Breastfeeding allows you to burn a lot of calories while producing milk. Despite that, our body still needs plenty of calories in this breastfeeding period! How To Lose Weight While Breastfeeding will require a healthy diet, exercise!
Evidently, A woman gains approximately 25-35 pounds of pregnancy weight. Half of which is lost at the time of childbirth. That is the sum-up weight of your baby, placenta, amniotic fluids.
Mothers also notice a constant weight loss in the first week of their postpartum. This weight usually comprises of the extra leftover fluids in your body. What’s left of this pregnancy weight gain is the fat reserve. That requires efforts!
Breastfeeding & Lose Weight While Breastfeeding
It’s a piece of constant news, nursing mothers do not need a special diet in order to meet their milk demands. Similarly, to lose weight while breastfeeding doesn’t require special demands either.
A healthy diet is a must while breastfeeding. You need approximately 1500-1800 calories per day to meet your breastmilk demands! It’s important to not come in between your necessary daily intake.
There is always a way for you to lose weight without disturbing your health, your child’s health & milk production! It will take time and the process might be slow but it will be the best choice for yourself, your baby & your weight!
How To Lose Weight While Breastfeeding?
Mothers can make necessary cuts in their diet to keep themselves fit without any side effects. We broadly talked about foods to avoid while breastfeeding. Including these, a balanced diet and healthy exercise, we can get past pregnancy weight.
Our body stores extra fat because it’s a great source of energy. But this stored fat, if not used can turn out to be harmful. After eliminating the placenta, amniotic fluid’s weight, our body is left with a 6-8 pound fat reserve.
To lessen this fat, we need to major our fat intake into a healthy configure and use that extra reserved fat into exercise.
The three important macro-nutrients — protein, carbohydrate, fats are necessary requirements of our body. Given our calorie intake(Say, 2000 calories), we need 65-70% carbohydrate intake per day. 25% fat intake per day in accords with 2000 calories. 0.8 gm every kg of your body weight.
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1. Breastfeeding Diet To Lose Weight.
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Carbohydrate:
When breastfeeding, you need at least 1800 calories to meet your daily body demands. To that ratio, you need to consume 65-75% carbohydrate. That makes up for 225-325 grams of carbohydrate per day.
Healthy Crabs include unprocessed grains, that did not go through grinding. If you want to lose weight, do not opt for processed, grind grains or flour.
Choose grains that are close to being natural. These carbs include Brown Rice, Whole Oat, Barley. You can also gain carbs through fruits & vegetables. Fruits have a higher content of carbs than veggies and lower than whole grain.
Divide your carb intake between fruits/veggies and whole grains that are not processed and are close to being natural. DO not forget, you must intake 300 gm carbohydrates per day!
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Fats:
Fats are a necessary part of your diet! You cannot go without fats. Don’t ever believe in cutting off fats to lose weight. It’s a big myth that goes around — Fat is unhealthy. There also many myth about breastfeeding that go around. Do check these breastfeeding myths & facts to stay clear from myths!
Your body requires 25% fat in every 1800 calories per day! That sums up to 45-50 gm fat intake per day per 1800 calories.
Healthy Fats include monounsaturated & polyunsaturated fats. Do not opt or saturated fats/trans fats. These Healthy fats include Avocados, Nuts, Chia Seeds, Cheese(surprisingly), Eggs, Fatty Fishes, Olive Oil!
Credibility: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577766/. More about healthy Fat & its sources: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-super-healthy-high-fat-foods#section8
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Proteins:
Your body requires 0.8 gm of protein per kilogram of your body weight. Protein does not count for your body’s energy resources. Protein is the main building block of the body. It repairs and generates tissues.
Also note, if your body is not met with enough carbohydrate & fat intake. Your body will use up the protein. SO make sure you intake enough Carbohydrates & Fats!
Protein Sources Include Lean Meat, Poultry, Legumes, Beans, Eggs, Milk, Yogurt, Nuts, etc. Credibility: https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/protein
2. Exercises To Do While Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding in itself is an exercise. Breastfeeding burns 200-500 Calories per day! Statics also show, women who breastfeed lose more weight than ones who chose not to.
Postpartum should be as gentle as it can be. That being said, you must not overdo exercises. Your body still needs the calories to breastfeed. Don’t invest all your energy into exercising!
You can start simply through Walking and get in step by step.
- Walking: Stoll with your baby in the park or take a bit time out for yourself and walk in the park for 10-15 minutes or as per your needs.
- Jogging: Add jogging in your walking schedule after a week or so. Do it for 5 minutes and increase the time when it seems convenient!
- Yoga: Yoga doesn’t ask for much movement and still manages to loosen up your body. Yoga can cleanse your insides. Do it in the morning with the sun-rise. The aroma would be something else!
- Dancing: C’mon. That’s allowed! A little dancing won’t just burn extra fat but will also refresh you in and out!
- Stretching: Don’t overdo stretching. Simple, easy stretching would be enough!
3. Foods To Avoid While Breastfeeding & Losing Weight
Along with foods to avoid while breastfeeding also avoid sugary food, unhealthy snacks, saturated, trans fat, processed food!
These include French Fries or any sort of fried food. Sugary drinks, Empty calorie snacks, candy bars, artificially sweetened food products, too much sugar, processed flour, white bread!
Conclusion
This is ‘How to lose weight while breastfeeding!?’ like a pro. DO not forget, you are beautiful with or without body weight! Don’t overdo yourself. Your pregnancy weight was the need for months. It will take time to get rid of it! Be patient and don’t stop eating a healthy diet! Until then,
Adios!