Nine long months of pregnancy have come to an end, and it seems to the young mother that now nothing prevents her from regaining her former shape and easily losing extra pounds. However, it should be remembered that after the birth of the baby, your body will continue to require a lot of food, especially when breastfeeding. To lose weight in this case, resorting to the help of exhausting diets, is not possible. The only thing you achieve by starving is, at best, a deterioration in the quality of breast milk, and at worst, its complete loss.
Therefore, if you want to learn about how to lose weight while breastfeeding without harming your baby, you should understand the following: the human body has the ability to store fats for the future, providing itself with a reserve of energy in case of starvation. During breastfeeding, your body needs up to 750 calories per day above normal to produce nutritious milk for your baby. In order for the body to start burning fat, rather than eaten food, professional nutritionists advise nursing mothers to reduce their calorie overconsumption to 500 per day. Then the body will take the remaining 250, burning “reserve reserves”. If you follow these instructions, your body will begin to bounce back.
What can I eat with breastfeeding?
Everything that a nursing mother eats directly affects the quality and quantity of breast milk. To keep the baby healthy and well-fed, your body needs nutrients. And the right selection of products is very important for those mothers who want to know how to lose weight while breastfeeding. So, the general rules:
1. The diet of a nursing mother must necessarily contain foods rich in zinc: meat, legumes, eggs, fish and seafood. Zinc normalizes the immune system, improves the recovery of damaged cells and tissues, is an important component for the healthy growth and development of your baby. In smaller quantities, it is found in wheat germ, whole grains and miso soy paste, and its daily rate is 25 mg.
2. An equally important substance for a nursing mother is calcium - the main component of milk, cheese, yogurt. You should not avoid these products: when you are breastfeeding, the main question is about the health of your baby, and not about how to lose weight. When breastfeeding per day, it is necessary to consume a minimum rate of calcium of 1200 mg so that the body can produce milk for the newborn. In the event of a deficiency of this substance, the body will begin to use calcium, which is located in the bones of the mother. Dairy products can be partially replaced with calcium-rich green leafy vegetables and canned sardines, salmon and salmon (calcium is mainly found in their bones).
3. Iron, which is responsible for the level of hemoglobin in the blood, can be found in foods such as animal liver, oysters, spinach, beans and peas. On a day, a nursing mother is expected to receive at least 27 mg of iron with food (partly with the help of special nutritional supplements).
4. Breast milk is 50% water, so it is recommended that you drink it as often as possible with freshly squeezed fruit juice. And the consumption of tea, coffee and soda should be reduced to 2 cups per day.
Remember that extra pounds during pregnancy accumulated slowly, and you need to get rid of them too slowly. Thinking about how to lose weight while breastfeeding, you should not go to extreme measures and exhaust yourself with diets. Instead, it’s better to properly organize your diet, which, together with a small set of daily exercises, will help you gradually lose excess weight and not harm your baby.