Post Partum
Your post-partum diet is primarily going to be determined by whether or not you are nursing. We’ll start with the assumption that you’re bottle feeding, since that comes with fewer instructions! If you are bottle feeding then you don’t have any unusual nutritional requirements you have to meet. The diet you were on when you first got pregnant is perfectly sufficient, although until the bleeding from the delivery stops you are going to want to consume a little more protein, iron and fluids than you would otherwise.
Of course, if your diet before you got pregnant wasn’t all that healthy to begin with then you may want to take advantage of the fact that you’ve basically spent the last nine months readjusting your eating habits and give your diet a kick start. The first thing you want to do is forget the words soda, candy, cookies and fast foods. These are all empty calories, and while the occasional chocolate fix is going to wonders for your nerves when you aren’t getting any sleep it’s not going to do anything to help you drop those pregnancy pounds.
Remember, it took you nine months to gain that pregnancy weight and it’s going to take you nine months to a year to lose it-if you’re Wonder Woman. It takes most women until their child is between eighteen months and two years to lose most of their pregnancy weight, and in about 90% of the cases an extra five or ten pounds hangs around just to remind them that they gave birth. (Like the sticky fingerprints on your windows weren’t enough!)
It’s important that you be prepared for this, because many women who fail to lose all of their pregnancy weight in the first six to nine months through healthy diet and exercise turn to crash dieting instead, urged forward by stars such as Uma Thurman and Reese Witherspoon that appear to look gorgeous and thin within weeks of giving birth. All of those stars that got their figures back within three or four months did it by hopping back into a strict diet and exercise regime long before you’re going to be ready (or able) to do so unless you have a nanny and a personal trainer, so don’t worry about it! Most people are going to be too busy looking at the little bundle of joy in your arms or your stroller to pay attention to the extra weight you’re carrying.
When you’re attempting to lose weight after giving birth and you don’t have to compensate for the fact that you’re nursing you can cut your caloric intake back to your pre-pregnancy RDA less 500 calories a day. Cutting 500 calories a day from your diet will allow you to lose a pound a week, a little more if you up your exercise regime as well. When you’re chopping those calories from your diet make sure that you’re doing it in the right places. You still need to take in your daily RDA of vitamins and minerals to recover properly and get back into shape. You’re not going to be able to do anything, including take care of your baby, if you’re anemic or malnourished.
As mentioned earlier the first place you want to start cutting calories is in your fats and sugars. If you spent pregnancy happily enjoying the fact that for the first time people actually expected you to gain weight you may have developed an incurable sweet tooth by this point in time. If you find yourself constantly gravitating toward sugary drinks and sweet or fatty foods this is the time to nip it in the bud. Right now your body is going to be fairly accommodating about losing the weight you gained while you were carrying a baby. Take advantage of that!
Following the basic guidelines laid out by the Sonoma Diet is a great way to go about weaning yourself from unhealthy foods and getting your dietary habits back on track for a lifetime of healthy eating. The Sonoma Diet essentially puts you through a 10 day “Boot Camp” that takes away your sugars, fats and high calorie foods while still ensuring that you eat enough of the nutrients you need to be both healthy and, believe it or not, full. Although you’ll be cutting your portion sizes you’ll be eating foods that fill you up faster and keep you filled up longer, so it’s one diet you actually won’t have to suffer on!
The first 10 days of the Sonoma Diet require you to abstain from eating or drinking anything that doesn’t fall into one of the following categories:
1) Water
2) Unsweetened tea with lemon (hot or cold)
3) Black coffee
4) Fresh green vegetables, such as celery, spinach (which is exceptionally good raw) or broccoli, which you can eat as much of as you want
5) Whole grain breads (3 servings/day)
6) Low fat protein sources (lean meats, legumes, eggs) (3 servings/day)
7) Dairy (in small portions) 1 serving/day
At the end of the ten days you’ll be able to see a noticeable difference in your weight and you’ll find that the cravings you had for soda, potato chips and sweet stuff has begun to wane. After that you’ll be permitted to slip different types of vegetables into your diet, such as carrots and peas, as well as an increased number dairy servings and two to three servings a day of healthy fruits. You can visit www.sonomadiet.com for more information and recipes (which are available without having to join the program) or pay a visit to your local library. The book form of the diet is probably available somewhere nearby.
The Sonoma Diet is simply a quick way to jump start your weight loss and get you started on a healthy course of eating. It isn’t by any means the only way to go, so if you don’t want to spend the money on the program don’t worry about it! Following the guidelines mentioned above for after the first ten days, attempting to cut sugary sweets and drinks out of your diet and not allowing yourself to overeat (eating even though you aren’t really hungry because everyone else is or because you do not want to allow it to go to waste) will go a long way toward helping you lose that pregnancy belly.
If you are nursing you are going to want to be a little more careful with what you eat. Some foods can enter your breast milk and affect your baby, so you are going to want to choose wisely. Listed below are some common foods that cause problems in breast fed babies, so it would be wise to steer clear of them for a while longer.
• Caffeine. You wouldn’t let your baby drink coffee from a bottle, which is exactly what it’s going to do when you drink a cup and then breastfeed. While the occasional cup of Joe is unlikely to hurt anything, regularly giving your baby caffeine could result in a budding young insomniac-the last thing you need when they’re not sleeping through the night anyway.
• Spicy foods often bleed through into your breast milk and cause gassiness and fussiness in your baby, particularly if you did not eat them regularly during pregnancy.
• Alcohol. An occasional drink of alcohol is okay (after all, you managed to wait for nine months) but more than one drink can bleed through into breast milk. If you have had more than one drink, or plan to have more than one drink, wait two hours after you finish your last before nursing again. Moderate to heavy drinking that would result in alcohol remaining in your blood stream for several hours is strongly discouraged when you’re nursing.
• Dairy products. This is going to be a trial and error determination, as you certainly need to still get your RDA of calcium while you’re nursing. If your baby appears to be fussy or gassy after nursing when you have been consuming high quantities of dairy products, or if they display allergy or intolerance symptoms such as hives, diarrhea, vomiting or eczema, try cutting back to see what happens.
Aside from alcohol and caffeine your diet isn’t going to be all that limited while you’re nursing. If you notice that your baby is particularly unhappy after a feeding or more colicky than normal at the end of the night take the time to go back through and think about what you ate that day. Was it anything you ate that they may have reacted to before?
Finding out whether a breastfed baby has a food allergy or intolerance is much more difficult than with a bottle-fed baby, and it is going to require a great deal of sleuthing on your part. For example, say that you had the Kung Pao chicken for dinner. It’s now two in the morning and your little angel is still screaming. You remember that this happened the last time that someone brought Chinese home as well. Eliminating Chinese food from your diet may alleviate the symptoms, or you may have to try something else. With a little trial and error you should be able to get a fairly accurate determination of the problem long before it becomes a major issue.