Water or Fat Loss?

It's Spring so it is time to be concerned about how you look in a bathing suit. This is where many busy moms are tempted to take a weight loss supplement with a bit of something to pep you. The problem with these products is that they do not help you lose your fat. They can cause you to lose water and the water less is temporary. When you drink those Chinese teas and stuff it only works for a few days.

Diet products that cause water loss and not weight loss are called diuretics. The loss is temporary and fat is never dissolved as is sometimes claimed on the package, as that is not scientifically possible. Diuretics can actually promote dangerous heart problems. As soon as the body runs dry the weight comes back as you drink to quench the thirst caused by the dieting. If your weight loss is to be meaningful at all it must include the dropping of fat as well as water.

If you are dealing with a weight loss product that makes outrageous promises such as Lose Twenty Pounds in Two Weeks or Take Ten Inches off of your waist in a week then you really need to drink a lot of water. Also if you are dieting because you are a new mom who is trying to lose the baby weight you need to be aware that this type of crash dieting can really deflate your mood and make you feel depressed and fatigued.

The products that are diuretics can be hard to identify. You must look at the ingredients. According to the FDA the ingredients in anything must be listed from what the product contains the most of to what it contains the least of. If the first listing on the box is caffeine then you are looking at diuretic.

Most magical weight loss formulas (and especially those that are marketed as Chinese or miracle weight loss teas) contain herbs that act as diuretics. This includes green tea, which sounds all healthy, but any weight loss is causes are triggered by diuretic action and loss of water. There is no such thing as 'fat burning herb' only herbs that speed up heart rate, breathing and other functions. This is not “fat burning” it is simply a way to stress the body all of the time so it wastes a lot of calories.

There are quite a few herbs that you should not take if you are a mother. They make you moody and cause weight loss only. One of these is Bochum, which causes dizziness and fatigue so you can't function.

Another one to avoid in any mixture is Kola Nut. This is a powerful diuretic that is not to be fooled around with. The side effects are excessive thirst, nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, frequent urination, and urges to go on an empty bladder, over stimulation, mania and insomnia.

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Baby’s Sleep and Natural Light

Sometimes it is hard to tell why your baby won't sleep through the night. I could be colic or anything. At any rate that good night's sleep seems so hard for some baby's to come by and that affects your sleep too. Now there is a new theory. It is not colic at all but rather due to a lack of light.

This idea comes from another concept, which is that the reason babies don't sleep through the night is because their internal clock has yet to be established. Other theories are that the lack of sleep might be due to a lack of daylight.
If a lack of daylight is the culprit then the obvious solution is to make sure that your baby is exposed to a few more hours of natural light a day. That means taking the baby out in the prom. This might also help moms sleep through the night as well. The idea is to get both child and mother synchronized on the same schedule.

This lack of daylight theory is not that new of an idea. It is actually based on a study published in 2004 with the European Sleep Research Society which details how 56 babies at ages six, nine and twelve weeks old were studies over a period of six days. During those days monitors tracked the amount of light these babies received and then also their waking, sleeping and crying patterns.
So what did this study reveal? Apparently the babies that would sleep all night were exposed to more light in the early afternoon from say noon until two. This helped to develop the baby's internal clock so it would be triggered to produce melatonin at the right times. The babies who were stimulated with light in the afternoon simply were easier to put down at night. This is because the light stimulated the circadian clock, which is located in the babies' hypothalamus. It predicts sunrise and helps get us ready for the day.

Another key is to make sure that the light you are getting is very bright. If you live in a cloudy place like Vancouver or Seattle you might have to buy a Light Book to shine on your baby during the early hours of the afternoon to stimulate than baby's production melatonin.
It is good for moms to get out during the day as well as that early afternoon exposure to the sun's rays can also help heal post partum depression. Without sunshine our hormones become unbalanced and we end up becoming sleep deprived. This can end up in a reliance on antidepressants and sleeping pills to get through your day and night. This is not the kind of stuff that you want ending up in your breast milk!

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