I was under the impression that nursing was something like liposuction. With how much the baby is nursing, surely she's sucking the fat cells from my body, right?
But recently I learned that nursing is no reason to go crazy at the buffet—quite the opposite, in fact. I need to make sure I'm filling up on the right kinds of foods in order to properly nourish the baby. And, to my chagrin, I learned that my ravenous appetite has nothing to do with the voluminous amounts of breast milk I'm producing.
For a nursing nutrition reality check, I connected with Frances Largeman-Roth, the senior food and nutrition editor at Health magazine, author of Feed the Belly: The Pregnant Mom’s Healthy Eating Guide, and, most famously (to me), the inventor of the Better Than Elvis milkshake. (My review of her book is here.)
As a nursing mother herself, Largeman-Roth sympathized with my ravenous appetite and gave some recommendations regarding my diet.
"If you’re breast-feeding exclusively, you’re burning up to 500 calories a day," she says.
And what should I eat for those extra 500 calories? It turns out that pepperoni pizza and chocolate chip cookie dough didn't make the cut. Go figure.
