We all heard that you shouldn’t limit your calories while breastfeeding. But this is a very general guideline. Define “limit” in relation to the individual lifestyle. Are you eating a pack of cookies a day in addition to your regular foods? Should you limit that? What are your regular foods?
One of the ways nature ensures the breastfeeding mother will have sufficient stores of energy is the weight gain of pregnancy. Part of that weight gain were … fat stores! So, normally, if you gained the recommended amount of weight in pregnancy (or, like most of us, you gained more), it follows that you have some good stores of energy for milk production.
I personally believe that the first few months of lactation are indeed a time when calories should not be restricted. For many reasons: first of all, the mother is recovering from whatever type of birth she had, so she needs more calories and more protein. In addition to that, lactation is still being established, so the first 2 months are crucial in getting adequate nutrition to support lactation.
By the time your baby is 3 months, if the baby is thriving, and mom’s lactation is well-established (it should be– you’re probably building up your “frozen milk bank” by now), you can start thinking about avoiding overconsumption. Your ally is the fact that breastfeeding requires a lot of calories, each ounce of breastmilk has 20 calories, and, depending on several factors, you are producing anywhere from 15 to 40 oz in a day, maybe even more, especially if you have twins or a large size baby that is thriving, when baby is 6 to 12 months old. On the other hand, breastfeeding mothers have voracious appetites–prolactin stimulates appetite!
Why should you worry about weight loss at all? What kind of coquette or selfish mother would have her weight or appearance on her mind when she has a little infant in her arms? I will try to post over the course of the next days a few thoughts and facts, to answer the question “why lose weight?”
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