During pregnancy, your stomach getting larger by the day is a joyous thing to witness. It lets you know that your bundle of joy is growing, slowly but surely. Also, you are quite certain that once you give birth, your tummy will go back to looking the way it did before. Unfortunately, most new mothers are in for a rude awakening. After labor, their stomach still resembles their pregnancy belly. Before you get too scared, however, just know that it is only a matter of time before your waistline begins to shrink.
Still, losing the fat that you have accumulated around your middle isn’t the easiest thing to do. Mothers will often stress about the fact that they just can’t seem to shed those last couple of pounds. Here is what you can do to help with the process:
Let Mother Nature Take Its Course
As difficult as it is to do, sometimes it is simply a matter of patience. You need to remember that it took your stomach muscles and skin nine months to expand to such an extent. Therefore, it is only fair to wait a similar amount of time before it begins to look normal again. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t exercise but it does mean that the results may not be as drastic as you would like.
Start with Cardio
Depending on how difficult your birth was and whether or not you had a C-section, you will have to wait awhile before you can start exercising properly. Your doctor is the best judge of when it is right for you to start with more strenuous movements. Even if you can’t exercise, you should still make a point to move around unless, of course, your doctor has informed you otherwise. When you can start working out, it is best to start with cardio. You can’t do spot weight loss so you are going to need to shed pounds all over first. Only once you have lost an adequate amount of weight should you start focusing on toning your abdominal area.
Continue with Basic Toning Exercises
If you weren’t an exercise guru before you got pregnant, there is no need to worry. A lot of the workouts that target the stomach are quite basic. Even better, they can all be done in your living room! Stomach crunches, planks, and even leg raises can help you tone up your abdominal area. As long as you do enough of sets and do these exercises often enough, you will be able to see the results.
The Frustrating Part of Your Weight Loss Journey
If all of this works for you, you will start to see an overall reduction in your weight. However, in some cases, your stomach may look a lot like it did before. The most common reasons for this is either diastasis recti or an excess of belly skin. Diastasis recti is when your stomach muscles do not go back to their previous alignment. In both of these instances, surgical intervention in the form of mommy makeovers in Scottsdale is the only solution. This is because the muscles need to be reset and the skin needs to be trimmed. The benefit of such a procedure is that you can also get your breasts reshaped or lifted at the same time.
These are some of the instructions you need to follow when trying to lose that post-pregnancy tummy.