While doing research on a presentation that I did recently on diet/exercise and breastfeeding, one of the studies done in 1997 by McCrory et al. showed that in their study, the women who were dieting showed the largest prolactin spike after the baby breastfed.  The women who were both dieting and exercising showed the next largest spike and the control group doing neither showed the smallest spike.  They hypothesized that when diet is restricted, prolactin helps to drive the metabolism of fat stores to support milk supply (exercise, in and of itself, also mobilizes fat stores which may be why the prolactin spike was lower in this group, even though energy balance was very similar - extra calories were added to make up for energy expenditure through exercise).  Also, several studies showed that the women who were leaner going into pregnancy lost weight faster post-partum while eating an unrestricted diet.  I think that this issue is very complicated, especially when you figure in that a percentage of the heavier women have PCOS and perhaps other syndromes that remain as yet unidentified.

Warmly,
Sharon Knorr, BSMT, ASCP, IBCLC
Newark, NY (near Rochester on Lake Ontario)
mailto:[log in to unmask]

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