How many calories and how much protein to have in a day ?

cwarn20
cwarn20 Posts: 1 Member
edited March 5 in Health and Weight Loss
I am 2 months post partum and I’m also breastfeeding. I only gained about 25 pounds during pregnancy and lost all of it and then 15 more immediately after. Before hand I had a very hard time loosing weight. I am wondering how many calories and how much protein I should be eating to keep loosing weight. I don’t always have time to workout but I try to do 3/4 days a week if possible. I’m 24 195 and 5’5.
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Answers

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,197 Member
    If your only goal is weight loss, protein doesn't matter, only calories matter. But since you're breastfeeding, and because I'm sure you're wanting to be healthy, MFP's default protein goal is not bad for most people. The exception would be someone who cuts calories aggressively hard, because there's no getting adequate nutrition on too few calories.

    For a more nuanced estimate, you can check out this source:

    https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/
    https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

    Since you have weight to lose, put a healthy goal weight into the calculator (the guide mentions this). If you're not sure what a healthy goal weight is right now, use the middle of the normal BMI range for your height, which at 5'5" would be 130-131. BMI isn't a great way to find an actual goal weight, but it will be a close enough approximation for this purpose.

    Since you're breastfeeding, one option for calories would be to set MFP saying you want to maintain your current weight, then let the breastfeeding create a calorie deficit for you. Losing fast while breastfeeding is a risk to milk supply. But breastfeeding does require extra calories, so that would probably create a reasonable deficit for you. If your supply is strong and baby is feeding enthusiastically, you may even be able to eat a little above normal maintenance and still see a small loss. My advice would be to hold off on faster loss until baby is a bit older. This would be a good thing to discuss with your doctor, though.

    Like you, I'm 5'5", started losing weight at 183, now lower 130s (in year 7+ of maintaining a healthy weight post loss). The big difference was that I was not post-partum while losing. That's a good time to be conservative, I'd suggest.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,216 Member
    edited March 10
    If anyone wants to know about dietary protein and about it's quality and it's relationship to diet and our health then this is the podcast you don't want to miss. It's Don Layman and Peter Attia. Don is probably the most educated person on protein there is. Peter, is a little wishy washy at times imo but again this is about what Don Layman has to say. It's long but it's time stamped.

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=BqmG2y4IeY8

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