Serves: 5
The process of breast-feeding may promote an accelerated rate of fat loss in your body if you're fully satisfying your body's caloric and nutritional needs. However, if you are slightly "under-eating," not balancing your meals, and not keeping your daily fat intake at about 20%, your body may perceive a threat of starvation that affects not one, but two people. Therefore, your body may decide to begin storing fat for two people, or it may simply retain the extra fat it may already have stored during pregnancy.
Three Water / Veggie / Grain / Protein / Fruit meals, plus three good- sized "veggie plus other food" snacks, are an excellent way to feed your baby, feed your lean muscle, and starve your fat!
If your calorie requirement for comfortable satisfaction when not nursing is 1,800 to 2,500 calories, your calorie requirement while nursing could easily be 1,000 calories more than that, especially if you don't supplement your baby with other food.
When my babies reached about 18 pounds (which occurred when they were about six months old--I had big babies!), my caloric intake averaged about 3,800 a day. I was never full, but my babies were. They were very healthy and happy and I couldn't keep my weight on--for a brief period, I actually got a little too thin. But if I didn't eat enough, and didn't completely follow the Lean & Free nutrient-balance guidelines, I would be stuck with a couple of sizes to lose.
Occasionally, there is a complication that requires an adjustment in this plan. For instance, one of my children had severe stomach aches. He would scream and stiffen from the pain all day long. He weighed only twelve pounds when he was five months old. My child's doctor suspected a dairy allergy and had me omit all dairy products from my own diet. My baby's stomach aches and his mucous-filled cough immediately stopped his complexion went from white to rosy and in one month he gained five pounds. I proceeded to nurse this child for 18 months. During the last six months, I added a lot of good solid foods to his diet, and a few dairy products to mine. He could tolerate a few dairy products "through me" after he was a year old.
At twelve years old, this child is still allergic to dairy products, but he does tolerate small amounts of them (with acidophilus added). I believe he tolerates them better because I nursed him and introduced dairy products gradually into his diet.
This Breast Feeding recipe is from the Cook'n Lite & Healthy Cookbook. Download this Cookbook today.
"I must say this is the best recipe software I have ever owned."
-Rob
"Your DVO cookbook software saves me time and money!"
-Mary Ann
"Call it nutrition software, meal planning software, cooking software, recipe manager, or whatever you want. It is the software I use to stay healthy!"
-David
"Your software is the best recipe organizer and menu planner out there!"
-Toni
"Thank you so very much for creating such a wonderful cooking recipe program. I think this is the best recipe program there is!"
-Sarah
"I saw lots of recipe software for PC computers but I was having a hard time finding really good mac recipe software. I'm so glad I discovered Cook'n! It's so nice to have all my recipes in a computer recipe organizer. Cook'n has saved me so much time with meal planning and the recipe nutrition calculator is amazing!!!
-Jill
My favorite is the Cook'n Recipe App.
-Tom
