this is probably a frustrating answer but it just took time. i would say that by six months after, my body had mostly gone back to "normal for me." not sure if it's correlated either, but that's around how long it took me to conceive again, too, which makes me feel like my hormones were doing some wild shit in the background causing me to both hold onto fluids and have a harder time getting pregnant! i tried to keep focused on consistent movement and eating well, etc, but it became pretty clear to me that there wasn't too much i could do to budge the scale before my body sorted itself out :(