Your post-partum diet is primarily going to be determined by whether or not you are nursing. We’ll start with the assumption that you’re bottle feeding, since that comes with fewer instructions! If you are bottle feeding then you don’t have any unusual nutritional requirements you have to meet. The diet you were on when you first got pregnant is perfectly sufficient, although until the bleeding from the delivery stops you are going to want to consume a little more protein, iron and fluids than you would otherwise.

Of course, if your diet before you got pregnant wasn’t all that healthy to begin with then you may want to take advantage of the fact that you’ve basically spent the last nine months readjusting your eating habits and give your diet a kick start. The first thing you want to do is forget the words soda, candy, cookies and fast foods. These are all empty calories, and while the occasional chocolate fix is going to wonders for your nerves when you aren’t getting any sleep it’s not going to do anything to help you drop those pregnancy pounds.

Remember, it took you nine months to gain that pregnancy weight and it’s going to take you nine months to a year to lose it-if you’re Wonder Woman. It takes most women until their child is between eighteen months and two years to lose most of their pregnancy weight, and in about 90% of the cases an extra five or ten pounds hangs around just to remind them that they gave birth. (Like the sticky fingerprints on your windows weren’t enough!)

It’s important that you be prepared for this, because many women who fail to lose all of their pregnancy weight in the first six to nine months through healthy diet and exercise turn to crash dieting instead, urged forward by stars such as Uma Thurman and Reese Witherspoon that appear to look gorgeous and thin within weeks of giving birth. All of those stars that got their figures back within three or four months did it by hopping back into a strict diet and exercise regime long before you’re going to be ready (or able) to do so unless you have a nanny and a personal trainer, so don’t worry about it! Most people are going to be too busy looking at the little bundle of joy in your arms or your stroller to pay attention to the extra weight you’re carrying.

When you’re attempting to lose weight after giving birth and you don’t have to compensate for the fact that you’re nursing you can cut your caloric intake back to your pre-pregnancy RDA less 500 calories a day. Cutting 500 calories a day from your diet will allow you to lose a pound a week, a little more if you up your exercise regime as well. When you’re chopping those calories from your diet make sure that you’re doing it in the right places. You still need to take in your daily RDA of vitamins and minerals to recover properly and get back into shape. You’re not going to be able to do anything, including take care of your baby, if you’re anemic or malnourished.

As mentioned earlier the first place you want to start cutting calories is in your fats and sugars. If you spent pregnancy happily enjoying the fact that for the first time people actually expected you to gain weight you may have developed an incurable sweet tooth by this point in time. If you find yourself constantly gravitating toward sugary drinks and sweet or fatty foods this is the time to nip it in the bud. Right now your body is going to be fairly accommodating about losing the weight you gained while you were carrying a baby. Take advantage of that!