When we’re pregnant, we all accept the fact that we’re going to gain weight. There’s no getting around it. Both our bodies and our babies’ need the extra layers of fatty tissue which are built up during pregnancy. But nobody wants to hang onto that “baby weight” after baby is born.

Believe it or not, breastfeeding, in addition to the myriad of other health and emotional benefits it provides for you and your baby, can actually help you lose that extra weight. It turns out that lactation is pretty hefty exercise.

Which would you rather do, have a two hour aerobic burn workout every day, or lactate? If you’re like most of us, you really don’t have the energy for a two hour workout anytime soon after giving birth to a baby, and those first several months of baby’s life when she can’t sleep for more than two or three hours at a time don’t leave a lot of room for Tae-Bo anyway.

We’re in luck if we choose to breast feed, however. It turns out that lactating and nursing eats up about 600 calories per day for as long as you are exclusively breastfeeding. In other words, you can benefit as much (at least as far as weight loss is concerned) by simply following the World Health Organization’s recommendation to exclusively breast feed your baby for the first six months of his life as you can from doing a grueling aerobic workout two hours per day for six months.

Nobody’s trying to say you shouldn’t exercise. Ideally, you should do both. Reasonable amounts of exercise, coupled with healthy eating habits and breastfeeding offer you the best and healthiest way to reduce your waist line while offering your baby the world’s best nutrition.

Of course, everybody’s body is different, and breastfeeding alone does not guarantee that you will lose weight or body fat. It has been statistically shown, however, that, all else being equal, women who are breastfeeding tend to lose weight much quicker than those who don’t. And since it is healthy for you and your baby in so many other ways, it simply makes sense for most women to breast feed their babies.

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