Confused about the calorie system

itali614

The top of my page tells me the calories I have to eat, the calories I ate, then subtracts the exercise, and gives me a net. Anyone know If I am nursing and want to keep at 1800 calories if the net should say that or just the calories I ate??? I am trying to keep my milk supply. Yesterday the net said 1200 but the calories I ate said 1800.

myfitnessnmhoy

NET is the number of calories you ate minus the number of calories you burned during exercise. Basically, it's the number of calories you've consumed to support your daily life.

So if you:
- Ate 1800 calories
- Burned 600 calories doing some workouts

You'd have eaten a NET 1200 calories. So 1200 calories would be what you are taking in to support your body, including your milk supply. It depends on your size, your metabolic rate, I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor, etc etc, but I'd think 1200 sounds low for a nursing mom.

Gutter19

You want your net calories to be equal or close to 1800.

HealthyBodySickMind

You should probably find a way to find out how many calories you are "burning" by nursing. It's been my understanding that that is a lot of calories going out when you are producing milk. I have a friend that was heavy before she had her kid, and then while nursing could not keep weight on no matter how much she ate.

eHow puts breastfeeding at 200-600 calories a day, with 500 as the average. It will depend on how much milk you are producing. So if you are trying to net 1800 calories and you do no exercise but are breastfeeding, you will need to eat about 2300 calories.

HealthyBodySickMind

More from eHow.... 1 oz. of breastmilk production burns about 20 calories. So if you know how much your new baby is eating a day you can figure out about how many calories you are burning a day.

HealthyBodySickMind

Here, the eHow page says it better with numbers and everything:

http://www.ehow.com/about_4598063_many-do-burn-day-breastfeeding_.html#page=0

itali614

the 1800 calories includes nursing. You are to take in 1800 to 2300 calories for nursing. So, I think I got my answer that I want to net 1800 to support my body and the baby. So, I guess I need to add calories somehow! Thanks everyone

Gutter19

I think you can also put nursing in either the food or exercise area and myfitnesspal can track those calories too...in case you haven't seen that in there yet.