posted April 02, 2000 09:55 AM            

Do you have any idea what drugs these are? I would like to know, just for future reference!

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OH HELL YA!!!!

posted April 21, 2000 02:56 PM            

It is believed to be true that bodyfat in women has the additional function in the production of hormones (ie, estrogen) As you strip the female body of adipose there is a point at which the body stops producing estrogen. Unfortunately, that appears to happen at various points for various individuals. *stick with me here, I'll get to your situation*
So I'm thinking about this as it might relate to your question to reduce bodyfat while lactating.
What I know from experience is that if you do not eat enough, the milk dries up regardless of the bodyfat you may or may not be hauling around. What I don't know is if this is related to hormone production or simply a natural safety mechanism whereby you cannot use stored energy to feed the both of you. If that were possible, all new mothers would be breast feeding their young until they turned 18!
It is also current belief that a woman must maintain an extra 10# of bodyfat during lactation.

So I inquired from a friend (whose wife is in the know) and he confirms that this bodyfat is in fact fundamental in requisite hormone production, and I suspect that it may be true given the argument above. Concurrently, I would have to argue that you will likely vary from the standard 10# ...but! if you must experiment please realize that once you start to lose your breast milk, it's pretty much irreversible. I suspect that your choices boil down to either dealing with the extra bodyfat, or switch to formula.

posted April 21, 2000 05:22 PM            

This old Iowan farm boy has seen first hand many a female animals cease lactating when, for what ever reason, they go off feed. Generally what happens is they get some type of sickness and in some cases stop eating. And WHAM, no more milk for the babies. This is when we have bottle feed.

As a general rule we will often increase feed to milking mothers up to 50%, and most of this is high quality food. Milk production is VERY demanding and if anything negative happens to the mother, milk production is one of the first things to go.

When you look at it from a biological stand point, this makes perfect sense. Mother nature will preserve the mother over the baby in this situation as the mother may survive to produce offspring in the future. Where as if the mother where to die, then the baby would die from lack of care and it would be a two fold loss.

When a female BF% dips below a certain threshold, it is "assumed" by the body that something negative has occurred and will go into a defensive posture....And you all know how powerful the body can resist you best efforts to lose them last few pounds!!! This means any "extra" biological functions are shut down. Metabolism decreases, milk production ceases, a host of other body functions are effected as well.

My OPINION on this is that your baby should come first. You will have plenty of time to lift and workout. But your baby only has a limited time to develop and set the base physical trates that will be with him/her for life.

I could only wish I was breast fed for at least a year. I've seen what happens to bottle fed animals. They are ALWAYS smaller, often get sick, and NEVER do nearly as well as the breast fed. And in some cases we have even processed them out. Far to much work for so little return.

Late