There may be a lot of perks to celebrity life, and access to all the top weight loss tools and resources is certainly one of them. After all, with the paparazzi waiting to snap photos of your post-pregnancy tum, the pressure is on to shed that baby weight as fast as possible. Still, even without their resources, and their excuse, for losing your pregnancy weight as quickly as the stars do, you can still benefit from their top tips and diet secrets.
1. High protein/low carbohydrate: The basic tenets of Jennifer Garner’s, Kate Hudson’s, Elizabeth Hurley’s and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ post-baby eating plan were low carbohydrate-based foods and a high protein intake. According to David Kirsch, trainer to supermodel Heidi Klum’s trainer, the best way to restore your body to its pre-pregnancy wellness is to cut down on starchy carbs like dairy and fruit for two weeks. Still, that’s not to say that these celebs found it easy to take care of their own wellbeing. Jennifer Garner explained, ‘It took me a long, long time. I just wasn’t that motivated. I wanted to play with her. Then I got on the treadmill, stopped stuffing my face and lost the weight. I cut out croissants, bagels and muffins – all the good stuff – and went back to having a salad once a day and protein.’
2. Food delivery services: As Uma Thurman doesn’t trust herself to eat the right foods, she has a food delivery service which tells her what to eat and how much. These food delivery services deliver portion-controlled healthy foods right to your door, and Uma reportedly lost 25 pounds in six weeks using this type of service. However, this may be too expensive as an option for we regular folk, and many people find they put all the weight back on, and then some, once they stop the service and re-enter the ‘real world’ of making their own meals.
3. Commercial weight loss programmes: Structured plans provide the tools you need to lose weight without the big price tag of delivery services. Jenny McCarthy, author of Belly Laughs: The Truth about Pregnancy and Childbirth, lost her 80 pounds of baby weight through Weight Watchers, and is now a spokesperson for the programme. Such diet plans provide more realistic, albeit slower, weight loss than your usual celebrity regime, which means it may be the best option for you.
4. Yoga: This is a favourite amongst celebrity mums such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, the latter of who keeps her 48-year-old body looking decades younger by following Ashtanga Yoga. This is a more aerobic and energetic form of the exercise. However, even regular yoga helped Gwyneth Paltrow to lose the 40 pounds she gained with her pregnancies. She noted, ‘It’s all lovely when you are pregnant; but when you are not pregnant and you haven’t been for a couple of months and you are still carrying tons of extra weight and everything’s all hanging and sagging, you think, How is this ever going to go back? But it does. If you do a lot of working out.’
5. Running: Again, this is one of Jennifer Garner’s top tips for losing baby weight, but singer Gwen Stefani also relied on running to burn calories and tone her lower body after giving birth. Still, even for Stefani it wasn’t easy, as she commented, ‘Let’s just talk about how hard it’s been. But it’s almost gone.’ However, it seems that the singer keeps it simple with running and a healthy diet, as she asserted, ‘I’ve just been eating healthy. I cheat every day at least once.’
6. Heidi Klum: As she went from having a second child to walking down the runway in a thong in just two months, Heidi Klum gets a special mention. She attributes her success to breast feeding, and her trainer David Kirsch for getting her body in runway shape. His top tip is ‘Get on the rowing machine. Get off the treadmill. It’s a bigger bang for your buck.’