To lose the pregnancy weight as quickly as you’d like, and feel healthier as you go through your postpartum period, it’s important to take good care of yourself. Getting enough nutrients is especially critical during this crucial time.

Here are five tips for eating well to encourage a healthy you.

1. Healthy, More Youthful Skin

You’ll need healthy skin to heal after giving birth. And what the body benefits from at this time is collagen. The name itself provides some clues as it’s based on ancient Greek where part of the word translates as ‘glue.’ Similarly, collagen helps skin cells to work together for skin repair and development.

Collagen is also useful for keeping the skin looking more youthful. The hydrolyzed collagen's anti-aging properties ensure your skin will retain a healthy glow. While you can get collagen and its 18 amino acids from various foods like eggs, beans or chicken, sometimes there is insufficient supply for mothers with a newborn. Supplementation is often the answer to this problem.

2. Skip the Baked Goods

The flour and excess of sugar contained in most baked goods aren’t good for pregnant women or new mothers.

While they no doubt smell great as you walk past the bakery with the stroller, resist the temptation to go inside and pick out a croissant or puff pastry of your choosing. Sadly, these provide too few of the ingredients and nutrients, which are needed at this important time.

3. Get Enough Omega-3's

The general advice with fish consumption during pregnancy is that certain types are to be avoided because they absorb methylmercury from the water, which ultimately can cause nervous system issues for the unborn child. However, the advice is different after the baby is born.

Adding fish back into your diet once again is an excellent idea. It provides more variety in protein sources too. The Omega-3 fatty acids from salmon, albacore tuna and lake trout can offer various benefits, including:

1. Fighting depression
2. Reducing the risk of heart disease
3. Better eye health
4. Reduced plaque in the arteries
5. Cutting inflammation
6. Warding off cognitive declines
7. Cutting fat in the liver

4. Prepare Food Ahead of Time

Preparing meals for yourself one-by-one is time-consuming and difficult to maintain when you’re constantly being interrupted. Babies like to be held and so it’s also hard to have time alone to cook nutritiously on a daily basis.

Batch cooking by preparing several portions of the same dish and freezing them for later reheating or sticking in the microwave saves a lot of time. Preparing from scratch can be done when time allows with the daily food prep time reduced to just a few minutes each time. Once you start preparing meals in batches, it won’t make sense to do it any other way!

5. Antioxidant-rich Diet

Getting enough antioxidants is always difficult to do when not eating healthily enough. Having sufficient antioxidants is important because they protect your cells from the risk of free radicals. Free radicals are a danger in developing cancer, heart disease, and more.

The recipe for getting more antioxidants is simple. Consume more fresh fruits and vegetables in your daily diet. If you tend to eat more protein than you should, aim to have a better balance of vegetables like leafy greens on the plate, or a salad to balance it out. Fruit is also a healthy snack between meals if you don’t have too much of it.

By taking care of your diet and caring for what your body needs in the postpartum period, you should find recovery easier. Not doing so will make everything a bit more of a struggle, so it’s worth putting in the extra effort to eat right.