Breastfeeding - Breastfeeding and Your Diet

Breastfeeding mothers need to be somewhat careful with their diet.

• Production of breastmilk requires you to spend an extra 500-800 calories a day.
• Part of this extra energy comes from fat stores laid down during pregnancy. This is why breastfeeding helps you return to your pre-pregnancy weight and shape sooner (or at all!).
• The rest comes from extra foods that you should eat.
• Breastmilk is ideally your baby's only food for about half a year, a major source of nutrition for a year, and still a good source of nutrition for as long as you continue breastfeeding (see the page on how long to breastfeed and the page on introducing solid foods).
• This means breastmilk contains all the necessary fats, proteins, sugars, vitamins, and minerals that a young baby needs, and most that an older baby needs.
• Your body needs to produce milk that contains all these nutrients. The nutrients have to come out of your body.
• If your diet is deficient in some of these nutrients, your breastmilk will still contain reasonable amounts of them. That means your own body will be robbed of them.
• If you are seriously malnourished, then your breastmilk may be deficient in some nutrients too. This is generally not a problem for mothers in industrialized nation, but it is a problem in many less fortunate areas of the world.
• Don't panic! All you need to do is to eat a reasonable variety of foods (which you should be doing anyway). Just eat a little extra of everything. Trust your hunger. Eat to satisfy hunger, not habit.

Important: It is not a good idea to go on a weight-loss diet while you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Well, most diets are never a good idea, but this is particularly important now because of the extra work your body needs to do. And remember: breastfeeding is helping you lose weight anyway. Just eat well and all will be fine.

Back to the breastfeeding main page

Dear Reader:  You can help us make this website even better!

We'd love to hear your comments about this article!  Scroll down to sound off!  All of our articles and ideas have come from our imagination and from reader submissions.  Please use this form to contact us if you have articles, crafts, activities, games, recipes, songs or poems that you would like to add to this website. Make sure to stop by our mom friendly forums too!

Webmasters and Authors:

We will gladly include a link back to your site or book in exchange for sharing your content.  Just contact us!

Bookmark

Email This

Hits: 3215

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Test

Testing comments

Mrs. ChildFun , January 21, 2009 | url

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Write comment

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment Preview