Pregnancy weight loss is not one size fits all—just ask Kourtney Kardashian.
The famous mom is certainly no stranger when it comes to the highs and lows of pregnancy. After all, she's done it three times. Now, in a newly penned essay titled "How I Got My Body Back After Kids" on her wellness website, Poosh, the longtime reality star kept things real as she recalled her weight loss process after having each of her children, Mason, 10, Penelope, 7, and Reign, 5.
To start, she gained the exact same amount of weight each time: 40 pounds. However, as she acknowledged, "My body and my experience after having each of my kids was so different. I was in a different place mentally, emotionally, and physically, even if by just a couple years."
The star went on to explain how, after having her first child, she stuck to running, at-home workouts and more than a year of breastfeeding, which helped her burn calories and maintain a healthy diet. "I recommend breastfeeding for as long as you can, if you can—the first full year," she wrote. "It forces you to eat super clean for your baby, drink much less alcohol and caffeine, and hydrate with a ton of water." Kardashian also noted that she would cut out a snack and monitor her sugar if her weight became stagnant.
After welcoming her daughter nearly three years later, Kardashian said she was still doing "mellow workouts," but "it was harder to get my body back. After about two years, I felt really ready to be in the best shape I could be in and started getting into intense workouts."
While she started exercising with a trainer doing HIIT workouts, she put them on pause when she got pregnant with her second son a few months later.
"I couldn't wait to get back on my high-intensity schedule after the pregnancy, and it felt so good to jump back into it. Especially because I was going through the breakup with Scott [Disick], I found that these workouts helped crush my anxiety," she explained. The mom credited HIIT workouts with making "the biggest difference" and noted that while they were hard, she grew to crave the intensity.
Ultimately, she advised, "The most important thing is to listen to your body and to do what you're doing for you, not for society's standards of getting your body back, because they are unrealistic."