Want to get back into shape? Here's where to start

If you've had a vaginal delivery then you can start exercising sooner, possibly even within two weeks of giving birth, but don't rush back to exercise if you don't feel up to it, the most important use of your time right no is getting used to being a mother and settling in with your baby.

You might be bombarded with images of skinny celebs who got back into shape within 2 months of giving birth, but it's perfectly naturally for you to carry more weight than usual at this time, and rushing back to your pre-pregnancy weight in a couple of months is not necessarily healthy for you or your baby, particularly if you're breastfeeding: this isn't the time for dieting.

Exercise is though, an important to your role as a new mum. It's not all about the cosmetics of losing weight and getting back you're your skinny jeans, more importantly it's about making sure that you're a fit and healthy parent and can benefit from the extra energy that regular exercise provides. Once you do feel up to getting back to exercising here are our top tips for making it work for you.

1. Start slow - Your body has been through a lot with pregnancy and birth and demands on your energy as a new mum are high, so be careful not to overreach yourself in the beginning. Gentle activities such as walking and swimming are a good way to ease your body back into exercise, particularly if you managed to keep them up during pregnancy. Start with a modest amount of exercise too - even a twenty-minute walk can be quite demanding when you've just had a baby - and build up slowly, walking or swimming a little further each day. You want to exercise just enough that after a short recovery period you feel brighter and more energetic - if you're just left feeling tired and drained you've gone too far.

2. Start light - If you're used to a lot of exercise and strength training you might be tempted to reach for the weights to get your metabolism going and shift fat, but remember, your joints aren't as stable as they were before pregnancy. During pregnancy your joints adapted to accommodate the extra pregnancy weight and to allow for a vaginal delivery and it will take a while for them to return to normal, particularly with pregnancy hormones still swishing around in your body. So if you like weight training use only light weights to start with and increase the intensity slowly and gradually.

3. Break it down - If you gained more weight than you'd hoped during pregnancy the task of getting back into your old clothes can seem like a huge and demoralising mountain. And the mountain isn't going to shrink over night. The best way to make your ultimate goal seem more manageable is to set clear and realistic targets, breaking your weight-loss down into achievable chunks and not focusing on the weight itself, but on positive achievements, like fitting in 5 sessions of exercise a week, building up to walking for forty minutes, gaining a sense of renewed energy from your exercise. That way you can celebrate as you tick off each small step along the way. And the first step to tick off should be…

4. Establish a routine - If you don't make a special effort to incorporate exercise into your regular routine it will always be one of those things that falls to the bottom of the pile. While as a new mum you ultimately have to be flexible, as your baby's needs are paramount, that doesn't mean you can't plan a broad regular routine that suits both you and your baby - and the earlier you get into the habit of including exercise into that routine, the easier it'll be to keep it up.

5. Be creative - You might find it easier to fit exercise into your routine if you're creative about exercise that you can take with your baby or fit around her routine. That might be a simple regular walk in the park in the early weeks, jogging along with your pushchair (your baby will probably love being out and about and find the motion of the pushchair soothing), going to a special mother and baby exercise class or simply putting some music on at home and dancing around.

6. Don't obsess over the scales - The numbers on the scale tell only part of the story of how you're doing at getting back into shape. As you increase the amount of exercise you do you'll be developing muscle, which weighs more than fat, so even when you're burning fat the line on the scale may stay stubbornly still for a while. Focus instead for the first few months on your changing shape, how you feel and how much energy you have and don't expect weight loss to be anything other than very gradual. If you need reducing numbers to motivate you then try getting out your tape measure and measure your bust, waist, hips, biceps and thighs and notice how they get smaller.

7. Find a partner - Some people are very good at setting their own aims and sticking to them, others of us need support and a sense of teamwork. If you find that you're rather to good at cancelling appointments with yourself to exercise then you can try making appointments with someone else. For the rich and famous this might take the shape of a personal trainer, but the same kind of support is open to we mere mortals: try asking your partner to join in exercise with you or if you have a friend with a baby as her. If you make an appointment with someone else you'll be far less likely cancel as you won't want to let them down.

8. Choose exercise you enjoy - You'll be far more likely to stick to your exercise programme if you have fun while you're doing it, so choose the forms of exercise that you most enjoy, not necessarily the ones that should have the fastest return. There's no point opting to burn calories faster with a long run when you take any excuse to avoid going for a run - a more gentle swim or yoga session that you look forward to will be more rewarding in the long run. If you're not exercising with your baby then this will be one of the few times in a day that you truly have to yourself, so try to make the most of it.