What I Ate as a Breast Feeding Vegan Mom

When I was breastfeeding my daughter, every meal needed to be healthy and nutritious. Here's what I ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a nighttime snack!

While our little Harper is not even 6 pounds yet, she somehow manages to suck the life out of me (literally) each day, making me one hungry mama! I rarely felt intense pregnancy hunger during my 39 weeks of pregnancy, but breast feeding hunger is a completely different ball game. I love having a big appetite again and stomach space to fit larger portions of food!

When being discharged from the hospital I was told to eat an extra 500 calories a day to make up for all the calories I would be burning feeding Harper. I don't count my calories, but I definitely noticed that I usually need a snack in the afternoon and usually before bed and often even in the middle of the night. Plus I can easily eat my larger, pre-pregnancy portions again. 

I plan to share more What I Eat in a Week posts in the future, but today let's just look at one day of what I ate as a breast feeding vegan mom!

Breakfast

I've been loving zoats lately (a.k.a. oatmeal cooked with shredded zucchini). The zucchini adds volume and veggies to keep me fuller longer. This day I made simple cinnamon zoats cooked with chia seeds and ground flaxseeds and topped everything off with banana, coconut flakes, cacao nibs and almond butter. I need all the fats to help keep me satisfied!

Lunch

I'm still obsessed with my Homemade Oil Free Baked Tortilla Chips and have been eating them almost daily with different "dips." This day I ate my chips with my Three Bean Chili, which I added lots of spinach to in order to get in some greens. I've been adding spinach to lots of things lately as a way to eat more greens without having salad. I just want warm and comforting food lately!

Dinner

This dinner hit the spot! I hadn't had a sweet potato in ages so it was quite the treat. I ate one large sweet potato with a salad. The base of the salad was spring mix which I topped with one of my favorite Bean and Corn Salads! The recipe usually calls for black beans, but since we didn't have any we used white beans instead and it was just as amazing. 

Nighttime Snacks

After dinner I had a Dark Chocolate Covered Cherry with some tea. Later during the middle of the night when I was up with Harper I had a Mint Chip Brownie Lara Bar (so so good!). I have a huge stash of granola bars and different snacks near my bed so that I don't go hungry in the middle of the night.

And that's everything I ate in a day as a breast feeding vegan mom. I didn't share pictures of water, but I drink crazy amounts of it everyday. Breast feeding makes you really thirsty!

Let me know if these posts are interesting to you!

Thanks Jenn and Laura for the link-up!