3 December 2013 – Oil pulling adventure

My youngest boy has just turned 6 months old and is still breastfeeding many times a day. He’s a great sleeper so I’m a lucky mom. I’m struggling to loose the remaining kilos after my last pregnancy, as for some reason my body seems to try to hang on to the extra flab badly. Ok, I realise I’m not actually very active at the moment, but with a 2.5 year old by your side, going for a brisk walk just isn’t that easy!


We got an early Christmas present for the boys: a giant trampoline. This mom thought that jumping would be the way to go! Tried that a few times, but all that’s changed is that I now have 2 badly striped boobs :( And here I was, not a single line on my boobs or belly after carrying 2 chunky babies for over 41 weeks each… 4 months into breast feeding my second child, still not a single line… Jumped on the trampoline for half an hour or so and both boobs covered in striae!!! Sorry tramp, you won’t be seeing me for the next foreseeable future :(

Now to get back to the oil story!

How do you loose weight when exercise gives you stretch marks, you’re not allowed to diet (when breastfeeding) and you’re not even eating that great an amount? Well, you try google!

I came across Detox recommendations a few times, but next to a diet, it’s not allowed to detox while breastfeeding, as a lot of harmful toxins could end up in the breasmilk when your body starts ‘cleaning’ itself from the inside out.

And THEN I read about oil pulling! It’s where the first thing you do after getting up, is taking a spoonfull of oil and you spend the next 15 to 20 minutes swishing it around your mouth, particularly around and in between of your teeth. Oil will pick up bacteria and toxins and even tiny food particles that are stuck IN the tiny pores in the enamel of your teeth. The trick is to actually leave the oil swirling around for that long, so the oil gets the time to enter those tiny pores and do its job of cleaning and brightening.

So what kind of oil do you use? Recommended are sunflower oil or sesame oil, but after reading up on it, cold pressed coconut oil will be on my shopping list. Any kind of cooking oil would work, but some oil just tastes too strong to keep in your mouth for that long.

Just make sure you spit it out when the time’s up, I actually got a glass with oil before and one with oil after and YUK it had gone al milky and off-colour. But my teeth were brighter and felt cleaner than ever!

Next to a brighter smile, oil pulling ‘could’ cause fresher breath, less head aches/muscle pains/joint pains, better sleep and a whole range of other benefits that may or may not have been proven. AND it is deemed SAFE for pregnant and breastfeeding women!!

Except for my cleaner teeth I can’t say it’s got any benefits for me yet, but time will tell and hopefully the scales will too!