Why Dieting is not the Way to Burn the Baby Fat

November 8th, 2008 by Suzanne Brown

by Teresa Brown

One would think that with all the technological advancements and the conveniences that came with it, a mother’s life today would have more time on her side and be the healthier for it. On the contrary, these days moms have less time and are less healthy. Part of the problem to losing pregnancy weight, is that many moms go for the fad diets because it seems like the quickest route possible to burn the baby fat. Fad diets are like fairytales full of promise and hope for our weight loss dreams to come true, but the reality is that most fairytales don’t end up happily ever after, the same is true with dieting.

We are told to eat a balanced diet, which seems simple enough but in today’s world 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.

Food Deprivation Diet

Eating to live is easier said than done because most of us live to eat and that usually results in us packing on the pounds. The fact that we have to eat to live tells us that our bodies are “wired” to receive food on a regular basis and not the opposite. Because of this, when you literally starve yourself on an extremely low-calorie diet, your body’s “energy conservation” strategy kicks into effect by reducing your metabolism to hold onto your baby fat instead of burning it.

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.

Tinsel Town Diets

From South Beach to Beverly Hills and from cookies to syrup and water, fad diets are alive and well in our diet obsessed society. Fad diets are based on the idea that some kind of secret ingredient makes fast weight loss possible and that you only need to stick to the plan for some time and everything will be fine.

We all know that a fad diet is something we can’t do indefinitely but we do so only to burn the baby fat as fast as possible. Celeb moms who resort to the “Beverly Hills type” diets risk their health for their careers and why should you do the same just to fit into your skinny jeans? You are a mother which is has more value than a career or skinny jeans.

Mother Nature’s Diet

As tempting a starvation or fad diet may seem to solve your battle to burn the baby fat, it will 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.

About the Author:

Being a new mom doesn’t mean that you can’t lose weight after giving birth to reclaim your pre-baby body back. Trim your tummy with a lifestyle program and start living. Teresa Brown is passionate about health, wellness and life-long learning for self-improvement.