Breast feeding, calorie intake and weight loss

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annienicole77
annienicole77 Posts: 3
in Health and Weight Loss
hello everyone. This is my first post and I could really use some advice. I have a 6 month old that is breast fed and I don't want to cut my calories too low so my supply doesn't decrease. I am 5'6 and 132 pounds. I work out 6 days a week and wear a polar heart rate monior. I usually burn 400-600 calories doing cardio. I weight train 2 times a week as well but I don't use my hr monitor for that. I have a digital scale and weigh my food for each meal as well as scan barcodes. My calories are set at 1650 and even with working out I never eat that many. I've been consistent for about 1 month now and haven't lost any weight on the scale. My husband says I'm toning up but I still feel like I should have lost a couple of pounds. My question is could I not be eating enough or do I need to drop my calories? They said breast feeding burns 300-500 calories a day but I don't add those in any way. I don't want my weight loss to stall because I'm not eating enough however I don't want to add in more calories and see my numbers go up. I'm sorry this is so long but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Cjmi427
    Cjmi427 Posts: 26 Member
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    Exclusively breastfeeding a newborn does burn about 500 calories a day...that's feeding 8-12 times per day. You could probably drop your calories a bit and not worry about your milk supply, especially if your child is 6 months old. IME (working with many many breastfeeding mothers) drinking enough water and managing stress is more important than calories for keeping your supply up. Very severe nutrient deficiency/starvation will affect supply, but not a healthy woman cutting a couple hundred calories.
    As far as recording and eating back exercise calories, another thing you could try is eating back only half the calories you have burned. That could help make up for any inaccuracies with the HRM or food logging you might not be aware of.
    Feel free to message me with any other breastfeeding related questions :)
  • annienicole77
    annienicole77 Posts: 3
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    Thank you so much! That was very helpful!

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