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All of us know that cutting calories and exercising more is the secret to healthy weight loss. But how many calories do you need and still have enough to fuel your body? The number you need to eat each day varies depending on your:

• overall health
• physical activity
• sex
• weight
• height
• shape

Because of these variables, experts cannot agree on the number of calories you should consume each day. In the U.S., the average male should eat 2,700 calories per day while in females that number is 2,200; in the UK, the recommendations are 2,500 and 2,000 respectively. The United Nations on the other hand, recommends consuming no less than 1,800 calories per day.

While these are all good guidelines for general information, in the scope of nutrition and weight loss they are generally irrelevant. If you want to lose weight, you have to create a 500 calorie per day deficit between the numbers of calories you eat and the number you expend. There are three ways to accomplish this.

1) Create a Calorie Deficit by Eating Fewer Calories

If you want to keep your physical activity the same, but lose weight, then you have to eat 500 fewer calories than you are currently eating. It is easy to do by making smarter and healthier food decisions. A good place to start is to cut (or at least limit) the calories you consume by watching foods high in simple carbohydrates (sugar) and saturated fat.

Instead of that latte in the morning, choose plain coffee with a little cream. The latte has 180 calories of which 25% is saturated fat. By comparison a tall Starbucks coffee with cream has 20 calories of which 5% is saturated fat.

Eat more foods high in protein, such as chicken, turkey, pork and lean beef. Substituting natural foods – fruits and vegetables – for processed food is also a good way to cut calories.

2) Create a Calorie Deficit by Burning More Calories

However, if you want to keep your calorie intake the same, then you can burn up to 500 more calories each day by adding in more exercise; it is easy. Instead of parking close to your work, park at the far end of the parking lot and walk the rest of the way. During your lunch break, walk around the block a couple of times. You will still have time to eat a healthy lunch that you brought to work. Or go for a walk after you get home from work; a 150 pound person walking for 30 minutes at 3.5 mph burns 149 calories. The point is there are many different ways you can increase the number of calories you burn each day with very little extra effort.

3) Create a Calorie Deficit by Combining the Two

This option works the best for most of us – eating fewer calories and increasing our physical activity. By eating 250 fewer calories per day and burning 250 more per day through exercising, you have your 500 calories per day deficit. Maintain this deficit regimen for seven days and you will lose a pound. One-pound per week weight loss is both healthy and easy to maintain.

To lose weight, you have to cut calories, or exercise more, or a combination of the two. If you plan to cut calories, we rounded up 20 ways you can use to reduce your caloric intake through smart substitution and portion control.

Smart Substitution to Reduce Calories

By making small, but smart swaps, you can reduce your calorie intake substantially. For instance:

1. Swap out a bagel for an English muffin and avoid eating 220 calories.
2. Trade 10 ounces of whole milk for skim and avoid another 70 calories.
3. Make an omelet with one whole egg and two egg whites instead of three whole eggs. Calories saved – 125.
4. Try turkey sausage instead of pork and save another 125 calories.
5. Instead of mayonnaise, use hummus or mustard on your roll and cut 200 calories.
6. Trade your french fries for a salad and save 300 calories.
7. Try tortilla chips with salsa instead of potato chips dipped in a sour cream-based dip; it’ll save you 109 calories.
8. Try replacing oil in your favorite baked dessert with applesauce; four tablespoons of applesauce is 40 calories while two tablespoons of oil is 200. Plus you’ll add more flavor to your dessert.
9. Use 4 ounces of fat-free half-and-half in your coffee instead of regular cream and save 88 calories.
10. Eat 1/2 cup of oatmeal instead of a full 1-cup serving; calories saved: 150.
11. Substitute 1.5 ounces of raisins for fresh grapes and save 98 calories.
12. Snack on baked potato chips instead of the fried ones; save 90 calories for a 1-ounce serving.
13. Put 3 ounces of mozzarella cheese on your sandwich instead of Swiss and save 108 calories.
14. Swap out Alfredo sauce for marinara sauce- 129 calories saved.
15. Eat 1 cup of frozen yogurt instead of ice cream.
16. On your salad, eat either croutons or cheese, but not both and save over 100 calories.
17. For something different, eat 1/2 cup of fresh strawberries topped with 2 ounces of fat-free whipped cream instead of 1/2 cup of strawberry ice cream and avoid eating 102 calories.
18. Portion Control: The size of your plate makes a big difference on the number of calories you consume. Trick your mind into thinking you have more food than you do by using a 9-inch instead of a 12-inch plate. On average you can save up to 500 calories.
19. Do you tend to go back for another helping when finished with the first? You still can, but first wait 20 minutes. Most likely won’t go back and if you do, you’ll take less.
20. When eating out, it is harder to control portions, however, not impossible. Because restaurant portions are significantly larger, eat smart by leaving a fourth of your meal on your plate. Look up the nutritional information before leaving the house. Studies found people ate 52 fewer calories when they knew the nutritional information before ordering.

Cutting calories is easy when you know how to make intelligent substitutions and control portion size. Take charge of your eating with these suggestions.

Desserts don’t have to be loaded with calories (and fat) to taste great. There are many alterations or substitutions you can make to your current recipes, and still have them taste great. Here are four changes you can make that your family won’t even notice.

Reduce Calories with Yogurt

Low or non-fat yogurt is a great substitute for high fat ingredients used in baking such as shortening, oil, butter and sour cream. Not only does it cut fat and calories, but it adds a creamy texture. If your recipe calls for 1 cup of butter, use 1/2 cup or butter and 1/4 cup of yogurt. Replace 1 cup of shortening or oil with 1/2 cup shortening or oil, 1/4 cup yogurt plus 2 tablespoons.

Reduce Calories with a Sugar Blend

A part of a healthy lifestyle, many people are switching over to natural sweeteners derived from the Stevia plant. While 20 times sweeter than sugar, it has 0 calories. If you use pure stevia, then use at the ration of 6 packets to 1/4 cup of granulated sugar or follow the package directions.

Some companies have created a stevia/granulated sugar blend. Use it at the replacement ratio of 1/2 cup of sugar blend per 1 cup of sugar. You still get the great taste of sugar, but with only half the calories and it is all natural.

Reduce Calories with Applesauce

For sweeter quick breads, muffins and cakes along with a creamier texture, substitute applesauce for butter. In most recipes, you can do a one-for-one swap. Use unsweetened applesauce measured in a measuring cup made for measuring liquids. When using applesauce as a replacement, mix the other liquid ingredients into the applesauce, then add in the sugar and finally fold in the dry ingredients. Mix only until well combined. Do not shorten up the baking time.

Reduce Calories with Whole Wheat Flour

White whole wheat flour is a great substitute in recipes calling for all-purpose or white flour. Replace half of the flour requirement with whole wheat flour. While white flour is highly refined and has many of the nutrients taken out in the process, whole wheat flour still contains the wheat seed, germ and bran, making it much more nutritious.

By using healthy substitutes, such as whole wheat flour in place of regular flour, yogurt in place of butter, applesauce in place of oil, and reducing the sugar in your recipes, you can turn your calorie-laden desserts into something healthy, and more than likely your family will not notice the difference.

You may be consuming many more calories than you think. They are hidden in all kinds of foods … many of which you would never know were high in calories.

Three of the big culprits are:

• sugar
• alcoholic drinks
• salad dressings

Hidden Calorie Traps with Sugar

Sugar can have addicting properties. Once you eat something high in sugar, your blood sugar spikes, triggering an insulin release to neutralize the excessive sugar. But what usually happens is the pancreas overcompensates and your blood sugar plummets. To get your blood sugar back to normal, your body signals your brain to eat something sweet. And the cycle starts all over again. In the process, you are consuming large number of sugar calories – a simple carbohydrate.

Another place to watch your sugar is with something as innocuous as coffee. At 15 calories per packet, adding a couple of packets of sugar to your coffee can add up if you drink three or four cups per day. And that doesn’t even consider the 20 calories per teaspoon in the half and half that to your coffee.

Hidden Calorie Traps in Alcoholic Drinks

Around the holiday season, it is easy to overindulge. At seven calories per gram of wine, a 5 ounce serving has 124 calories. Three servings, not hard to do while at a party, provides a women with over 20% of her daily calorie requirement.

And the calories in alcohol are only half the story. Alcohol also lowers your food defenses so you are more apt to eat more snacks and other unhealthy options than you would have had you not been drinking. All and all, it can add up to a disaster calorie-wise. Instead, eat a healthy meal before consuming alcohol. Sip your drink to make it last longer and you’ll be apt to drink less. Another trick is to add some soda water to your drink. It increases the volume of liquid without adding any calories.

Hidden Calorie Traps in Salad Dressings

While the vegetables and meat in a salad are healthy themselves, you have to be careful of the dressing you put on it; most dressings are loaded with calories. Balsamic vinaigrette is a good option; be sure to ask for it on the side so you can control how much you put on. For a change, try dipping a fork full of salad in the dressing instead of pouring it on. You still get the great taste, but actually use very little dressing.

By knowing about the hidden calories in sugar, alcoholic drinks and salad dressings, you can be more aware of just how many calories you are actually consuming. Knowing is half the battle; the other half is doing.

Desserts don’t have to be loaded with calories (and fat) to taste great. There are many low calories recipes that won’t add to your waistline, but still taste great. These two desserts recipes are just a sampling of how recipes can be altered to make them healthy, yet still taste great:

Low Calorie Mandel Bread

How modified:

• vegetable oil replaced with canola oil
• sugar reduced by one-fourth
• dark chocolate chips substituted for semisweet ones
• one-third of all-purpose flour replaced with white whole wheat flour

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white whole-wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup dark-chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray a large cookie sheet with cooking spray and set aside. Together mix granulated sugar and oil in a large bowl; fold in eggs and vanilla until well mixed. In a separate bowl, combine flours and baking powder. Add flour/baking powder combination to egg mixture, along with chocolate chips and mix well. Form the dough on the cookie sheet into three 9-inch-long logs; flatten each to 2 inches wide.
2. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for 30 minutes. Angle cut into 1/2-inch thick slices. Arrange slices on cookie sheet and bake for an additional 10 minutes, or until browned. Place on a wire rack to cool.

Healthy Low Calorie Savings:

• Cut 22 calories and 2 g carbohydrate; added 1 g fiber.
• New nutrition facts per slice: 123 calories, 1g protein, 15g carbohydrate, 8g fat (2g saturated), 1g fiber
• Makes 36 slices

Low Calorie Snickerdoodle Cookies

How Modified:

• Replaced half of flour with white whole-wheat flour
• Reduced butter by half; added yogurt as butter substitute
• Reduced sugar by one-fourth

Ingredients:

• 1 cup natural, plain low-fat yogurt
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 8 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, mix together flours, cream of tartar and baking soda. In a separate bowl, mix butter and yogurt 30 seconds; add 1 cup granulated sugar. Beat until combined; scrape sides of bowl occasionally. Fold in eggs and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour mixture. Divide the dough in half. Wrap and chill dough for 2 hours, or until easy to handle.
2. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly spray cookie sheets with cooking spray. Mix together 3 tablespoons granulated sugar and the cinnamon in a small bowl. Roll dough into 1-inch small balls and roll the balls in the sugar mixture. Place balls about 1 inch apart on cookie sheets. Flatten balls slightly, if desired.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned. Remove and cool on wire racks.

Healthy Low Calorie Savings:

• Cut 22 calories, 2g carbohydrate, and 2g saturated fat; added 1g protein, 0.5g fiber.
• New nutrition facts per cookie: 70 calories, 1g protein, 11g carbohydrate, 2g fat (1g saturated), 0.5g fiber
• Makes 48 cookies

By using healthy substitutes, such as white whole wheat flour in place of regular flour, yogurt in place of butter, and reducing the sugar in your recipes, you can turn your calorie-laden desserts into something healthy, and more than likely your family will not notice the difference. Next, we’ll take a look at some hidden calorie traps but go ahead and experiment and see how you can rehab your recipes to make them into low calorie deserts.

When you workout, you’ll want to incorporate a good diet for building muscles. But what exactly constitutes a “good diet for building muscle” anyway?

For some people the only adjustments they’ll need to make is to add in additional calories. Those calories need to come from food sources that are proven to build muscles. Common names are high protein diets and weight gain diets. So, it’s not as simple as just adding in additional calories; you need the right kind of calories that also provide much needed nutrients that aid in cell rejuvenation and muscle development.

The Purpose of a Diet for Building Muscles

The entire reason to adopt a diet for building muscles is to make sure that your are providing your muscles with the proper nutrients they need when they are being worked, torn down and in recovery. The nutrients that you feed your muscles will have a direct impact on how quickly and how effectively repair and build up.

Your purpose is to gain weight in the muscle department but at the same time you want to be careful that the calories you are adding are not going to pack the fat on. Nothing can hide muscle definition, and your hard workouts, more than excess body fat.

How Do You Know What a Good Diet for Building Muscle is?

A rigorous weight training workout schedule is taxing on your entire body. By making sure that you fuel your body with the right nutrients you will be helping ensure that you have the energy to start and finish your workout as well as the ability to repair your muscle afterwards.

Since your body uses the protein that you consume to build muscles, you need to eat enough lean protein such as salmon, trout, halibut, cod, eggs, chicken and lean servings of beef, pork or buffalo. These lower fat foods will help you get the protein calories you need while helping you to avoid packing on body fat.

Most people that want to put on weight should eat 500 calories more each day, some a little more, some a little less by 500 calories extra a day equates to about a pound a week in body weight gain. We’re talking about muscle weight gain here so you need those extra calories to be primarily protein.

If you find it hard to eat more protein foods, you can always reach for protein supplements or meal replacement shakes. A couple of shakes a day mixed with milk can easily get you to those 500 calories in extra protein a day mark.

What is The Single Best Diet for Building Muscle Mass?

Due to the fact that people’s body’s and food choices are so entirely different, it’s hard to recommend any one single diet for building muscles. You must have the additional protein but you must also have the many nutrients your body needs everyday. For example, you can’t use protein powders for meal replacement because mostly all that they provide is the protein. You would need a meal replacement shake in this case that provides the many different nutrients your body needs.

A good way to find what works best for you is to experiment a little and try different ones every two weeks or so and see how your body is responding. You can learn more about your choices and what to look for in the article “Why Protein Intake for Building Muscles” and look at http://MyFitnessNut.com for more information on protein, supplements, muscle building and fitness in general.

It’s commonly known by people in the bodybuilding world that protein is required to build muscle mass. What’s really important to know is that your protein intake amount is adequate enough to feed your hard working muscles. If it’s not, your muscles will not develop well in contrast to the amount of work you’re putting in.

One way to know how much more protein to eat is to first figure out the overall calories you need to be eating for optimal muscle growth.

Building your muscles is much like gaining weight it takes between 300 – 500 calories to put on extra muscle mass or weight. Eating 500 calories extra every day will have you putting on about one extra pound every week. Keep in mind that you must be working your muscles to burn these extra calories so that they don’t end up as stored fat opposed to built muscle mass.

Now, if your plan is to use these extra consumed calories to build your muscles then you’ll want to convert the 300 – 500 calories into mostly protein. You don’t want to be increasing the amount of fat that your ingesting, although some fat is important. Lean cuts of meat will contain some fat, nuts will contain some fat and well designed protein shakes will contain some fat.

So, at any rate, don’t go overboard thinking you have to avoid fat completely. You do want your protein calories to be the bulk of these additional calories that you are consuming in order to accelerate your muscle building venture.

Work Your Muscles Hard but Ensure Proper Protein Intake When You Do.

Learning the concept of consuming the correct protein intake for building muscle is to understand that protein is the foundational building block for gaining muscle mass. With these protein building blocks in your system, when you train your muscles, you are stimulating your muscle growth cycle to develop your muscles at a much faster pace.

So it makes sense to work your muscles really hard but only if you have good amounts of protein in your body to feed those hungry worked muscles.

Why Building Muscle Mass without Proper Protein Intake is a Bad Idea

You may have heard the saying “Turn fat into muscle” and while it is true that when you workout, you’ll be losing fat and as long as you are maintaining a good protein level in your body, you’ll be gaining muscle. But you’re not actually turning muscle into fat.

The bottom line is that if you don’t consume the right amount of protein based on how rigorously you work your muscles, your muscles will not grow no matter how hard you work them. And on the flip side, you never want to over eat if you’re not burning the calories you consume because you will pack on fat pounds and that’s the exact opposite of what you want to achieve.

Many of the weight training professionals will recommend not eating extra on your rest and recover days even if your body and brain are screaming to be fed more food. Instead, they advocate physically resting up more on your rest days. What this habit will do is create an energy surplus in your body without feeding it more.

The benefit is that when you re-engage in performing an intense workout, your body will draw upon this surplus reducing your body fat stores. And as we all know, the less body fat you have surrounding you, the more your magnificent muscle tone shows itself off. Many times, the muscle tone is there… it’s just hiding.

How to Add More Protein to Your Diet

There are no one-size-fits-all answers to how much protein you should add because it can differ greatly from person to person. While one person might want to simply shape up, the next person may be looking at competition bodybuilding. One might want to get their increased protein intake from food, others may want to supplement; others will want to do both.

Increasing Your Protein Intake with Food

Everyone wanting to build up their muscles will have protein requirements unique to them so it’s a good idea to start slower rather than too fast. Keeping in tune with what was said earlier, you’ll want to start out by adding in an extra 300 calories of protein each day that you workout for three months.

Take a step back and see where you are at. If you’re not seeing the muscle growth you were expecting, increase your protein intake to 500 calories and compare notes in three more months. A local bodybuilding coach can help get you on the road to reaching your goals much faster because they can personalize this task for you and your goals.

Increasing Your Protein Intake with Supplements

Most protein choices contain higher amounts of fat and research has shown that low fat protein choices work just as effectively in building muscle. While you can easily add in low fat dairy items, lean meats like chicken, fish and turkey; a good quality protein supplement is a convenient way to “beef up” your protein intake.

There are many protein supplements to choose from; some good, some great and some that are not so good – even downright bad for you sorry to say. The most important thing to glean from this article is to find a way to increase your protein intake when your goal is to build muscles.

Secondly, your goal is most likely to simultaneously lose fat while building up your muscle tone. So, as logic plays out in our search for a good quality protein supplement you will want to look for low fat, low sugar, no artificial ingredients whatsoever; basically you want as pure of protein you can get in the supplement you choose and avoid all the garbage so many manufacturers throw in their products merely for the sake of marketing buzzwords.

Read the labels and like anything you’re thinking about putting in your body, it there’s a word you don’t understand… find out what the heck it is before you consume it!

You can learn more about whole food protein and protein supplements at http://MyFitnessNut.com but the big takeaway for this article is that you must increase your protein intake if you want to increase your muscle mass. You can lift weights from morning until the sun goes down and still not build muscle mass. That would be sad.

Reason; if you don’t feed your muscles protein when they’re being worked, your muscles will tear down and feed upon their very own protein leaving your muscle building goals stuck in the mud. Increase your protein intake to the amount that works for you and you’ll be smiling at the results of your efforts instead of wondering why your workouts aren’t working as well as you like.

Introduction to The 15-Minute Fitness Guide

In our busy lives, it’s often a struggle to find time to get everything done. Inevitably, important things can sometimes drop off our to-do lists or get pushed off our schedules.

For many of us, finding time to exercise is something we know we should do, but it’s often the first thing to get dropped.

Part of the problem may be that we think we need to find an hour or two a day, five or six days a week, in order to exercise. Or perhaps that you have to join a fancy full-service gym in order to have access to the latest and greatest exercise equipment.

Fortunately, the reality is much more forgiving. In fact, it’s possible to significantly improve your health and fitness with 15-minute workout sessions.

That’s what we’re going to talk about in this 15-minute fitness guide.

To continue reading, use the page numbers below or the table of contents to the right. Enjoy!

The March 2012 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine shows just how deadly sitting down can be.

Using data from over 265,000 individuals, the shocking research showed that people who sit for more than 11 hours a day experienced a 40% higher likelihood of dying from any cause.

And if you sit from 8 to 11 hours a day, you still experience a 15% higher probability of dying than those who sit for less than four hours each day.

The dangers caused by too much sitting include but are not limited to:

• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Colon cancer
• Breast cancer
• Heart Disease
• Metabolic Syndrome
• Heart attack

And Harvard researchers have shown that watching TV for just two hours a day increases your chances of developing Type II Diabetes by a full 20%.

That same 120 minutes of sitting and watching your favorite television programs means you are 15% more likely to develop heart disease as well, including possibly triggering a heart attack or stroke. And more than three daily hours of television viewing, which is generally done while sitting, substantially increases the danger of dying from any disease.

The dangers of sitting down all day are many as are the rewards of an active lifestyle. One HealthPop study showed that too much sitting combined with an overall sedentary lifestyle caused as many as 43,000 instances of colon cancer, as well as nearly 50,000 cases of breast cancer among the study participants.

And incredibly, simply standing instead of sitting, exercising, bending and stretching while sitting, and a couple of brisk walks a day can drastically reduce the chance that you will succumb to the dangers of sitting.

No other respected health organization than the World Health Organization has openly stated that physical inactivity and frequent sitting is the leading cause in a full 21 to 25% of all breast and colon cancers, according to their research. That same sedentary lifestyle and extended periods of sitting also contributes to at least 27% of Diabetes and a full 30% of ischaemic heart disease, according to WHO.

That same World Health Organization found that the dangers of sitting down all day are so plentiful, they consider a sedentary lifestyle one of the top 10 causes of all death and disability, making up for more than 300,000 early deaths annually in the US.

The dangers of sitting for extended periods of time, whether it be in your vehicle, at work or on your couch at home, cannot be ignored by those people looking to enjoy a healthy and fit lifestyle which leads to a longer and happier life. So, give this information to a friend or loved one and turn them into a workout buddy.

How Workout Dates Help You Stick To Your Goals

The key to attaining your fitness goals is to work out with consistency. You start a new exercise program filled with excitement and goals, but soon you are bored with the same exercise routine, discouraged by the lack of results, or sidetracked by life in general. Pretty soon, you are back to your old ways of sitting on the couch and eating ice cream and potato chips.

Keeping that excitement and commitment going over the long haul is hard, but here are some ways that can help you stay the course:

• find an exercise buddy
• schedule your workouts
• structure your workout time

Find an Exercise Buddy

Whether you exercise with a friend or your significant other, being accountable to someone other than yourself is a great way to keep you on track. When you commit to working out with someone, you do not want to let them down, nor do they want to let you down, so not showing up for a workout becomes more difficult than just going.

Schedule Your Workouts

If you are like me for something to get done, it has to be on my schedule. If not, something always takes priority and consequently the non-scheduled things take a backseat; workouts are no different.

However, by scheduling your workouts both on your personal calendar and the one you have at work, your workout time becomes just as important as anything else you have scheduled. If you are using an electronic calendar, such as Gmail or Yahoo, set the reminder so you get either an email or pop-up reminder a certain time before your workout is supposed to begin.

Structure Your Workout Time

Do you have a plan on what routine you are going to do each time you go to the gym? Do you know which days you are doing strength training and which days will be cardio?

A great way to make planning easier is to join some classes. That way the planning is done for you. Then, each week you know on Monday you have a spinning class at 1:00 p.m.; on Tuesdays, you have aerobics at 3:00 p.m., etc. This makes planning your fitness workouts much easier; it is harder to skip a workout when you know you have to be at a certain place at a certain time and other people are expecting you to be there.

Exercising on a consistent and routine basis will eventually become part of your healthy lifestyle. Eventually you will reach a point where you will feel guilty if you have to miss a session – even if it is due to something beyond your control.

But to get to that point, where exercising becomes second nature, requires diligent and deliberate dedication to succeed on your part. These “4 Tips To Make Exercise More Fun” can give you some additional ideas and you can visit http://MyFitnessNut.com and subscribe to the My Fitness Nut Newsletter to stay up to date on the latest health and fitness trends.

Congratulations, you are a new mother!

Now that you have given birth, most likely you are ready to start losing that baby weight and to get back in shape. But hold on, not so quick…

Most healthcare professionals agree that you should not start trying to lose weight or to back get in shape until you have completed your six-week postpartum checkup, two months, if you are breastfeeding.

Once cleared by your doctor or at the two-month mark, respectively, consider these four things.

1) Don’t Diet

Strict, restrictive diets don’t work and in most cases, they do more harm than good to both you and your new baby. As a new breastfeeding mother, you most likely need to eat 1,800 to 2,200 calories per day to keep your milk supply adequate; some mothers need as high as 2,500 calories per day. If you are not breastfeeding, then you should eat between 1,500 to 1,800 calories.

2) Eat Right

Caring for a new baby can be hectic and you may find it hard to work in a meal sometimes. Avoid the tendency to skip meals – especially breakfast. As they say “It is the most important meal of the day.” and so true. Many mothers find that eating five or six small meals, spread out throughout the day, works better than sitting down to three larger meals. A small meal might consist of half a sandwich, some veggies, a piece of fruit and a glass of milk.

3) Exercise

Besides eating right, exercising is the most important element in your weight loss effort. Static cardio exercises mixed with some lightweight training, such as light dumbbells or resistance bands, is a good way to both tone muscles and get your metabolism revved back up. You can exercise and spend time with your baby by going for a walk while pushing the stroller ahead of you.

4) Set Realistic Goals

Keep in mind that it took nine months to put the weight on, so it can take that amount of time to take it off (or more). Yes, movie stars lose their weight in a couple of months after having a child, but keep in mind, most of them have personal trainers to guide them and nannies to care for their child.

Losing one pound per week is a safe and realistic weight loss goal. To do this, you have to burn up 500 more calories per day than you eat. To keep your calorie count down, focus on eating whole grain, low-fat dairy, fruits and vegetables, while staying away from fried foods, sweets and saturated fat.

You can also work on getting the whole family into your fitness plan and support each other on reaching the level of fitness you desire. It just takes eating nutritious foods, proper exercising and patience.