Men will never (ever) understand this. Is there anything harder than trying to lose the baby fat after pregnancy? Oh! My! God!

Seriously, keeping in shape is hard enough to begin with. But once you get pregnant, forget about it.

Agreed?

But here's the thing. Weight has pretty much always been a problem for me since around my junior year in college. For some reason, it wasn't the Freshman 15 that hit me -- more like the Junior 35!

And things only got worse once I got married (my husband is a chef in a New York City restaurant, which is both a blessing and a curse, know what I mean?) and got pregnant.

But the good news is that I know it's actually possible to successfully -- AND SAFELY -- lose weight after pregnancy. I know because I did it.

I won't lie and say it was easy. There are a LOT of diets out there -- some of them work, but most of them are worthless.

I want to tell you about the ones that work.

(By the way, you can click on any of the links here to go right to the sites I'm talking about!)

I'm speaking from experience here, and the experiences of my friends who went through the same thing. So if you want to know what works from REAL MOMS, not some snake-oil salesmen, then you've come to the right place.

The diet that worked best for me, and a lot of my friends, was actually South Beach. (Click on the link to check it out -- you'll get a free diet profile for your trouble, which can be really informative.)

Some people say making it through Phase 1 -- the most restrictive part of it -- is hard. But I never thought it was.

I mean what's so hard about a diet that lets you eat bacon and a veggie omelet for breakfast? Some people miss things like cereal or whatever, but like I said, that was never a problem for me.

I lost about 10 pounds in the first 10 days (pretty much what they claim I think), and then maybe another 5 over the next three weeks. So in the first month I dropped about 15 pounds. I'll take it!

So if you're asking me, I'd recommend South Beach. (You can click on the link and take a tour of the diet to see what it's all about.)

But it's not the only one out there.

Jess, one of my friends who couldn't deal with with South Beach's carb restrictions, found something she loved called Medifast.

I had actually never heard of it before she told me about it. Turns out it's like one of the most respected diet programs in the world (I think I read somewhere that Forbes named it one of it's top small companies, but don't quote me on that.)

You really should check it out here. (Click on the link.)

I see what she eats on it, and could defintitely see myself doing it, but since South Beach is working for me, and I like it, I don't want to mess with success.

There is one other program that people are raving about, and that's eDiets.

But we're still waiting for results on that one. (One of our friends, who shall remain nameless, has just started on one of the plans from over there. Once we see how she does we'll definitely report back.)

So there you have it.

Two definite plans we'd recommend -- South Beach and Medifast.

And one that looks very promising -- eDiets -- but we need just a little more time with that one first.

Hope that helps!

And please leave a comment below to let me know how you make out. We always want to hear about other plans that work (and ones that don't)!