Sorry guys, this one is for the ladies this week!  A lot of my friends who have had babies at the same time keep asking is it safe to exercise and breast feed?  They have heard (a tale from an old wife) that if you diet or exercise when breast feeding it will interfere with your milk supply! Well luckily the old wife who made this tale up wasn’t right.

There are only a few substances that can affect milk supply with are, these are:

• Smoking
• Caffeine
• Contraceptive pills and injections
• Severe weight loss diets
• Peppermint, parsley, sage (in excessive amounts)

You are also able to carry out a wide range of activities, including impact work, without it effecting the feeding or milk supply.  It is important to wear the correct apparel for obvious reasons,(big boobs need supporting) and timing of exercise is also important. Do not try and exercise when you are hungry.  Its best to eat, then feed the baby and then exercise for both your comfort as well as for your energy levels.  Depending on your activity, you may find that you also need a small snack before you exercise after feeding.

So, boot camp sessions are going well, as well as my run, jog and walks.  These are a great way to start back running after a long break.  If you break down your run into walking sections and running sections before you start it will motivate you to actually run the running sections rather than do it ad-hoc when you won’t actually run the run sections.  By pre planning these sessions you will actually run further that you would have done by just saying ‘I’ll run to the next lamp post’.  These interval sessions are a great way to build up stamina before working on speed.

Also this week as I’ve been writing a lot of nutritional plans for Anatomy clients, so I decided to take a good hard look at my own.  Did you know that just one bottle of beer a night is an extra 1000 calories a week!  Which is roughly a pound of weight gained every month through just beer alone!  Wine is even worse, as a glass of wine can contain double the calories of a bottle of beer, which can equate to two pounds a month in weight gain.  So dry January is not only good for your liver, if you are serious about losing that Christmas bulge, cutting out drink is an excellent way of reducing your calories intake.

Don’t panic, I’ve not forgotten you all, its just taken me a week to gather the strength to type again!  So, I did what everyone does, stand on  the scales after the new year only to find they were broken. So after rushing out to buy a new pair, only to find they were broken too, I had to conclude that the half a stone I had shed before Christmas had somehow reappeared!

With this in mind, plus number one going back to school and cramming too much into the 6 hours of ‘free time’ I ran, walked, jogged our normal 4 mile dog walk.  This meant that I haven’t been able to walk for the last week and I’m in all sorts of trouble!

So that aside, its back to starting to exercise properly.  I’m walking the dogs between 2 and 4 miles every day, and whilst pushing a double buggy this is actually quite a work out.  I also started with the ‘bootcamp’ classes.  I have to be careful here and many people fear these kind of classes, plus they are run by my husband, so I feared that it would quickly end in divorce.  I was wrong, there was a lovely bunch of ladies, none were lycra clad showing off six packs, none were trying to out-do each other and they were all friendly!  There was no shouting, it was actually fun, difficult but fun! These classes are on most day each week and although I don’t pay (because that would defeat the object of owning the place) £25 for 10 sessions is brilliant value.  They are a great way of toning up, losing weight and having fun, which right now, after an average of 4 hours sleep a night, it’s what I need.