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Why You’re Not Losing Weight While Breastfeeding

4 REASONS WHY YOU’RE NOT LOSING WEIGHT WHILE BREASTFEEDING

“Breastfeeding makes your baby weight melt right off.”, “Breastfeeding burns SO many calories so your weight will just come right off.” Have you heard these types of statements made?

Sadly, this is not completely true! This does happen to some lucky mamas but NOT everyone!

There has been some studies comparing breastfeeding mamas vs non-breastfeeding mamas and some of the breastfeeding mamas actually gain 1 kg more!

You might even have lost a lot of weight the first few weeks after having your baby but then hit a plateau. So frustrating, right!?!

Now there are lots of reasons why you might not be losing that weight. Let’s dive into them more:

1. Your Pregnancy Diet And Weight Gain

Here is another thing we hear all the time, “Your pregnant so you are eating for two now!” Now that does sound good, but this actually isn’t true at all. We only need about 350-450 more calories a day while pregnant. Now that’s just an extra snack, not a whole extra meal or two.

Also, if you gained a lot of weight while pregnant, studies have shown that it will be a lot harder to get the weight off. But, don’t worry, not impossible!

2. Hormones

As you may know, during pregnancy and after you have your little one, our hormones are on a roller coaster! But, there is one hormone that really impacts your weight loss. The hormone is Prolactin. Prolactin is known as the “fat-storing hormone.” Prolactin is a major hormone that helps regulate your breast milk production and is released each time you nurse your little one. Prolation will actually slow down your fat metabolism.

Prolactin also increases your appetite. So, the moments that you find yourself starving and has you eating everything in sight, prolactin is the cause for that. Now I completely believe to follow your hunger cues while nursing, but what you are eating can be a HUGE game changer. (More on that later.)

3. Stress and Sleep

Now I know this one is REALLY hard to control when you are a new mama. Just trying to take a shower some days is impossible.

Sadly, going without sleep or only getting a short duration of sleep contributes a lot to not losing weight.

High levels of chronic stress is also a huge factor in not losing weight.

Both sleep deprivation and high stress can lead to adrenal fatigue in a lot of new moms.

Adrenal Fatigue is when your adrenal glands start to become “fatigued” and starts producing an inadequate amount of cortisol. Then the cortisol can’t keep up with your stress demand and that can lead to weight gain.

(If you think that you could be experiencing Adrenal Fatigue I really recommend seeing a Functional Doctor. One that will help you find the root cause.)

4. Your Diet

As I mentioned above, when we are breastfeeding we are starving all the time! Listening to your body is so important but WHAT you are eating is also so important.

We truly only need around 500-700 more calories while we are breastfeeding. (This number varies from person to person though!)

If you are just eating only packaged foods, fast food or anything you can get your hands on this will really make it hard to lose that weight. I get it, as a busy mama we need quick meals and snacks. Grabbing the right healthy ones is key.

Another thing in your diet that can affect your weight loss is actually NOT taking in enough calories. A lot of new mamas I talk with always think that cutting calories is the best step to take. The reason this isn’t the best step is that when you start eating fewer calories your metabolism will slow down to help increase your energy.

Also, taking in fewer calories will drop your milk supply! You for sure don’t want that!

Okay… Now What?!?

Now that you know everything that could be the reasons you aren’t losing that baby weight you’re probably wondering what you can do about it?

The #1 piece of advice I have is… the keto diet! The keto diet is truly an amazing diet while breastfeeding if done correctly. You start seeing weight loss, increase energy and I have even seen it increase some mamas’ milk supply!

I have helped many mamas that are breastfeeding start losing that baby weight with the keto diet and without losing that precious milk supply!

With the keto diet, we help clean up your diet and add in nutritious foods and WITHOUT restricting calories!

I do teach keto to be done differently while breastfeeding than when we aren’t nursing. So doing it correctly is key to not have your supply dip.

Inside my program, the Keto Breastfeeding Method, I help mamas start the keto diet safely while breastfeeding without a dip in supply. We work daily to make sure supply doesn’t dip, you are getting in the most nutrient-dense foods, and never have to second guess what if you are doing will affect supply.

If you have any questions about the program or article make sure to ask your questions below!