Digestion – How You Eat Affects Pregnancy Weight Loss

How your digestive system works, or otherwise, plays a key role in the nutrients and energy you get from the food you eat, and how your body eliminates its waste – all key for pregnancy weight loss when you are following a healthy eating plan and want to learn how to lose belly fat.

The following are the Lose Baby Weight tips to help you digest your food thoroughly and effectively.

Chew Your Food

How often did you hear your mother say “chew your food properly”?

Well she was right, chew your food, and chew it thoroughly!

Chewing is extremely important, yet sometimes overlooked, part of healthy digestion.  We think digestion starts in the stomach but in fact healthy digestion starts in the mouth and as busy and time poor mums we are often guilty of popping food into our mouths and chewing and swallowing as fast as possible.

Firstly the action of chewing your food mechanically breaks it down into smaller pieces (surprise surprise) giving the food an increased surface area, an important component of good digestion because the food surface is exposed to saliva for a longer period in time.

Why is this important?  For two reasons; firstly, saliva contains an enzyme that breaks carbs down; and secondly, the first stage of fat digestions occurs in the mouth.  As added bonus, chewing sends a signal to the brain to prepare the digestive system for the food that is coming.

So if you’re anything like me, always trying to do 100 things at a time, take my advice, it’s much better for you to take five and sit down to eat your food.  Not only will you enjoy food more because you’re more likely to taste the flavours and textures you’re eating, your body will digest it better meaning you get more nutritional value from your food and your elimination process will work better – both crucial for pregnancy weight loss.

The elimination process works better because chewing helps relax the muscles in order for your food to leave your stomach and move into your intestinal tract in a healthy fashion.

Don’t Drink and Eat

If possible, avoid drinking fluids while you are eating, instead drink water first thing in the morning, when you exercise, and between meals.

The reason being that fluid dilutes your stomach acid and digestive enzymes so if you drink while you are eating they can’t do their proper job.

Eat Regularly

OK so its not a perfect world, and we don’t expect it to be, but where possible aim to eat your meals around the same time each day and try to give yourself two hours between dinner and bedtime.  We say this not because eating late at night is bad for you, remember calories can’t tell the time, but rather cut your digestive system some slack.

Digesting foods take a lot of energy which is why you’ll often find it harder to sleep straight after eating, especially if it was a big meal or had lots of protein.

Toilet Time

Sorry this is a bit personal, but who poo’s wins!

You should be aiming to go to the loo at least once a day and your bowel motions should be relatively easy to pass.  If they’re not its likely you’re not getting enough water and fibre in your diet. If your bowel motions are particularly fragrant then its a sign your digestive system is sluggish so as well as more water and fibre in your diet, you want to reduce or eliminate the refined carbs you’re eating – things like refined sugar, white breads and pasta.

A great way to improve your digestion and the nutritional content of your food, in conjunction with losing weight, is the Lose Baby Weight Plans.  To read more about our Plans, click here.

To help you digestion we recommend half a teaspoon of LSA, chia seeds or flaxseeds in your diet twice daily.  It really simple and easy to add them to your Lose Baby Weight Smoothie – click here for some delicious Smoothie recipes.

To read more about the Health Benefits of LSA click here, and to read more about the Health Benefits of Flaxseeds click here.

 

Technorati Tags: healthy eating plan, how to lose belly fat, pregnancy weight loss

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