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Well.
I used to hang out here a bit and was firmly convinced that any and all “diets” were bad, but now I feel myself sucked into low-carb dogma because for the first time in my life, I need to lose weight.
Rewind one year.
I had a high-risk pregnancy (my 7th baby, my first scary pregnancy). Short story is that after weeks of threatened miscarriage, my water broke at 21 weeks, I managed to keep the little guy in for another 6 weeks, so he was born weighing 2.5 pounds at 27 weeks gestation.
He’s doing AWESOME now, perfectly healthy.
But, the last year of my life has been the most frightening, terrifying, grief-stricken, awful experience I’ve ever had. From thinking we were losing him several times during the pregnancy to the rape that is C-section (my first non-natural birth), to the 3 months long NICU nightmare… it’s been rough and I have a few PTSD symptoms still.
At almost 6 months postpartum, I’m usually almost back into my clothes but now I find that I need to lose about 15 pounds. I did start a low-carb diet about a month ago and lost about 10 pounds. My milk supply is fine (been watching that like a HAWK since little guy really needs to gain weight), and I feel good other than more tired than usual.
What’s the best way for me to lose this weight without messing up my metabolism?
I think the gain came about from two things:
Several weeks of bed rest in pregnancy and lousy hospital food (curiously I found myself RAVENOUS while on hospital bed rest, when my baby was born he was bigger than average for his gestation which may have saved his life). I was so hungry and always asking for more food, but usually got crap that I’d never eaten before (potato chips, cheap-o bread with lunch meat).
Thanks for any advice. :-)
ps Also how to get the Taubes dogma out of my head? Incidentally I have had symptoms of low blood sugar since I was a kid, having trouble after high carb meals, even fainting at school inbetween meals. So the “science” of the book kinda made sense to me. I also had poop and blood tests several years ago that showed allergy to wheat so I should probably avoid that too. After reading Matt’s book on hypoglycemia I’m not so sure that’s what I was experiencing though, but while doing low carb I do find that I’m less hungry inbetween meals and no longer crave sugar. Thoughts?
Also, as far as exercise I walk every day and was doing some weight training, but feel too fatigued on low carb to lift. The exercising didn’t seem to be helping me lose weight, my weight stayed basically the same during my entire postpartum period until I started low carb, which is super discouraging. After all I’ve been through this past year I don’t want to be fat too.
Hi Carrielee,
How are you and your little boy doing now? Not much activity on this forum is there?
I’d like to lose about 10lbs of pregnancy weight gain I’m still carrying around, but wasn’t really sure how to go about it without metabolic damage.
I recently read “Forever Fat Loss” and think it offers a more realistic way to lose weight than low carb. The main points in that books seem to be eating unprocessed whole foods to appetite and increasing NEAT (I’m sure as a mother of 7, you get plenty of NEAT!) as a way of creating a subtle enough calorie deficit to promote some fat loss but not enough to cause metabolic damage. It is a bit of a paleo diet in disguise in places (the author doesn’t rate grains and legumes very highly, but he’s not saying you need to eliminate them either). As someone who prefers a mostly vegan diet (I don’t like meat and dairy) I find it hard to avoid grains and legumes and still eat enough calories to feel well (especially while breastfeeding), so that’s a recommendation I’ve just had to ignore. I’m currently trying to follow the recommendations from this book that I can. I’m not sure I agree on the NEAT so much, I personally find that eating well and getting enough food naturally causes more NEAT (for me it translates as the desire to get up and active doing chores, go out walking etc), but NEAT is not something I can easily force my body to do if the extra energy isn’t there.
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