lose weight while breastfeeding

Many diets and weight loss programs impose strict rules about what you can eat and what you must avoid at all costs. They tell you when to eat and how much. They say fat (or carbohydrate) is the enemy of a slim body, and that it must be counted and limited. They tell you to avoid snacking or to eat every 2 or 3 hours, without fail. They specify cabbage soup every day for a week or allow you virtually nothing but grapefruit or eggs. And they want you to exercise 5 times a week when you haven’t moved a muscle in a decade.

But you know that rules are meant to be broken. The very fact that they are rules imposed by an outside weight loss “authority” means that they will be.

Rules bring out the small child in you who wants to touch the forbidden ornaments on your aunt’s hall table and stay up when its bedtime. You become the rebellious teenager who wants to party when there’s homework to do.

During your weight loss program, nothing makes you want food more than forbidding it. “Can’t have chocolate cake. Can’t have fries” leads you to think of nothing else. Enforced salad or soup means that these are the last things you actually want to eat.

And when you do succumb, as you inevitably will, to the chocolate cake, you feel guilty rebellious pleasure in breaking the rules you feel have been unfairly imposed on you. “Why me?” you ask yourself “It’s not fair. Why do I have to follow these rules? Everyone else gets to eat cake.”

So forget the rules!

“Forget the rules?” you cry “I’ll go mad and shovel in everything in sight. I’ll be fatter than ever.”

Somehow it doesn’t work like that if you treat yourself as the adult you are.

Take responsibility for learning about healthy food and nutrition. And once you have the information you need, make your choices from the huge range of delicious food out there. Don’t label any food good or bad. Just select from all that’s available with a mindset of being good to you, good to your body and how you want to feel.

And yes, sometimes you will select the chocolate cake. But once you treat yourself as a responsible adult rather than a child to be kept in line and punished, you will find you enjoy the cake and go on to make healthier choices at your next meal, happy in the knowledge that nothing is banned, that there will always be more cake if you want it in the future.

If you have difficulty getting through the afternoon and evening without overeating, you are not alone. The key to managing stress is managing your energy level.
The hardest time of the day for most people is in the middle to late afternoon. Around 3:00 or 4:00 P.M. we enter the time of day that Japanese researchers have called the “breaking point.”

By studying brain-wave readings throughout the day, they found 2 distinct kinds of rhythms. The breaking point occurs when the low phases of both rhythms coincide, multiplying their effect.

It is when our bodies physiologically start to transition toward its recuperative phase – sleep.

The result is one of the deepest lows of the day.

The “breaking point” is experienced as the feeling of decreased alertness, deep fatigue and the need for rest and recovery in the late afternoon hours.

You know the feeling – struggling to push through the sluggishness at that time of day when you really wish you could go home and take a nap.

It’s easy to reach for food to try to manage our mood and energy levels. Those are simply extra calories. It’s not really what you need.

There IS a need.

It’s just not a FOOD need.

The “breaking point” CAN be managed with a little planning . . . and your willingness to take time out.

How well you manage it determines how well the rest of the day goes.

Remember . . . diets are broken in the late afternoon and evening.

It is best to use this time for restorative activities, such as rest, reading, listening to music or meditation.

If you can, take a 20-minute break at that time. Even take a nap if you can. You will feel SO much better (with less urges to overeat) for the rest of the night.

When you can’t take a break, take a mini-break. Even 3-5 minutes helps. Any break in concentrated work brings some restorative relief.

Do activities that don’t require a lot of concentration – organize your desk, do some breathing exercises, or get up and take a 5-minute walk.

Give your mind a break – remember when the teacher told you to put your head down on your desk? It’s a break in mind-directed activity. And a necessary respite in your day.

DON’T use the time to plan your day or think about what you will say in your next meeting.

Use the time to REST, relax and reconnect to yourself and your needs.

Above all, pay attention to your mind-body cues. The goal is to change your mental pace.

I recently heard someone say “If I have a lot to do, I just eat my way through it.

“DON’T use food to push through the day. But instead, honor your body and the signals it is giving you.