After having your baby, you may want to try to get your figure back as fast as possible, and breastfeeding is one way to do that. Mothers who are nursing use up more calories—about 500 calories a day more—than mothers who aren't breast feeding, and some new mothers are delighted to find that they lose the post-baby weight more quickly and with less effort than they had ever imagined.
But it's important to realize that you could be depriving your child if you start a stringent diet while breastfeeding. Diets like the Atkins diet or the South beach diet recommend that women who are pregnant or nursing skip the strict, no-carb phases of the diets and move right to the maintenance phases—the ones that give you more carbohydrates. Fad or one-item diets like the cabbage soup diet aren't healthy for you under any circumstances, and particularly when your body is dealing with the hormonal, metabolic and caloric requirements of pregnancy or post-pregnancy. The better your nutrition, the
better you'll provide your infant with healthy milk, so avoid highly prepared foods full of additives, food colors and other weird, non-food substances.

If you're concerned about your weight and want to get your pre-baby jeans back on, skip the stringent dieting and turn instead to exercise. With your body burning more calories to start with, you'll get more bang for your metabolic buck by starting a schedule of walking, strength training and stretching.

Now, unless you're one of the few people who need a high calorie diet to maintain a normal weight, you don't need to eat more food when nursing; just bear in mind that you're burning up the equivalent of a pound every week simply by breastfeeding your child. There might not ever be a better time for eating extra chocolate!