I worked with a mum who was about five months postpartum.
She had an older child, she was breastfeeding a baby with an allergy, she was absolutely knackered and food had become another thing she felt like she needed to get right.
And I think when she came to me, she expected me (as the nutritionist) to hand her a beautifully organised meal plan and tell her exactly what she should be eating.
Except I didn’t. Instead I basically told her:
Feed yourself like you’d feed your toddler.
Which admittedly sounds slightly ridiculous when you first hear it. But think about how we feed our kids.
We try to get some colour in or we sneak extra veg into a sauce because sometimes that’s the easiest way to get it eaten. We give them foods we know they’ll actually eat. And if something isn’t working, we find another way rather than declaring the entire day a nutritional write-off.
Yet when it comes to feeding ourselves postpartum suddenly we think it needs to be this enormous and often impossible overhaul.
So with her, we made it smaller. She didn’t like fish? Fine. We worked around that rather than forcing her to learn to enjoy salmon. We started with breakfast too by looking at what she was already eating and what we could add or change to make it more nourishing without making it more difficult.
Then, once that felt normal, we built on it.
No Monday-morning overhaul. and definitely no perfect meal plan or some bougie food shopping list that was going to need 3 different supermarkets.
And do you know what the first result was?
It wasn’t weight loss.
It was that feeding herself properly became easy and doable!
She understood what she needed and where to start.
She felt capable of looking after herself again.
Her energy improved. She lost weight too.
But those were the by-products.
The part I LOVED was that she now went from saying to me:
“I know I should be eating better but I have no idea how to make that happen right now.”
to:
“Oh I can actually do this and it’s easier than I thought.”
And if food feels like another massive job on your list at the moment, steal this from us. Don’t try to fix your entire diet this week. Really really please don’t!
Pick one meal (I’d probably start with breakfast).
Look at what you already eat and ask:
What could I do to make this slightly more nourishing without making it harder?
Maybe it’s adding something rather than taking something away.
Maybe it’s buying the convenient version (frozen vege still count as vege!!)
Maybe it’s eating the same breakfast four days in a row because it works.
Get that bit working.
Then build from there!
Postpartum nutrition needs to work in the life you’re actually living and today’s reality. It really shouldn’t be another impossible task.
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