Questions please!

[whynowblowwind]

I am interested in this, I had a baby in April and I am breast feeding her. So I do find I want to eat quite a lot. I'm worried about gaining weight though.

So I've been thinking of low carb but high protein - for breakfast just I had a fromage frais, 2 eggs and an apple, plus a baby bel light (I'm so hungry in the morning just now! I never used to be!)

Then lots of fish, ham, eggs, meals with salad, veg and sausages, baked beans, baby bel lights (my new addiction!) I adore all seafood and I like omelettes and scrambled egg type meals so omitting the toast is this about right?

I'm also exercising as I do a LOT of walking with DD in the sling and we have a big garden which takes a lot of work.

Am I on the right lines? I weigh 10 stone 10 pounds and really I need to lose a stone for a healthy BMI.

Thanks :)

Hiya. Congratulations on the birth of your DD :-)

If you are exclusively breast feeding her then your body needs the extra calories to compensate for that - I read somewhere that whilst ebf you need approximately 500 additional calories a day so now is definitely not the time to be cutting down on what you eat! It's only 2 months since you gave birth so you need to give your body a chance to settle down before trying to lose any weight.

Having said that, there is a lot of research that has been carried out around carbs and how important they are for your diet and it's probably good to get used to cutting down the carbs, especially for your evening meal, although I wouldn't omit them altogether at this stage as you need all the energy you can get, especially to get through the sleepless nights!

In short, I would focus on maintaining rather than losing weight at the moment and concentrate on enjoying your new baby girl!

Be careful with sausages - some of them are very carby. Also, if you're regularly eating apples (or other fruit) and baked beans, this will push your carbs up.

And if you're low carbing you need to be eating a high fat diet.

Good luck!