"You can't diet while BFing". Umm, why not?

[allsquareknickersnofurcoat]

Anyone know? Seeing as nowerdays, its accepted that what you eat has little, if any, effect on your milk?

Surely if youre obese, you need to lose the weight and could cut down calories? Eg, if you're eating 3000 calories a day, surely 2500 isnt gonna hurt?

sakura, not all women lose weight when bfing. A lot of women find it hard until they stop. I eat very healthily (teetotal, non smoker) and I run 4 times a week. When bfing, I could not lose weight. It just wouldn't shift despite my best efforts. When I stopped it disappeared within weeks. You'll find a lot of women had the same experience. There's some theory (probably utter rubbish) that your body hangs onto fat stores when feeding in case there's a sudden famine and your baby needs the sustenance as a priority.

Tiktok - I gather you are a BFC (I'm a lowly peer supporter ) so I'll bow to your superior knowledge here, and admit my first post was really based on instinct...

But seriously are you saying that even an extreme diet (this lady was eating less than 500cal a day) REALLY doesn't affect baby?

Freudian - check with your peer supporter tutor on this :)

Extreme low calorie diets are not great, but a woman would have to be on one a long time - to the point of starvation - before it actually affected her breastmilk to the extent of making her baby smaller than he would otherwise be.

We know this from copious research all over the world.

The concern among nutritionists in developing countries is the effect that breastfeeding has on the poorly-nourished mother - the babies are fine, but for the chronically under-fed mother, bf may impact on her health:

rehydrate.org/breastfeed/faq-maternal-nutrition.htm

Quality of milk is unaffected except in cases of severe, prolonged and serious malnutrition, which means the mother's own stores of certain nutrients are poor.

None of this applies to mothers in the UK trying to lose their 'baby weight'.

Ok. Fair enough thanks :)

Why do diet companies say not to do it if BFing then, if in the uk it is safe to? I know that the diet my friend was doing very clearly says do not do this if you are BFing (my mum did it too so I've read all the bumph) - hence me thinking it was selfish for her to quite deliberately go against the rules.

Why would they say that if it's not true? Unlike dieting during pregnancy which presumably is genuinely dangerous? Baffling!

Dieting in pregnancy isn't dangerous either and is sometimes recommended. Again depends what you mean by 'diet'.

A company can't take responsibility for how a woman chooses to interpret a diet or control how she behaves whilst on it. And in the same way can't accept responsibility for the what any person deems to be the consequences of any given diet. So they can market themselves to the normal spectrum only and have to have those disclaimers.

It's like exercise in pregnancy. It's perfectly safe if you're used to exercising. An exercise dvd is unlikely to cause you any problems. But they all have the disclaimer that they're not recommended during pregnancy and to consult your health advisor. You have to be trained to recommend exercise in pregnancy (have to take a course) and I presume though don't know that the same applies to recommending diets. WW and SW for example tailor their diets to bfing.

Not baffling :)

It is not a good thing to do if you are bf, because if you are already poorly nourished your own nutritional status may be affected - see my explanation above.

But with regard to the instructions, the manufacturers will not have tested the product for safety or effectiveness with breastfeeding women, and they are not obliged to in law....so the easiest thing to say to protect themselves is 'don't use it'.

This protects them against claims for damages - a breastfeeding woman might think something has gone wrong with her or her breastfeeding, and connect it (wrongly, almost certainly) with the meal replacement programme. The manufacturers have not tested it in these circumstances, so cannot offer a defence, unless they say clearly 'do not use when bf'. That's why they call these slogans 'a disclaimer'.

This makes me sad. I had issues with bf that actually started when I began listening to other people. MIL and her HV friend told me that I needed to eat lots and lots but also be very careful about what I eat. MIL wouldn't let me have cucumbers, onions, tomatoes or garlic on day 3 when they visited.
Definitely contributed to me feeling like BF was just too hard for me a few weeks later.
This myth really needs dispelling - seems like it is definitely an older generation thing. Really unhelpful.

I don't think I'm explaining myself properly.

Some pregnant or bfing women will be precluded from diet/exercise for example. A woman with a threatened miscarriage or SPD shouldn't be doing exercise dvds meant for the general population and a woman with gestational diabetes requires a certain diet. Just a couple of examples. The advice not to blindly follow something but to seek advice just allows for all these scenarios.

X-posts with tiktok. She explains it better. They're just protecting their brands.

Yes I had a feeling there must be some arse-covering involved!

Yes. Somebody, somewhere would pitch up to the Daily Mail with an 'I followed the no food diet for 6 years, my milk dried up, my tit dropped clean off and I grew a third eye' story.

Sorry, that's an exaggeration.

The News Of The World maybe.

I can't help but lol at sakura's suggestion that breastfeeding will give you a flat stomach

I have put on a stone while breastfeeding - I'm considering it emergency rations if I find myself in a famine.

Cilantro you're quite the satirist :o

Sakura, that was the second part of the advice - "you dont need to diet when youre breastfeeding"

Thanks for all the advice ladies, as I said earlier, I'm glad I havent been told that I've done something bad for me or my baby. :)

I am sure you can diet when bf'ing but the diet should reflect the fact that you are bf'ing because your metabolism increases to make the milk.

Woohoo, I lost 4lbs in the last two weeks! :)

BMI is still over 30 though...
But even "skinny" (size 10 top, 12 bottom at about 19) my BMI was never lower than about 24?

I'm on Weightwatchers, losing a small amount of weight (1lb + per week). DD is gaining serious weight (99th percentile for length) and I get so many WW points I can eat cake (if I want, more of a pizza girl myself). They also encourage you to eat 5 a day, dairy etc. and keep healthy. Best of all, they have an online thing that prompts you to drink enough water (I was forgetting).