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Losing the baby weight

If you are struggling to get back into your pre-pregnancy clothes, don't panic. Kate Cook and Lucy Wyndham-Read, authors of An Unfit Mother take you through the five rules to healthy eating

The easy peasy eating bit and how it works

What we are going to do together is loosely based on the GI system, but I have made it really, really easy and in doing this, I'm handing the power back to you, your decisions and you knowing if a food is on the programme or not.

There are no lists of good foods and bad foods. There is no point counting, just five really, really simple guidelines that absolutely work. And with only five things to remember, you can keep track of them on the fingers of one hand!

The five rules for healthy eating in a nutshell

1. Keep your energy stable by balancing your blood sugar (sounds complex, but it isn't)

• Eat food that is thick and fibrous and/or full of protein - this is slow burn food
• Avoid food that is primarily sweet, fluffy and white - this is quick-burn food

2. Whittle down the wheat. Wheat isn't the only grain in the world. Try to replace it with rye, spelt and other grains, such as buckwheat, millet and quinoa. This increases the variation in your diet, so you are not relying on the same old things all the time.

3. Vary your dairy. Don't just rely on cow's milk, try other forms of dairy as well, such as goat's and sheep's milk (pasteurised please) and mozzarella. You could even try rice milk. Don't over-do the dairy. You can get calcium from loads of other sources including green leafy veg.

4. Eat breakfast. You must do this, no arguments, and, if possible, include some protein.

5. Eat like a caveman. This means eating real food, organically produced if possible.

6. Make up your own rule. I know I said there were five rules, but this is one for you to make up for yourself if you want to. It is a wild-card rule. You might, for example, decide to eat only a handful portion of low-burn carbohydrates at your evening meal as opposed to a great big plateful. Or you might want it as an exercise rule or to build it around portion size or drinking.

Extract taken from An Unfit Mother: How to get your health, shape and sanity back after childbirth by Kate Cook with Lucy Wyndham-Read, published by Collins, £9.99

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