Should i add this to my Exercise?

NewspaperMomma

Breastfeeding,
now because I don't know how many exactly, and roughly maybe 200 cals plus a day
should I be adding these calories on top of my exercising? or just forget about them?


tia

BarbieAS

Definitely. Well, probably.

Exclusively nursing an infant typically burns about 300-500 calories per day. This amount goes down as you introduce formula and solid food, obviously (a rough estimate is about 20 calories burned per ounce of milk produced). Some mothers MUST eat extra in order to maintain their milk supply. Other mothers do fine without it. It's whatever works for you.

It's recommended that nursing mothers eat at least 1800 calories per day, though obviously that's a stock answer and will vary widely based on your weight/height/age and your activity level. But, I'd recommend starting with a goal to lose no more than a pound per week, and adding a few hundred calories to your goal per day. You can always tweak that to fit your needs as you see how your weight loss progresses and how your milk supply is doing.

There's a couple of methods for adding calories to your daily goal. First is that there's a few entries in the food database that will put "negative" calories into your food diary to allow you to eat more. This is fine, unless macros are important to you, then it might not reflect your personal goals. Second is to just go into the "Goals" section, create a custom goal, and just add however many calories onto your daily goal that MFP already provides you based on your inputs. Last, and my personal favorite, is to create a cardio exercise for yourself every day adding in however many calories you want. I just liked the control that method gave me.

cwolfman13

Everything my wife researched on this subject pretty much came up with an extra 500 calories for breastfeeding. So if someone ordinarily maintained on say, 2,000 calories, there new maintenance with breast feeding would be 2,500 calories...to to lose one Lb per week while breast feeding, they could actually eat their old maintenance calories of 2,000.

My wife is 5/2" and 39 y.o. and was eating between 1800 and 2000 calories per day when she was breastfeeding and losing weight steadily at around 1 - 1.5 Lbs per week on average. You need to make sure you're providing proper nutrition to both the baby and yourself here.

veganbettie

how old is your baby? Does he or she nurse a lot?

You need to make sure you're getting enough calories as a breastfeeding mother, generally speaking you burn a lot while nursing, which is why we are always so hungry.

It's normally 300 extra for an older child, or one that doesn't nurse a lot 6 months and up, and 500 extra for a new squishy baby.

Of course it depends a lot on your baby....my 18 month old nurses like a new born and I pump while at work, i'm trying 300 but i'm not sure I will make it on that.

veganbettie

Also remember, your baby is essentially leeching the nutrients from your body, they will for the most part ALWAYS get the proper nutrients from your milk, breast milk is the perfect food because it's created from your blood from your nutrients. So even if you eat a really bad diet, the milk will still be perfect (generally). You are the one that will suffer. So make sure you take care of yourself.