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Started Gaining Weight After Delivery. What Should I Do To Lose Weight?
Question: Hi,
I'm 28 years old and have delivered a baby 7 weeks back. I had a normal delivery. Currently there are no health complaints post pregnancy. I breastfeed by baby.I see that I had put on almost 15kgs of my normal weight post pregnancy. I had to join back work in XXXXXXX I wanted to know what are the healthy ways of loosing weight while I breastfeed. I have gone through lot of articles online but wanted to know from an expert how to work on it and how gradually I should loose weight.Please suggest.
I'm 28 years old and have delivered a baby 7 weeks back. I had a normal delivery. Currently there are no health complaints post pregnancy. I breastfeed by baby.I see that I had put on almost 15kgs of my normal weight post pregnancy. I had to join back work in XXXXXXX I wanted to know what are the healthy ways of loosing weight while I breastfeed. I have gone through lot of articles online but wanted to know from an expert how to work on it and how gradually I should loose weight.Please suggest.
Hi, thanks for using health care magic
Remember some of the extra weight that you would have measured would be increased size of the breast to allow for breast feeding, you will have an extra 3 pounds of breast tissue for lactation.
Breast feeding itself should assist you in losing weight since producing one ounce of milk burns 26 calories.Your body would normally store fat from pregnancy to aid in breast feeding.In addition to this excess fat a woman is normally recommended to use at least 500 extra calories.
If your breast feed solely and frequently it would aid in your weight loss effort.
To assist you with this, however, you will need to eat a healthy diet and not use excess unhealthy foods with a high caloric content.
If you can use about 1800 calories a day which is slightly less than what is normally used, it will not compromise your breast milk supply but the slight decrease will facilitate weight loss when combined with the calories loss with feeding the baby.
Reduce or eliminate sodas and juices and use mainly water.
Use at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, in between meals use them as your snacks.
Since your are 7 weeks post delivery you can start mild exercising whatever form of exercise you are comfortable with.
Since exercise also utilises calories, if you find any problem with milk production with the exercise, you may have to cut it back.
Remember as they say, it took 9 mths to put it on and will take at least 9 mths to take it off.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask any other questions
Remember some of the extra weight that you would have measured would be increased size of the breast to allow for breast feeding, you will have an extra 3 pounds of breast tissue for lactation.
Breast feeding itself should assist you in losing weight since producing one ounce of milk burns 26 calories.Your body would normally store fat from pregnancy to aid in breast feeding.In addition to this excess fat a woman is normally recommended to use at least 500 extra calories.
If your breast feed solely and frequently it would aid in your weight loss effort.
To assist you with this, however, you will need to eat a healthy diet and not use excess unhealthy foods with a high caloric content.
If you can use about 1800 calories a day which is slightly less than what is normally used, it will not compromise your breast milk supply but the slight decrease will facilitate weight loss when combined with the calories loss with feeding the baby.
Reduce or eliminate sodas and juices and use mainly water.
Use at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, in between meals use them as your snacks.
Since your are 7 weeks post delivery you can start mild exercising whatever form of exercise you are comfortable with.
Since exercise also utilises calories, if you find any problem with milk production with the exercise, you may have to cut it back.
Remember as they say, it took 9 mths to put it on and will take at least 9 mths to take it off.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask any other questions
Above answer was peer-reviewed by :
Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar
Answered by
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