Flipping the switch.

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, three weeks postpartum, I'm already recommitting to the eat-less habits that I cultivated in 2008.

Embarrassed?  Well -- I keep imagining voices chiding me:  

• "It's only been three weeks since you gave birth -- wait a few months.  Breastfeeding will surely take off some of the pregnancy weight without you having to think about it."
• "You need to eat plenty of good food to nourish yourself and your baby."
• "It takes time, thought, and energy to do all that planning and analyzing -- why add more stress right now, while you're still getting used to all the changes?"
• "People won't notice you're heavy again -- they'll notice the cute baby on your hip."

This is the sort of thing that I said, or wrote, to a number of new mothers who expressed to me a desire to drop their post-pregnancy weight.  Privately I wondered what was the hurry.  

Well.  The shoe is on the other foot now.  It's really remarkable how demoralizing the postpartum body can be!  Blah blah blah, perspective, gratefulness, patience.  (Platitudes!)  I am who I am, and as ever I hate lagging behind the person I want to be.  

But!  I will follow my own advice anyway -- the good part of it.

• Breastfeeding surely will take off some of the weight I've gained without my having to think about it -- but I can get back in the habit of thinking about it now, of eating mindfully instead of mindlessly, so that when (if) I do "have to" think about it, it comes naturally to me.
• I surely need to eat plenty of good food to nourish myself and my baby -- but I don't need to eat food that doesn't nourish me, and I don't need to overeat even healthful food.
• Indeed some of the things I did to lose weight required time, thought, and energy that I don't have right now -- but many of those good habits reduce my stress rather than raise it.  I feel less stressed when I am successful, so I deserve to have opportunities for success right away.  
• People surely won't notice my weight -- but the habits of moderation and mindfulness are worthy for their own sake.

All that being said, I do recognize that I should not lose weight rapidly.  For most of 2008 I lost about a pound and a half a week, which is roughly twice as fast as would be healthy for the mother of a newborn nursling.  Rather than try to calculate how many calories I need and count them daily, I'll keep an eye on the scale and make corrections as necessary.  That's one of the old habits, of course, although now "too fast" would be a bigger problem than "too slow."

So what am I looking at doing now?

• I'm back in the gym three days a week.  I'm the type who's always trying to do too much too soon (hard to believe, I know ;-) ), so I swore that until Leo's 6 weeks old I would do nothing but brisk walking around the track.  So far, so good.
• Weighing every morning and charting the weight.
• Lots and lots of vegetables at every meal.
• Scheduled snacks, prettily presented on a plate, perhaps prepared in advance.
• Stop after the first helping at meals and take time to evaluate satiety.
• Plenty of fluids.
• Reading about healthy, moderate eating to keep it front and center.
• Noticing my successes, several times a day.
• Responding to my frequent impulses to eat unplanned food or excess quantities with my old mantra:  "I don't do that anymore."

None of that is bad for the nursing mother of a three-week-old baby.  None of that causes stress.  I can do all this right now.

Comments

[Cathie B]

Your plan looks good. Just keep track of the diapers and you will know if you are pushing it too hard. It's just a good way to monitor.

I am still dealing with a postpartum body - almost 9 months out. 6 babies in 11 years takes a toll on a belly. It really does and it is hard to be patient. I hope I can someday do what you have done and I'm quite sure will do again.

[Kathy]

I like your point about good habits reducing stress. I am totally struggling right now.I am four months postpartum and I can't get a good healthy mindset going. I may use some of your ideas if it's ok. I have quite a bit of weight to lose and I am so discouraged.

[bearing]

Cathie, yeah, I hear you about the belly. But the belly shape is more a matter of the abdominal muscles' separation and loss of tone, and of the extra skin left over from pregnancy, than it is a matter of excess body fat.

Even when I was down to 108 pounds between Mary Jane and Leo (having given birth three times) I had a pretty sizable tummy pooch, fortunately not too visible when I had fitted clothes on.

So, I just have taken the attitude that I probably can't do a whole lot about the belly and so I just have to let time do what it can and not feel bad about it otherwise. I guess I could start saving now for my celebratory post-menopausal tummy tuck.

[Cathie B]

My doctor suggested that I shop around for surgeons to have my abdominal diastasis and umbilical hernia repaired (it will need to be surgically repaired, she informed me) to find one that will throw in a tummy tuck for free ;-). Unfortunately, I also intend to wait until menopause for obvious reasons. Until then, I will have to live with a front that looks like a behind.

When you get a chance, please email me a good site to log my eating and how I go about calculating a "good" number of calories a day for my goal w/nursing a baby...

[Amy F]

I was able to see a physical therapist between baby #2 and baby #3 who helped me shrink a 3-finger diastasis (and that was 2 yrs postpartum) down to less than a finger. There's a lot that can be done without surgery. I got lazy after that and it widened a bit before this pregnancy, but now I know what I need to do.

[bearing]

Cathie, re: eating log sites, I generally recommend Sparkpeople.com , which has (I think) a very easy to use nutrition tracker.

As for calculating the number of calories to shoot for, no calculation will be perfect and you will be forced to adjust it based on your real experience. So frankly, it seems better to me to use an iterative process from the very beginning. And I know you know how *those* work.

Pick a number. Eat that many daily calories for a week. Did the scale go down or up? Too fast or too slow? Make an adjustment. A difference of 500 calories per day ought to translate to a difference of one pound per week.

Don't get stuck at the "pick a number" stage. I figure 1,800 or 2,000 should be a safe place to start. But if you really want to start with a calculated number, find any online calculator for "maintenance" calories -- what you would need to eat to have zero weight change -- and put in the numbers as if you were not breastfeeding. Then, since you ARE breastfeeding, the extra calories from bfing should take you below maintenance and into some degree of weight loss. But you'll still have to adjust the amount to get the loss rate you are hoping for.

BTW, I find a lot of variation among sites recommending how fast is too fast to lose weight while nursing a new baby. Some say half a pound a week, some say as much as one kilogram (that's 2.2 lbs) is safe...

[bearing]

So how did you do it Amy?

[Cathie B]

Yes, Amy, do tell! I really don't want to go under the knife if I can help it...btw, I'm at 4 fingers (after 6 babies in 11 years, all but 1 very good sized on a small frame with no waist).

[Barbara C.]

After three kids, I noticed differences in my body shape that I know had nothing to do with being overweight. Most noticeably my hips widened...I can tell that my pelvic bones have opened up. And I too developed a small pooch. I've accepted it as part and parcel of having kids and getting older..like having a sagging "balcony".