You no doubt turned to the Paleo diet to become healthier. You want you and your family to be as healthy as possible, and the Paleo approach to eating can help you achieve that. Regarding health and wellness, you aren’t going to find too many people that are more serious about this topic than a pregnant mom-to-be.
A pregnant mom is eating for two (or more) and therefore must up her nutritional intake. After the baby is born, and a Paleo mom begins breast-feeding, she may wonder if this is the best dietary approach to keep her and her baby healthy.
As it turns out, eating Paleo, while breast-feeding, covers all of mom’s and baby’s nutritional needs. Here are a few foods Paleo moms should be getting plenty of while breast-feeding.
Eat More of These Nutrient-Dense Paleo Fruits and Vegetables
Nutrient-dense foods have lots of nutrition and very few calories. This is the perfect recipe for a breast-feeding Paleo mom. Especially good are leafy greens such as kale, spinach, and collard greens. Cruciferous vegetables also qualify, so eat plenty of cauliflower and cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. Enjoy fruits such as olives, blackberries and oranges, bananas, grapes, cherries, and papaya.
Eat more nuts, flax seeds, hemp seeds and Chia seeds. Avocados are full of minerals and nutrients good for mom and baby. Eat mushrooms, as well as orange and red root vegetables like yams and carrots. Get turmeric and the ashwagandha herb into your diet.
Healthy Paleo Fats
Fats are an important part of the complicated process that produces mother’s milk. As much as 50% of the fat in breast milk is made up of saturated fats. An additional 20% or 25% is a combination of capric and lauric acids. Coconut oil is a Paleo-approved fat that is rich in lauric acid. It also contains some capric acid.
These essential fats have antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties. This supports the immune systems of mom and baby while breast-feeding.
In addition to coconut oil, fatty fish should be eaten regularly. The anti-inflammatory properties of the EPA and DHA fatty acids found in salmon, sardines, herring and other fatty fish are important for baby’s brain tissue development. Additionally, the essential fats found in these fish lower the possibility that either mom or baby will have to deal with heart disease, unhealthy weight gain and a number of cancers.
Offal and Organ Meats
The word “offal” is used to describe the parts of an animal that aren’t muscle meat. This includes tongues, ears, organs and other body parts that aren’t usually considered edible. The truth is many of them are extremely high in nutrients and minerals that are perfect for breast-feeding mom and her baby.
This means eating more organ meats like liver and gizzards, kidneys, hearts, and brains. You can alternately drink broth made from the collagen-filled bones and joints of animals.
The Paleo Breast-Feeding Wrap-Up
Sticking to any type of diet has proven to restrict the nutrition moms and babies get during the breast-feeding stage. This means you should follow the Paleo diet about 80% of the time while breast-feeding. The other 20%, eat what your body is telling you to eat. This ensures you and baby are well nourished and have everything you need to be as healthy as possible mentally and physically.
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