Giving birth to your baby is a beautiful experience that certainly changes the way we look at our body both physically and emotionally.

It’ll be a long journey to rediscover and fully understand how our body works after pregnancy.

Take this time to find out all the fun facts about your anatomy and what will work best for you.

The most important aspect of post pregnancy is to figure what kind of activities or exercises that you can do to recover and regain strength, and lose baby weight at the same time.

After giving birth, your back and hips may be tight and inflexible and you will feel a little bit detached from your body. So, here’s something that can help you get you out of this funk: Yoga poses!

The good thing is that yoga poses can help you regain the strength and flexibility before pregnancy and will actually speed up your overall recovery process, physically and mentally. It also greatly helps you to get in touch with your body, mind and soul to promote mental and emotional well-being.

Weight loss can often be simplified down to a basic equation; calories in must equal less than calories out. While working out how many calories we are putting into our bodies is relatively simple, trying to work out how many are going ‘out’ can sometimes make things a little bit more complicated.

If you’ve been on the healthy eating and weight loss bandwagon for a little while, you may have heard the term ‘ancient grains’ tossed around, especially in relation to eating trends like the paelo diet and other, wholefood eating plans.

Ancient grains, as the name suggests, are seeds and grains that have been rediscovered recently, even though they have a long history of being part of human nutrition. Quinoa, farro, amaranth and spelt are just a few of these so-called ‘ancient grains’ and they’re turning up in everything from bread to salads. The general literature suggests that these foods have remained unchanged for centuries, possibly even millenia, meaning that they are generally well tolerated by our bodies as we have been eating them for so long. They also tend to come in their raw form and need minimal, if any cooking or processing to be eaten and digested.

Hi Lose Baby Weight, here is my easy and practical recipe on how to make your own healthy eating smoothie cubes to use in your healthy mummy smoothie recipes

Ingredients for smoothie cubes

Pop in a blender, add a bit of water if it it isn’t blending well. Put into large ice cube trays (I am using baby food trays)

We love snacks that keep us going for hours and that can help with post pregnancy weight loss– and that’s exactly what this nifty little snack idea of spinach, orange and sunflower seeds will do for you.

Zingy, fresh, soft and crunchy, all at the same time, this yummy snack is perfect for keeping you going mid-morning and is perfect for your Lose Baby Weight healthy eating plan.

Health benefits of spinach

It’s well known that spinach is probably one of the healthiest veggies you can eat. Rich in iron and folic acid, like its dark green veggie cousins kale and cabbage,

Meditation has long been touted as one of the most simple positive activities you can undertake for good mental health. Recent research has shown that meditation can actually help to heal both the mind and body due to the profound changes regular practice promotes in the brain.

In our increasingly busy lives, finding time to ‘de-stress’ can be difficult. We lead a fast paced existence these days and are often encouraged to multi-task and strive to get more done in a day than ever before. While this no doubt has a positive effect on our productivity and the amount we achieve, living with high levels of stress can have a negative impact on your body.

If you’re looking for a wholesome and hearty meal that’s going to help you with your post pregnancy weight loss plan, then you should definitely include this Chinese Steamed Chicken Breast into your dinner menu.

The refreshing flavours of this dish also come with really good health benefits so that you can slim down your tummy and say goodbye to belly fat!

Chicken breast is great for weight loss because a plain piece of chicken breast does not carry any carbs or sugar but instead it’s filled with healthy protein.

It is also full of essential vitamins including vitamin E, B6 and B12 which encourages blood flow in your body and helps with the development of antibodies to fight infection.

Not only that, it’s especially good for a mums who are recovering after giving birth because it helps to prevent weakness, nausea, loss of appetite and postpartum depression.

Chicken breast is also very vital to your post pregnancy weight loss plan because it gives you a lot of energy for you to do more exercises and activities to burn calories and fat.

Earlier in the year Jennifer Graces won our weight loss mum of the month competition after sending in her fantastic weight loss success story and before and after pictures – you can see Jennifer’s story here.

Plus as a winner of our monthly competition Jennifer is also in the competition to win our weight loss mum of 2012 where YOU can win a $500 by voting for your favourite story – you can vote here and see other mums’ stories here.

And this week, Jennifer sent in her updated pictures and an update on how she has gone with her pregnancy weight loss 12 months on – you can see this below – Well done Jennifer!

Jennifer’s update

I am now 24kg down weighing in at 53kg that is down from my post pregnancy weight when I was 77kg 3 months after having my gorgeous baby boy.

When it comes to healthy eating and weight loss, research shows that we form our attitudes and relationship with food from a very young age. Good, not so good, or in between, there’s a good chance that the way we think about certain foods or food groups stems from observing people like our parents, caregivers and siblings.

We all know how important regular snacking is, when it comes to losing weight and eating healthily, but sometimes finding tasty food that’s filling AND nutritious can be difficult. When working out what to snack on, there are a couple of things we need to take into consideration. These are the nutritional content of the snack and the number of calories it contains.