Your postpartum body isn't working against you — it's working for your baby

Your postpartum body isn't working against you — it's working for your baby. I could not breastfeed. I could sleep through the night. My body did not have to protect milk supply. When you are protecting milk supply, your body is going to retain fat. Your fat storages are not going to release that fat the same way mine would because I don't have any milk to produce. There is also the truth, which is when you are breastfeeding, you are burning between, call it 400 and 700 calories a day on that act alone. But the way that the body is going to lose weight is because of a caloric deficit. Rightfully so, if your body is protecting milk supply, it's also going to increase your appetite. If your intake is not balanced with your output, you are naturally either going to hold on to it or you're going to gain weight. It's supposed to happen that way. Your body is protecting the thing that it needs to do and you need to give it grace. All by design. Layer in sleepless nights, layer in the natural stress of being a new mom, cortisol levels go up. We all know that cortisol levels increasing in a way where your body is in fight or flight, your body is not going to respond to the same things it once did. Now, in my journey back, my body did not respond to the same things it did prior to losing weight.