Video: Atkins Diet While Breastfeeding

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Mothers are not advised to apply the Atkins diet while breastfeeding because the effects are unknown and possibly harmful. Learn more about the Atkins diet and breastfeeding with tips from a licensed dietitian in this free video on nutrition.

Video Transcript

My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic and I'm going to talk to you about doing the Atkins diet while breastfeeding. Phase one of the Atkins diet can put your body into a state of ketosis. There hasn't been a lot of research done on breastfeeding women who are in this particular state. The only research that has been done has been in uncontrolled diabetics who are actually in ketoacidosis which is a little bit different. Some of the same things can happen as far as your body forming ketones but again because it is in diabetics it's different than in somebody who does not have diabetes and still reaches that point of ketosis. Even though technically breastmilk does contain some ketones in it, it's not known how a woman in that state, how that would actually affect her breast milk, if it would increase the level of ketones, if it would change the quality of it, and again, because this is affecting human infants, it wouldn't be ethical to actually form a study and actually put people through to see what would happen to the infants. So because we don't really know what can happen it is definitely not advised to do the Atkins diet particularly the phase one diet, if you're going to be breastfeeding. In addition, you need more energy when you are breastfeeding, so it's not advisable to do any type of weight loss diet at least in the first two months. Typically after the first two months milk stores have been formed there actually working properly at that point. A healthy eating plan, maybe trying to lose half a pound to a pound a week, could be done by someone who is overweight but again, typically for most women, weight loss diets are not advised while they are breastfeeding. So in particular avoid the Atkins diet especially phase one while you are breastfeeding.

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Atkins Diet While Breastfeeding

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