Ditch the Scale for Better Postpartum Results
Why You Should Stop Tracking Your Weight Postpartum (And What to Focus On Instead)
A Personal Trainer's Guide to Postpartum Fitness, Visceral Fat, and Real Body Recovery
If you want your clothes to fit better after having a baby, there is one major habit you should stop immediately: tracking your weight on the scale.
As a personal trainer with 20 years of experience specializing in postpartum fitness, I’ve seen this scenario play out countless times. The scale simply measures total body mass—which includes water retention, breast milk, and digestion. In fact, as you begin strength training and building lean muscle, the number on the scale may actually go up, even while your body composition improves and your clothes fit better.
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Why Waist-to-Hip Ratio Matters More Than BMI
Body Mass Index (BMI) is an outdated metric that only considers your height and weight, ignoring muscle density and body composition entirely. A muscular athlete could easily be categorized as overweight by BMI standards, while someone with low muscle mass and higher body fat might fall into a "healthy" range.
For postpartum recovery, your waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio are far more accurate indicators of health and metabolic risk than BMI.
Understanding Visceral Fat vs. Subcutaneous Fat
To understand health outcomes after pregnancy, it helps to distinguish between two main types of fat:
Subcutaneous Fat: This is the fat directly under the skin that you can pinch. We can measure this with electronic tools, skinfold calipers, and underwater.
(I don’t think anyone should be subjected to skinfold testing after having a baby.) While body fat analyzers try to measure this, they are notoriously unreliable during the postpartum period. If you are breastfeeding, fluid shifts and milk production skew the reading significantly. We can measure this most accurately with water weighing, which isn’t going to be an option for most people.
Visceral Fat: This fat surrounds your internal organs and plays a major role in metabolic and cardiovascular health. Fortunately, visceral fat is highly responsive to consistent exercise and healthy habits. It does NOT respond with diet alone. In fact, recent studies have shown that eating more frequently throughout the day will improve your fat metabolism. Please continue to eat regular meals, especially if you are breastfeeding.
How to Target Postpartum Body Composition Safely
Trying to drop visceral fat through extreme calorie restriction or crash diets simply does not work long-term. Instead, sustainable results come from balanced movement and recovery.
By prioritizing progressive strength training, supportive cardiovascular endurance, adequate rest, and proper nutrition, your body composition will naturally shift over time, and your waistline will lean out.
Please note - if you are experiencing a “shelf” on your post-Cesarean abdomen, this is likely scar tissue. Your physical therapist can help you massage, and use alternative treatments like cupping to increase blood flow and healing to this area.
If you are experiencing some pelvic floor dysfunction, low back pain, and noticing a “dome” when you cough or do abdominal exercise, these are symptoms attributed with diastasis recti abdominis. Please go HERE for more information.
A Personal Reality Check: Be Kind to Your Body
To put scale weight in perspective: three days after birthing my first child—a 6 lb 11 oz baby boy, plus the placenta, fluid, and extra blood volume—I stepped on the scale and had only lost 3 pounds!
My body was holding onto massive amounts of fluid, and my milk supply was coming in. Instead of obsessing over numbers, I checked in with how my abdomen felt and tracked how my strength returned over time.
Birthing a child is physically comparable to surviving a major accident. Your body needs time, nourishment, and rest to heal properly. Shift your focus to rebuilding strength and restoring sleep—the physical transformation will follow naturally.
Please visit my program page for Postpartum Strength training programs. I offer many different varieties of workouts, including Barre, MamaShred (my signature strength and cardio-building workout), Pilates, and more. Subscribe to MomTrainer.com to create your log-in, then simply select the one that fits your goals and you'll be ready to start immediately.
Need more help? Reach out to me here. I keep office hours on Tuesday and Thursdays. xoSA
Sources: Mayo Clinic on visceral fat and sleep
Recent study on Visceral fat and cortisol
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