10 Easy Ways to Get Back in Shape After Baby

Before Poopy the Sacred Prodigy, I had the body of a model.

Ok, I had the body of a "Before" model for a miracle weight loss drug, but still.

After 10 months of sharing my body with another organism-- another organism who was a very picky eater whose tastes ran towards the processed and sugary-- and then a month of near-sedentary recovery, and then seven months of largely-sedentary breastfeeding... well, let's just say, me now makes me before look like an After.

My fellow moms might know what I'm talking about. There's no time now for workouts, or elaborately prepared healthy meals, or other frivolous extras like showers or eyebrow plucking. Our time is consumed by caring for these new little people who are much smaller and cuter and more vulnerable than us, and suddenly taking care of ourselves seems not just difficult, but downright superfluous. Until one day you have a picture taken where you're holding your clean, smiling, adorable baby in her perfectly co-ordinated outfit... and there you are in 3-day-old pajamas with Cheerios on your unwashed hair, eye bags that could hold canned goods, looking like a homeless cat lady version of the Pillsbury dough boy. This is a wake up call. Here's how to shake that post-baby weight.

1. Breastfeed

I am in no way about the mom-shaming, and if you can't or don't want to breastfeed, that is your decision and I support you. If you do decide/are able to breastfeed, though, you have a leg up on the weight loss thing. Nobody knows exactly how many calories are burned from breastfeeding. Experts on the internet that I found by Googling estimate that it's somewhere between 200-700 calories per day, but like I said, nobody can really say for sure. Every woman is different, and every baby is different. You might be burning 1000 calories a day. Who knows? Just to be on the safe side, don't try to diet while breastfeeding, because cutting calories too much can affect your milk supply. Anyway, breastfeeding is hard, dieting is hard, being a new mom is hard... don't pile on. Stress will only make weight loss harder! Stress is bad. (See tip #8 for more on this).

2. Snack Wisely.

Food is fuel, and you should treat it as such. While you might normally forget to eat all morning in the bustle of caring for your family and then scarf down a sandwich or whatever around lunchtime, your metabolism and mood will thank you if you grab a handful of dry cereal on your way out the door in the morning and eat it on the way to drop your kids off at school. 

Better a couple of granola bars on your way to the grocery store than shopping on an empty stomach and coming home with nine packages of cookies.

Some nuts and dried fruit make a great mid-afternoon pick-me-up. So does a blended mocha and the leftover contents of the lunch you lovingly packed for your ungrateful husband who then "decided to grab something hot" yesterday. It's important to keep your blood sugar stable, after all, and the mocha is on approximately the same sugar level as the pop-tarts you judiciously nibbled to give you the energy to get through that exhausting phone call with the credit card company.

Bonus snack tip: for busy days on the go when you forget to pack a snack, check your bra! Now that you're a nursing mom, of course, you don't actually wear bras, just tank tops that can accommodate your breasts in both of their alternate states (huge, engorged, and leaking, or sore, saggy, and empty). That shelf-like hooter holster is a veritable goldmine of everything you ate today. And yesterday. And every day for as long as you've been wearing this tank top. What day is it, again?

3. Dress to Express

Before motherhood, you probably chose your clothes based on fit, comfort, and price. Or maybe fashionability and quality, but that's not the Weenie way. Now, though, your outfits are chosen on two equally crucial criteria: can I breastfeed in it, and will it double as pajamas. As a mom, you have to grab sleep by the balls whenever it's within reach, time and location be damned. Front porch, kitchen table, toilet... whenever there's five minutes of silence, you jump on that nap's back and ride it straight to bliss. There's no time to worry about buckles or tight waistbands or other impediments to pure comfort. Yoga pants are a cliche for a reason. A very good, very comfy, reason.

To accentuate your increasingly Mom-alicious curves, you need to add one more very important facet to your wardrobe choices: camouflage. Whether it's love handles, nipple leakage, or baby food, your clothes should hide it. Abstract, colorful prints. Loose and flowy construction. Possibly, actual camo print. Whatever. It's Summer and flowy dresses are your best friend. Bonus, you can probably pass off your five-days-since-shower hair as "beach chic."

4. Accessorize

Lookin' good is all about context. If I, at this moment, stood in a lineup with 7 Victoria's Secret models, I would look like an overinflated vinyl blowup doll of Jabba the Hut. If I was in a lineup of skyscrapers, on the other hand, I'd be looking pretty darn teeny. Apply this concept to everything you surround yourself with. The bigger your car, purse, or sunhat, the smaller YOU look. I, for example, purchased a hilariously huge coffee cup approximately the size of a toddler's head. Now, when I hold it, I look like a small person holding a normal coffee cup. It's all about drawing the eye in the most flattering direction-- away from my actual body.

More suggestions for oversized accoutrements: glasses, sunglasses, chunky jewelry, beach towels, wine bottles, overweight children, tall husbands with broad shoulders, supersized sodas, family-size chip bags, giant novelty pencils.

Look how slim that hand model looks! She's miniature!

5. Shed Pounds in Seconds With This One Weird Trick!

Put your scale on carpet! You could instantly lose 10-25 pounds.

6. Try Coolsculpting

Coolsculpting is an ingenious innovation that works by tricking your brown fat into thinking you're dying of hypothermia, triggering it to burn your white fat to keep you alive. It's weird, and cool, and really works! Unfortunately, it also costs hundreds of dollars and lots of valuable time (each session is about an hour, and you need a lot of sessions to see a difference). So instead, try this at-home hack! Step One: find frozen food in your freezer. Popsicles and ice cream work well. Step two: rest them on your midsection while you eat them. Repeat often for maximum sculpting!

7. Get the Flu

This is one of the simplest weight-loss tricks, since children are natural breeding grounds for bacteria and disease. Forget trendy "cleanses" where you just drink lemon juice and cayenne pepper. The flu is the traditional cleanse, where you spend 4 days drinking nothing but cough syrup and regret. Watch the pounds fly off!

8. Meditate

Cortisol, the stress hormone, makes your body panic and hold on to weight harder than Blake Lively held onto the buoy in that movie about the shark. Any parent knows that as soon as the baby starts crying, your stress level shoots through the roof. So next time that little fat-maker starts blasting his stress-siren, practice taking a few deep, centering breaths. Picture a serene island beach. Picture yourself walking on soft, white, sand, looking really awesome in your bikini. If visualization alone isn't working, try wine. Don't think about the calories in the wine. Thinking about calories is stressful. Stress is bad.

9. Get Active

It can be hard to get off the couch for the first few months of your baby's life, with the erratic napping and feeding schedule. But good news! Around month 7-9, your baby is going to get mobile. Like, terrifyingly, world-view-shiftingly mobile. Before you know it, you'll go from couch potato to trainee helicopter parent. And do you have any idea how many calories helicopters burn? All they eat is basically oil, and you've never seen a fat helicopter, have you? Chasing your crawling, cruising, toddling, death-seeking-missile will help the pounds fall off! As long as you don't get too stressed about your beloved progeny's new obsession with choking, electrocuting, or blunt-force-traumatizing themselves. Stress is bad. Eat lots of chocolate to get rid of the stress.

10. Round is a Shape

Give up. You may never look like you did before the baby. If you don't like how you looked before the baby, you may never look like you originally dreamed of looking. You may be one of those women who finds that no matter what they do or how hard they try, there's a stubborn 5-10 pounds of fat that just refuses to budge while you're breastfeeding. You may be one of those Me-women who finds that as hard as you try, there's that stubborn 100 pounds of fat that refuses to budge while you're still drinking wine and eating chocolate, which P.S. we need, because stress. It's ok. You don't have to be All Things. You are already a habitat, a jungle gym, a snack bar, a maid, a bodyguard, a chauffeur, 

and a personal shopper. If you have a partner, you may also already be a confidante, a sex bunny, a chef, a life coach, and a bookkeeper. You don't have to be a model. You don't have to be a Fitspiration right this second. Look into your child's eyes. She doesn't care what size your pants are. In her eyes, you are the most beautiful, glorious, necessary, being in the universe. To her, you are love. You are also her map of how she will relate to her own body. So love yourself. Forgive yourself. Be patient with yourself. Don't stress. 

Stress is bad.