7 months pp, losing too much weight while breastfeeding.

[Hope54321]

Hello fellow mumstnetters,

I had my wisdom teeth removed last week and now currently weigh 42kg! I’m 5ft so not tall, but my bmi is currently underweight.

A typical day of eating would look like this for me:

Breakfast: oats, kiwi/ berries, banana, tbs peanut butter.

Lunch: at least 300g cooked rice with chicken curry and some veg.

Snack: banana and nectarine/ apple

Dinner: at least 300g cooked rice and fish or meat curry, and some salad.

This is a lot of rice, but I’m asian. I feel like this is a lot of food, but I’m still underweight. I need some tips to put on weight. No processed junk food ideas please and no sugar.

Avocado on toast? High in calories and healthy fats.

Oooh I do eat avocado on sourdough bread and some chicken on top for lunch sometimes.

I'd throw in an extra slice of that then for a snack, instead of just fruit. Do you like nuts? Also a good, healthy, high calorie snack.

I eat a ton because I lose weight too easily when breastfeeding as well.

Do you eat any dairy at all?
Some home made raita with full fat yoghurt with the curry? Add butter to the curry and rice. Or adding peanuts on top of the curry can be good.

Otherwise drizzle olive oil on foods, and snack on nuts, and definitely avocado. Avocado on toast with a drizzle of olive oil is delicious.

What do you prep your oats with? I can see a couple of places where you could add some full fat yoghurt without hugely increasing the volume of what you're eating. Sprinkling mixed seeds on meals will also add calories and help get some good healthy oils in, and as a pp suggested mixed nuts would be a good addition.

You could also prep a smoothie in the morning and drink it gradually through the day - oats, Greek yoghurt (or even cream), chia seeds left to soak overnight and then add fruit for flavour and blitz in the morning. Have a few sips every time you go to the fridge for something else or keep it in a thermos cup so it's handy while you're feeding.

You definitely should be adding several portions of dairy a day if you are breastfeeding, if not you will be very deficient as a lot of extra calcium is needed when breastfeeding. Will also really help with your calories.

If you don't like dairy, there are other sources or calcium too. I consume a lot of tofu, beans and fortified soy milk because I don't eat dairy.

I’m intolerant to dairy unfortunately.

Nuts and dried fruits as snacks. I ate a lot of medjool dates while breastfeeding.

Hummus and flatbread as a snack too.

You could drink a huel ready made drink, particularly during the night if you are waking for feeds. I’m fairly certain they’re vegan so no dairy.

Eat more of the non-rice bits at meal times.

Sojade and Alpro both do some great dairy-free (plant based) yoghurts. Generally speaking the nut based ones have slightly more calories than the soya versions.

When you have fish are you mostly going for white fish, or do you have oilier 'meatier' fish like salmon, mackerel, or tuna?