The post-baby belly is one of the most hated signs of motherhood. All those months of carrying a little one safe in your tummy, not getting enough exercise, eating for two, and the sedentary lifestyle during the post-delivery recuperation phase loads on the pounds like nothing else. And this fat is very difficult to get rid of.
If you want to fit onto your old pair of jeans, try these tips.
- Try free-weight, bodyweight, and cable exercises instead of pounding away at the machines. These exercises need more skill and expend more calories in the form of energy. It is more difficult to work with free weight while maintaining body balance. This allows you to work more muscle groups in a wide range of motion, leading to a higher energy loss.
- Perform exercises that work more than a single group of muscles. Don’t worry about losing the tummy fat before you focus on those bulging arms. Use exercises that will work more muscle groups than just one. For example, squats are better than leg extensions for the simple reason that they exercise your buttocks, hamstrings, and inner thighs apart from toning your quadriceps. Leg extensions, on the other hand, help tone only the inner thigh region. If you focus on singular areas, you may need to perform a large number of exercises which will only lead to fatigue. Exercises aimed at multiple regions will also tend to increase your metabolism and the lean mass of the body.
- Couple your exercises to get the maximum benefit. Alternate between upper-body and lower-body exercises. This will keep your regimen short and efficient. You can reduce the time between exercise sets. This will also help you in weight loss uniformly since you are constantly in a state of motion, your heart is higher and you are burning more calories.
- Take shorter periods of rest between exercise sets, no more than a minute. This will keep your heart rate elevated and gets your muscles into the habit of recovering more quickly between the sets.
If you incorporate these strategies into your exercise regimen, you can say bye-bye to the mommy fat and say hello to a toned body.