How soon after birth can I cut calories?

vegankid1990

Hi all,

I’m 10 days postpartum and wondering when I can start cutting some calories?

I’m breastfeeding pretty much exclusively.

I was about 10lbs overweight before pregnancy and now I’m about 40lbs overweight. 😵‍💫

Thanks in advance!

sollyn23l2

vegankid1990 wrote: »

Hi all,

I’m 10 days postpartum and wondering when I can start cutting some calories?

I’m breastfeeding pretty much exclusively.

I was about 10lbs overweight before pregnancy and now I’m about 40lbs overweight. 😵‍💫

Thanks in advance!

Be kind to yourself. Despite what instagram will show you, it takes time to recover from pregnancy and birth. While breastfeeding, I wouldn't recommend cutting calories, or at least not by much. You need calories to produce milk, and you don't want your milk supply to dry up (which it can definitely do as a self protective mechanism. You're body's 1st interest is keeping you alive, not baby. And if you don't have enough calories, your body's not gonna worry about trying to give away calories to baby).

csplatt

You should talk to your OBGYN about this. Breastfeeding burns hundreds of calories per day already. Plus you don’t want to hurt your milk supply by under fueling yourself.

cmriverside

Give yourself some time. Keep eating at the level recommended by your doctor and the weight WILL drop off. Baby will eat it.

I mean, that's how it works. . .but not in 10 days. You'll be okay.

gentlygently

I lost my extra baby weight through keeping up the breast feeding - by the time your lovely baby (congratulations!) is guzzling away in great quantities, you are likely to find this is nature’s way of helping you slim down again. So I suggest you rely on this mentally and don’t worry about calories so much for now.

Just try not to develop a daily slice of cake habit like I did …I lost weight whilst eating for England when I was breast feeding, it really uses a lot of calories. The daily cake habit proved hard to lose.

MacLowCarbing

Breast feeding will burn up mass calories as long as you don't let food cravings overpower you lol. I had 3 kids I bfed, if I stuck to healthy eating I lost a lot of weight, but the problem was I kept getting cravings for high calorie junk food and when I gave in I'd gain weight or stall on losing.

But as for how many calories, you should talk to your OBGYN or nutritionist. After delivering your body needs to do a lot of healing and it will burn up more calories doing that, and generally needs more for a while still... as well as needing more to keep up the milk supply. Eating nutritiously dense foods will certainly help your body get back in shape, keep your mind in a good state, as well as help you produce good, healthy milk.

Congrats on the little one!