Calorie Estimates for Breastfeeding EBF

jaroby

Hey! So here's the scoop:

I'm Breastfeeding my second child who is 8m old. I also workout M-F and I do around 30mins of lifting/HIIT. The lifting days are paced quickly so those workouts can work up a good cardio. (Fitness Blender)

I've used a few calorie estimators and they have me at around 2,500 calories a day. Which feels great so far! I have a tendency to put off eating during the day b/c of always dealing with kiddos. I've been tracking my food off and on for a few months and I've definitely noticed that when I pay attention to fueling my body well I get HUNGRY. I'm definitely not forcing my body to eat those 2,500 cals, it's using them up! It's so lovely to eat breakfast, then be hungry for a snack and hungry for lunch and again for another snack and dinner. Such a needed change of pace.

Anyway, now that I've been consistently tracking for almost 2wks I wanted some input. I currently track and add in exercise of Breastfeeding at 350calories burned since she is eating some solids during the day. I eat back a decent portion of those calories in a day. However, I'm not adding in my exercise. I'm not entering the exercise at all so I don't have to do the backwards math

Sued0nim

8 months you're probably down to 300 or so as I assume you've introduced real food

It will start to tail off now ...

500 when exclusive BF around 6 months

jaroby

jaroby wrote: »

Hey! So here's the scoop:

I'm Breastfeeding my second child who is 8m old. I also workout M-F and I do around 30mins of lifting/HIIT. The lifting days are paced quickly so those workouts can work up a good cardio. (Fitness Blender)

I've used a few calorie estimators and they have me at around 2,500 calories a day. Which feels great so far! I have a tendency to put off eating during the day b/c of always dealing with kiddos. I've been tracking my food off and on for a few months and I've definitely noticed that when I pay attention to fueling my body well I get HUNGRY. I'm definitely not forcing my body to eat those 2,500 cals, it's using them up! It's so lovely to eat breakfast, then be hungry for a snack and hungry for lunch and again for another snack and dinner. Such a needed change of pace.

Anyway, now that I've been consistently tracking for almost 2wks I wanted some input. I currently track and add in exercise of Breastfeeding at 350calories burned since she is eating some solids during the day. I eat back a decent portion of those calories in a day. However, I'm not adding in my exercise. I'm not entering the exercise at all so I don't have to do the backwards math

It cut off my post and when I edit it it doesn't change...so here's the rest of it

jaroby

Should I be tracking my exercise and eating back those calories too? Or track and not eat them back? There are so many options! Haha I'm just sort of playing around with making sure I fuel myself well considering the exercise intensity and the breastfeeding. But I also want there to be some sort of calorie deficit so I loose weight at just a little bit faster pace than I had been.

I've been slowly building up the strength for these sort of workouts. I put on 10lb of muscle since August. (Up on scale down in inches) But it's been creeeeeeeeping along so much more slowly than I had thought it was going to. I'm pretty sure Breastfeeding hormones and too few calories are the most to blame. So I'm tracking to take care of the latter and give my body the best chance at releasing this fat.

The end! Yikes!

jaroby

Sued0nim wrote: »

8 months you're probably down to 300 or so as I assume you've introduced real food

It will start to tail off now ...

500 when exclusive BF around 6 months

Thanks! The note about 300 is reassuring, I had just guessed myself at 350 considering her solids intake. Do you know how often I should adjust the BF calories? I know it's not an exact science but there's got to be some sort of reference guide out there

Sued0nim

Just keep checking your weight loss against calorie intake against rolling 6-8 weeks and you'll figure it out

A trending app would be useful

I use trendweight.com, but there's lots of others like happyscale and libra and weightographer.com

KkBlowin25

How do u log u breast feeding calories? Should I? I have an ebf 6 month old, he also feed him solids.I just put moderately active , and just count my workouts. Been on mfp 70 days now lost 20+ pounds. Sometimes it freezes but then when it does show on the scale it's a few pounds at a time, I am really hungry at night tho.

jaroby

KkBlowin25 wrote: »

How do u log u breast feeding calories? Should I? I have an ebf 6 month old, he also feed him solids.I just put moderately active , and just count my workouts. Been on mfp 70 days now lost 20+ pounds. Sometimes it freezes but then when it does show on the scale it's a few pounds at a time, I am really hungry at night tho.

It seems like whatever you're doing is working! Keep it up!!

So far I've been entering BF as it's own exercise with 300 cal burned since my daughter is 8M old and eating solids. I have my activity level set for very active since my workouts are pretty intense and I'm BF. I only log the BF calories and eat them back. I havent logged the exercise. I've only been tracking for 2 weeks doing this, eating lots of protein and veggies

jaroby

Ugh. It keeps not posting my entire comment. Booooo. There was more to my reply :-) but I shall add that back in later as I'm super tired!

JBella0125

I am currently breastfeeding my little guy, too. He is three months old now. I also pump throughout the day/night. I record my pumping sessions in MFP as cardio. For every oz of breast milk made, 20 calories are burned. For instance, today, I pumped 21 oz so far, which is the equivalent of approximately 420 calories. I don't account for actual breast time, as I'm unsure how much he is actually eating. I also like tracking how much my daily output is, so that I can compare low milk production days to my caloric intake. I readjust my calories in accordance with my output to help maintain my supply.