Losing weight after having a baby

You can’t “melt off” fat. There is not any food or combination of foods that specifically help burn body fat. A variety of vegetables will improve your consumption of vitamins and minerals, but will do nothing to “melt off” fat.

Weight loss is a very misunderstood process. Actually, in order to move fat from storage to fuel as energy, you need carbohydrates (minimum 130 grams). To completely break down stored fat, your body needs carbohydrates. Without carbohydrates, your body incompletely breaks down fat and produces ketones. Large amounts of ketones are produced by stored fat when burned without carbohydrates. Ketones are irritating to your kidneys and your body will attempt to get rid of them in your urine. This urinary loss of ketones represents only about 100 calories per day, which is not going to cause a significant weight loss.

Your brain and nerve cells need glucose (blood sugar) for fuel. This is why body organ tissue and muscle starts to break down to some extent during a very low carbohydrate or fasting diet. This process is very evident in anorectics. Muscle and organ proteins break down and yield glucose for your brain and nerves to function. This is a waste of body protein since the amino acids are excreted and unavailable to build and repair your body.

Your body was originally designed to be able to store fat. This enabled cave people to survive from feast through famine to the next feast. Only those cave people able to store fat survived and reproduced. Unfortunately, they pass their “fat genes” on to us. The cave people with “skinny genes” died off during famines.

Your body will do anything it can to preserve its fat and muscle stores. So during a low calorie or low carbohydrate diet, your body will reduce its energy output. As muscles become smaller, because they have been broken down for fuel, they perform less work. In fact, less stored fat is lost during a semi-starvation diet (600 to 900 calories) or a fast (less than 600 calories) when compared to a moderately low calorie diet (1200 calories). Weight loss during a very low calorie or low carbohydrate diet is usually water weight during the first three days.

Weight loss occurs because in the first few days of a high protein, low carbohydrate diet or any diet less than 900 calories per day, you use your blood sugar (glucose) and stored sugar (glycogen) as fuel. Sugar is stored in muscles and your liver. This stored sugar holds three times its weight in water. When you lose the stored sugar, you lose the water it is holding in your muscles and liver. In addition, in diets of less than 900 calories, any food eaten including fat and protein will be burned for fuel. Your body can convert 70 percent of the protein and 30 percent of the fat you eat to glucose. This is a waste of food protein. You would be better off eating more carbohydrates. In such a low calorie diet, no dietary protein will be available for growth and repair of muscles and organs.

When a person who has been on such a diet begins to eat normal amounts of calories and carbohydrates to maintain this lower weight, your body will start to re-hydrate itself and replenish glycogen, wasted muscle and organ protein. Weight gain usually results.

So, how do you effectively lose weight? If you eat a minimum of 1200 calories, with adequate carbohydrate and protein foods, you should achieve a slow weight loss. One to two pounds per week is a realistic goal. An individualized weight loss diet would start with determining the calorie and nutrient content of your present diet. For every 500 calories per day you decrease in your present diet, you will see a one pound weight difference per week. A 1000-calorie reduction in calorie consumption would result in a two pound per week weight difference.

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