Post-Natal Nutrition. Your baby is a parasite!

Hi all,

How’s that title for click-bait, right? I can just hear the anger building up “Wait, did he just call my beautiful miracle a parasite? Who does this arsehole think he is?? My little one is special!” I’M GONNA CLICK THAT LINK!!!

I feel your rage.

And I thank you for clicking it. Now let me explain what I mean.

All this BS about you needing an additional 300 calories a day to maintain weight when breastfeeding is massively missing the point.

The single most important thing about a post-natal diet is that it should be highly nutritious. If everyone, including doctors and nurses, would just stop banging on about weight all the time that would really help.

You hear all this talk about how you need more calories when you’re breastfeeding but you never hear anyone talk about the bit that’s actually important. Your baby is taking nutrients. And this means that you need to replace the nutrients. Yes nutrients have calories but calories don’t all come with nutrients.

Have you ever noticed that some mums look unhealthy? I’m not saying “tired” or “stressed”, I mean “unhealthy”. Their skin looks vaguely grey, dry or flakey. Some look a bit puffy or bloated. This is almost always due to a nutrient deficiency. Living in Edinburgh I have genuinely never come across an underfed mum but I’ve seen many undernourished ones.

How much more time do you spend in coffee-shops or meeting friends now that you’re on maternity leave? Or how often you finish a plate off because a little one left a bit of a sausage or sandwich?

So they’re getting the calories but they’re missing out on the nutrients. Without the nutrients you will never have the energy you need to function. Getting enough sleep is difficult enough already but virtually impossible if you’re not healthy.

I tell all my clients not to worry about whether they consume enough or too few calories. We hardly ever discuss diet for weightloss anyways. I just ask them all to make sure they get enough nutrients.

Sure, it’ll be much lower in calories but it’s MUCH higher in nutrients and that’s ALL that matters. We don’t drink juices for “detoxing” or weightloss but because it’s easier to drink kale or spinach than it is to eat a lot of it 🙂 So throw some vegetables into a blender and go nuts.

Take care of yourself,

Peter