When you read about breastfeeding one of the benefits listed is “breastfeeding helps you lose your baby weight.” For some women, this is true. They seem to go right back to their pre pregnancy weight with little or no effort. I hate these women, with their large breasts and skinny waists.
I am the Pregnancy Blogger here at families.com. I gave birth to my fourth baby in July. He’s now six months old and I’m no where near my pre pregnancy weight. I’m still wearing sweat pants. Only one pair of my pre pregnancy pants currently fit. When Lisa called for guest bloggers in weight loss, I jumped at the chance. I’m hoping that writing this blog every Saturday will help keep me on track to reach my weight loss goals.
Losing baby weight is always a challenge. There are special challenges for mothers who breastfeed their babies. You can’t restrict calories, as you would in a typical weight loss regimen. To restrict calories is dangerous for a few reasons: it can decrease your milk supply. Restricting carbs has a negative effect on your milk supply as well, so no Atkins diets.
Rapid weight loss can also cause toxins to be released from the stored fat in your body into the breast milk. When your baby ingests the milk, he will be taking in the toxins as well. Normally, flushing toxins from the body is considered to be a good thing. However, when the toxins are flushed into the milk that nourishes your baby, it’s not a good thing.
Losing weight very quickly makes the body burn stored fat, rather than sugars. This is known as ketosis and results in ketones being released into the bloodstream and breast milk. Ketones may alter the taste of the milk and cause a nursing strike. It’s not known what level of ketones are safe for the baby, but most experts advise that women avoid ketosis when breastfeeding.
Slow weight loss with a sensible diet and exercise is the safest way for breastfeeding moms to lose weight. Since I am not a person who loves aerobic exercise, this will be a challenge. I will be blogging on this topic every Saturday. Join me in the challenge and together we can find our pre baby bodies again!
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