healthy meal plan for breast feeding?

hi i am nursing and am doing great but would like to drop 12 lbs ever since i started to exercise again i put on weight. i am not fat but my bmi says slightly overweight. my baby is 2.5 months old so i know i shouldn't worry to much and i know i can't diet so what should a meal plan look like?

I'm not an expert, but I have been there, twice, so I can give you some advice.

First, drink a ton of water. It's easy to get dehydrated while you are nursing.

Also, try to have a lot of healthy yet convenient snack foods around, since it can be hard to prepare much and when you have a very little one you just have to eat when you get a chance, often while you are doing something else!

Fruit is always good, of course, especially berries and bananas and apples and anything that you can just eat with one hand without even having to peel. I am also a huge fan of laughing cow cheese wedges, which are delicious spread on whole wheat crackers.

I am also a big fan of hard-boiled eggs--you can boil up a whole bunch of them at once and they keep well in the fridge, and then you have a great protein source ready to go for breakfast, or to put on sandwiches or bagged salads. I also used my grill a lot when my kids were very little, since slapping something on the grill is pretty easy. Stick with lean meats--chicken breast, flank steak, lean ground beef or even some ground bison if your grocery store has it.

You may want to particularly watch your iron levels while breast feeding. That's one reason I recommended the bison--it's much higher in iron than beef.

So that's not really a meal plan, but just some suggestions on the foods that worked for me. I also drank a TON of Carnation Instant breakfast, which I would NOT recommend. I don't know what I was thinking--it's incredibly high in sugar and your betting getting your nutrition elsewhere. Live and learn...

I am also not an expert, but have some experience.  Everyone is different, but...

When I was breastfeeding my daughter, I did watch my calories once I realized that I wasn't getting back to my original weight by magic (as some seem to).  My daughter was about 4 or 5 months old at the time.  I took the recommended calorie intake recommended by CC & then added 300-500 calories a day for breastfeeding.  The 300-500 was suggested as the requirement for breastfeeding by the nurses at a community health centre.  I also was not overly rigid about the limit, especially to ensure I was getting lots of nutrients to pass onto my baby, but I found that this gave me a "refresher" on portion sizes after being pregnant, which I really needed.  It worked, at a not-too-fast-and-not-too-slow pace, and without affecting the breastfeeding.

Best of luck!

As stated in another post, I'm still breastfeeding my 8-month-old son. I usually start my day off with a bowl of oatmeal with some honey and a splash of soy milk. For some extra protein, I eat 1/2 cup of egg substitute with some feta and hot sauce. Oatmeal is known to increase milk production. That breakfast keeps me full at least 5 hours.

I don't really do anything special for lunch or dinner. Lunch mostly consists of leftovers from dinner paired with some sort of fruit or veggie. Dinner is homemade and I try to go by the guidelines of the FDA: 1/2 plate of veggies, 1/4 of grains and 1/4 protein. I don't count calories because I obsess too much but I try to eat over 2,000 a day to maintain my milk supply (I'm only lighly active, working out 30 minutes on a good day). I also eat 1/2 cup of ice cream after dinner almost every night. I don't think I could stay sane without eating something sweet! Sometimes I'll top it with a sliced banana and honey. Yum!

Anyway, here are some good reads that helped me out:

http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/mom/mom-wei ghtloss.html

http://www.llli.org/FAQ/lowcarb.html

http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/breastfeedin g/a/nursingdiet.htm

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/yo ur-nutritional-needs-while-breastfeeding

Erica,

Do you have coffee with your breakfast?

Yes, every morning. Sometimes I'll make it half-caff but my husband doesn't like it. Most of the time I have a cup of REALLY STRONG coffee in the morning and then a diluted cup in the evening.

It doesn't really seem to effect the baby even on days when I have a Diet Coke (rare) in addition to the coffee. I drink it strong in the morning because I don't breastfeed during the day, just pump. My body has time to clear the caffeine out before my first pumping session. On weekends when I do feed him all day, I try to stick with half-caff or decaf in the mornings. Again, I don't think it effects him at all but I'd rather be safe than have a cranky baby. ;)

Yeah, I do just about the same thing: strong coffee in the morning. But I usually do have 1 diet pop/day Aria seems unaffected but I don't really know as I've been drinking coffee since she was born.

I, too, have been drinking coffee the entire time. I had my first cup less than 24 hours after he was born. I have to severely limit my caffeine intake because I'm donating milk as well and they don't like premie newborns all hopped up. ;) If I didn't have to watch my caffeine because of that, I'd probably drink more coffee.

Back to the original topic, I found this link to the USDA's website. It's the food pyramid for pregnancy and breastfeeding moms. There's also some great information under the "Ask Mary" topic of Family & Pregnancy.

Bear in mind if your infant is only 2.5 months old it's still kind of early for trying to lose weight hastily. Just producing breastmilk is a huge calorie burner and you should be intaking a few more calories than the normal daily amount for a non-pregnant woman (but not as much as during pregnancy since you're not eating for two now). It can also take from 6 months to a year to lose the pregnancy pounds in the natural course of events, so there's no need to push things.

I would suggest maintaining a regular healthy diet, not a weight loss diet, and increase your exercise if you're not doing that. Take baby out for walks after work and on the weekends. It will be a good activity for you both to enjoy and you'll shed the excess without even realizing it.

Original Post by elsinore:

(but not as much as during pregnancy since you're not eating for two now)

It's recommended to eat 300-500 calories more than you were WHILE PREGNANT throughout breastfeeding. That means eating 450-800 calories over maintainence depending on how much milk you're making.

Up until between 3 and 6 months, breastmilk production is regulated by hormones. After that, it's supply and demand. Either way, if you're not eating enough, you won't make enough milk and you won't lose weight (again, I found this out the hard way).

It burns roughly 20 calories producing one ounce of breastmilk. Since I pump, I know that my son takes in about 4 ounces per feeding (which is what I get during one pumping session). He eats  6-8 times a day which means I'd burn a minimum of 480 calories or as many as 640. My maintainence calories are about 1800 and I eat about 2000 daily and lose between 1 and 2 pounds a week. Of course, this is just a rough estimate. There's no way to know EXACTLY how many calories each of us burn producing milk.