EM2WL and Nursing - Newbie -

Wiccandothis

I love the whole concept of EM2WL and being able to eat more food and still lose weight. I am a big believer that the more active you are, the more you should eat to fuel your body.

Here's my background - When I started on MFP (almost 600 days ago), I was at around 1500 calories and following CICO. I cycled my calories through the week with a higher amount 3-4 days a week depending on my activity and a nice amount of calories was reserved for Fridays (our weekly night out). I was working my butt off and had a pretty high calorie burn 5-6 days a week averaging around 10 hours a week in exercise. As my weight went down, do did my calorie allotment Lurking on the community boards like I usually do, I found the EM2WL group back in September 2015 and instantly knew that I wanted to give it a go. With my own crazy mathematical process of averaging things out, I ended up with a cut value of 1928 and decided against the metabolism reset at that time. It worked really well for me to. I was eating what I wanted and kept up a steady loss of around 1.5 lbs a week...then after losing 70 lbs, I found out I was pregnant! My OB wanted me to eat no less than 2000 during pregnancy, which was pretty much where I was at anyway. I was able to maintain my weight during pregnancy for the first 4 months, then slowly put on only 30 lbs.

Fast forward to now almost 3 months after having my sweet little girl and I'm up to 2300 - 2500 calories a day. Dr said I had to add 500 to my daily calories to adjust for nursing. I started with adding 100 and slowly went up. I am almost maintaining with where I'm at now, although I'd rather be losing. My TDEE ranges between 2700 and 3000 depending on my activity for the day (according to my Fitbit), which is pretty close to what I get on the calculator. So I need to start reducing my daily calorie intake a little to start losing again. I have yet to get into weight lifting and need to get back into more cardio like I did before baby, but I'm happy where I'm at right now. I'm kind of using this time as my metabolism reset and hope to start losing a ton of weight once I stop nursing.

My question is... Now that I'm starting to get my exercise mojo back up and running, where does nursing fit into the calculations? I'm currently 265, 5'5 and 37 years old. I'd say my activity is somewhere between 2-4 days a week, depending on the week and how much baby lets me do and I want to slowly work my way back up to 5-6 days a week. While I'm nursing I want to work up to my maintenance level, then start cutting as soon as possible to get back on track with my weight loss. Where do I add in my nursing calories? Before the cut value or after?

Any help is appreciated
-Tracy

jerilynconn

Add the 500 to your maintenance. You can cut while breastfeeding but I would suggest eating at the maintenance +500 (basically your new maintenance). You may lose at that amount.

How old is your baby? If you do cut, keep an eye on your supply. As she ages, and starts eating food, you could decrease the amount of calories for breastfeeding until she is weaned. Also, keep in mind she will have some growth spurts where you may need to go back to maintenance because she will want to nurse all of the time.

You should be able to lose some weight while nursing, and I understand the rush but please don't rush this. Its a time in life you can never get back. Or don't decrease too low, you may drop in supply and its such a pain to increase it. Also, if you drop too low, your body will stop losing weight.

TerezaToledo

Welcome @Wiccandothis ! Congratulations on your baby girl! @saranharm gave you excellent advice. I understand how much you want to lose the weight right now, but if you cut too much or too soon, your supply may drop and right now the little baby girl needs you supply to be high. I'm still nursing and even though he eats a lot, feel like the more he eats, the more he nurses, lol. Anyway, no kid goes to college while still nursing, so I'm sure we should be done soon.
Calorie wise I didn't really cut, I'm close to TDEE (near 2600). Using this tome as a reset is a great idea. I could say I did the same and as much as I didn't cut, I did get back to my pre pregnancy weight and size while lifting and eating at TDEE. This is a great article in nursing and EM2WL http://eatmore2weighless.com/category/fat-loss-cutting/nursing/

Tereza
Team EM2WL

Wiccandothis

@saranharm She is now 11 weeks old. So according to my average TDEE of approx. 2700-3000, I would add the 500 to that = 3200-3500. Wow, that's a lot!! I get the 2700-3000 average from my Fitbit stats. The calculators give me a TDEE of 2322 for sedentary, 2660 for 1-3 days and 2999 for 3-5 days. Would my fitbit be more accurate for my TDEE than the calculators? Right now I think I'm at 2000 for my calorie intake and I do a negative entry of 300 for my breastfeeding for a total of 2300 and I'm afraid to add any more. Of course the more activity I do, the more calories I add for those days. I'm not losing anything at all right now. I'm just going up and down at this amount so I'm pretty much maintaining right now and I'm afraid that If I add another 800-1100, I'd gain like crazy. Should I just trust in the process or what? I definitely do not want my supply to diminish until I start to wean, however I'm anxious to get started again, lol. I plan on starting to wean around 6-9 months so since I'm trying to use this time as a metabolism reset, I guess I could continue to add 100 calories every week or two to see what happens. If I start gaining and it doesn't stabilize, then I go back down 100?? I guess I'm just confused because of the added nursing calories. So far I've only been adding 300 of the 500 nursing calories to what I was at before and during pregnancy.

I also need to start working on how to use my calories and make better choices. I have a hard time getting enough protein in and don't eat enough vegetables. Maybe if I start working on my macros and make healthier choices, I will be able to eat more calories and not gain...

Sorry about all my rambling. Typing all this out is kind of helping me understand it all, lol.

Wiccandothis

@TerezaToledo So did you not add 500 to your TDEE for nursing? I'm just wondering how much wiggle room I really have, lol.

ddbramble

My suggestion would be to find the highest number of calories that you can maintain on and then slowly cut 50 calories a week. If you notice a drop in supply then go back up to the previous week's calorie amount.

My son is 8 months old and still nursing plus eating plenty of solids. I'm still trying to find my perfect calorie amount - right now I'm eating around 1900.

Wiccandothis

Thanks @ddbramble

Wiccandothis

Raynn1 wrote: »

beverlyriley900 wrote: »

I have been looking all over for the comments on 'if you should eat back the calories burned' I cannot seem to find them. I have set a goal of burning 500 calories a day and I am wondering if I should be eating back that much in maintenance and in 15% deficit? Can you direct me to that discussion?

If your diary is set to anything less than your tdee (for example your BMR calories) and you are adding in your exercise daily, then yes, you would eat those back. So lets say your diary was set to 1700 cals, but should be 2200 to meet your target.. you would then want to eat back the exercise cals you earned, so your body is eating correctly. otherwise, you are shorting your body those 500 cals it needs.

For me, I find the easiest way to do my tracker is to set the cals to whatever my target is.. whether im eating at TDEE, or eating at a cut.. then I just adjust my exercise cals to 1 when I burn them. That way my diary always stays at the level I need and I dont get confused about adding in 300 cals and then having to "remove' them after..

Hope this makes sense for you

Kelly
EM2WL Ambassador and Moderator

Regarding this convo I found in another thread... I prefer to see my exercise in MFP so I take what my Fitbit gives me for the calories burned during exercise and log it into MFP, but I don't eat those back. Am I doing that correctly since I have my daily calories set at a higher TDEE that incorporates my activity level? I only eat them back when I go above and beyond my normal activity level.

TerezaToledo

In the beginning I was adding the calories to the fitbit reading. Then I just averaged it out and kept eating the same amount everyday, which basically would be eating my TDEE with the breastfeeding calories added. I always ate all the exercise back. If you factor your exercise on ypur TDEE and follos that value, you don't really have to add the exercise back, because it's already there. If you are following th Fitbit reading, you need to add the nursing calories and the lifting calories once you start doing it.

Tereza
Team EM2WL