Postpartum Stroller Workouts (with Baby!)

Lose the baby weight with these simple, hardworking exercises that use your baby and a stroller for extra resistance. Try these moves from the book Super Fit Mama: Stay Fit During Pregnancy and Get Your Body Back After Baby by Tracey Mallett.

You know those days when you wake up feeling totally refreshed because the baby slept soundly the night before? Your "To Do" list is only a few items long and you have endless stretches of time to spend with your baby, exercise, and pamper yourself? Yeah, right! The baby sleeps just long enough for you to throw in a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, and, if you're lucky, take a much-needed bathroom break. As a mom who has lived through the choppy, few-mintues to spare life with a baby, I've had to come up with some creative ways to sneak in exercise and lots of solutions for toning up and burning calories. The results are baby workouts on-the-go.

By using the baby as resistance—whether you're pushing a stroller up a hill or lifting him during strength moves—you're sure to get your heart pumping and burn baby fat fast. The good news is that with these exercises you don't have to worry about finding someone to watch your child because he or she will be right there with you. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to do this and what a wonderful, fun workout partner your little one can make.

BabyZone Editors' Note: The following workouts refer to the RPE (or Rates of Perceived Exhaustion) scale, a low-tech way to guage your workout efforts by determining whether you're able to talk during exercise. Chapter seven of Super Fit Mama delves into this further, but we'll clarify each intended RPE during the following workouts. Please remember that you need to get your doctor's or midwife's clearance to start any strenuous exercise.