Yes, it is a myth that a mother’s diet affects breastmilk. Once food, drink, or medication is consumed, the digestive tract breaks it down, and molecule-sized components of the material are absorbed into the bloodstream. These molecules travel through the cells that line the alveoli and into the milk when they reach the capillaries near the breast tissue. Diffusion is the term for this process. Diffusion takes care of what your baby’s body needs. Diffusion permits beneficial substances, such as antibodies to quickly enter colostrum and mature milk. This indicates that breastmilk varies throughout time in response to the mother’s surroundings, which is crucial for breastfeeding’s health.

Breastmilk is a living material that changes with each feeding to meet the baby’s needs. It contains essential nutrients, immunity-boosting cells and stem cells, food for good gut flora, and many additional health benefits that can’t be duplicated. These are unaffected by a person’s diet.

But all of these facts do not mean that your diet does not help in increasing or decreasing the milk supply. On the contrary, many food items are recommended for breastfeeding mothers to boost their milk supply.

Here are some of the food items to eat during breastfeeding for a mother’s better health and a good milk supply –

1. Protein supply is very important to have during breastfeeding. You can include food items such as fish, meat, poultry, dairy, beans, seeds, nuts, etc.
2. Make your diet full of green vegetables and eat at least three servings per day.
3. Fruits are also very important for the diet; try eating two servings of food per day.
4. Try to ignore whole flour items and shift to more whole wheat items and grains daily.
5. It is said that women find themselves thirstier than they used to be before, so try drinking as much water as possible, so you don’t find yourself thirsty quite often.
6. It is a myth that vegetarians could not have a healthy breastfeeding diet because they can sure do. There are many substitutes in the market for vegetarians who can provide you with all the nutrients.

Now comes the question of how much you need to eat during breastfeeding because it is true that breastfeeding needs calories. It is said that your body uses all the natural calories from your post-pregnancy weight, but if you have lost all the pregnancy weight, then you must eat more than 500 –  600 calories per day (on top of) so that it can be enough for breastfeeding.

These are some of the food items you can eat by which you can maintain a healthy diet that will benefit you and your baby. Now there are many food items that you may want to avoid. As said earlier, food items do not affect the milk, but it affects the production and your health.

Top on the list is alcohol. Alcohol is not considered very good for a normal person, leave alone a pregnant lady. But if you want to consume alcohol, what you can do is pump your breastmilk before consuming alcohol so your baby can get breastmilk even if you drank alcohol or breastfeed your baby after 4 – 5 hours of alcohol consumption.

Drinking caffeine does not affect the breastmilk but if you see your baby changing sleeping patterns or getting irritated, try limiting caffeine consumption.

Highly processed food is also not recommended during breastfeeding.

These are some tips that you can follow for a diet to lead a more healthy life during breastfeeding.

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