounds this year!

If you’d like to save this post for later, I’ve created a pin for you!

*Update*
 I’ve lost those last 5 pounds and it only took a week!!! See more here. 
 

What are your health/fitness goals this year?