Promoting a healthy weight after delivery

Abstract

There are over 1.4 million overweight or obese women who become pregnant each year in the United States. The postpartum period may be a critical period for postpartum weight retention, long-term weight gain, and chronic obesity for young women. Achieving a healthy weight after delivery in women who were overweight or obese prior to pregnancy should be possible, but will require the use of relevant, evidence-based lifestyle interventions. There is a lack of consensus from medical and public health policy organizations about how lifestyle interventions should be implemented in the postpartum period. Differences in recommendations may be due in part to limited and inconsistent evidence of the effectiveness of postpartum interventions on weight loss. Larger-scale trials with rigorous methodology, diverse study samples, and consistent outcome measures are needed to confirm intervention effectiveness in the postpartum period. The translation and dissemination of evidence- based interventions to high-risk populations deserves further attention.