Losing weight while breastfeeding?

delacruz_courtney

Congratulations on your baby girl!!! I hope you enjoy your delivery!! My son was born on August 12, 2012 and I have exclusively breastfeed him since he was born. You have made a wonderful choice!!! It is an amazing experience with so many benifits. It will help the weight come off a lot easier. Personally, I gained 60 pounds while I was pregnant with my son. When he turned 3 months and 1 week old, I lost all of that weight (he will be 4 months on the 12th of December). I did not do any exercise until 6 weeks postpartum...just let your body recover during that time. After that, here was my game plan:

Eat 2000 calories a day and drink at least 8 cups of water.
Start off jogging for about 10 minutes (for me it was very slowly with lots of breaks...I just couldn't do any more)
If you have access to an eliptical, that will help out a lot (once I started jogging, the extra weight hurt my knees so I had to do the eliptical)
Work out about 5 days a week.
Log everything.
Once you get smaller and your weight loss slows down, eat 1850 calories a day.
Have a free day where you eat more calories once a week (this will help your metabolism).
Eat whatever you want, just in the right portions .
Buy a digital food scale ($12 at Ross)

I've kept this up and now I can run over 3 miles without stopping at a nice pace and I've lost 66 pounds . 12 more to go until I reach my ideal weight . I think nursing helped out a LOT! Have a great time!!!

I also do the "crunch boot camp" that is available on youtube.com (& now the biggest loser at home challenge- not on youtube)

Filaree

Congratulations on your baby girl!!! I hope you enjoy your delivery!! My son was born on August 12, 2012 and I have exclusively breastfeed him since he was born. You have made a wonderful choice!!! It is an amazing experience with so many benifits. It will help the weight come off a lot easier. Personally, I gained 60 pounds while I was pregnant with my son. When he turned 3 months and 1 week old, I lost all of that weight (he will be 4 months on the 12th of December). I did not do any exercise until 6 weeks postpartum...just let your body recover during that time. After that, here was my game plan:

Eat 2000 calories a day and drink at least 8 cups of water.
Start off jogging for about 10 minutes (for me it was very slowly with lots of breaks...I just couldn't do any more)
If you have access to an eliptical, that will help out a lot (once I started jogging, the extra weight hurt my knees so I had to do the eliptical)
Work out about 5 days a week.
Log everything.
Once you get smaller and your weight loss slows down, eat 1850 calories a day.
Have a free day where you eat more calories once a week (this will help your metabolism).
Eat whatever you want, just in the right portions .
Buy a digital food scale ($12 at Ross)

I've kept this up and now I can run over 3 miles without stopping at a nice pace and I've lost 66 pounds . 12 more to go until I reach my ideal weight . I think nursing helped out a LOT! Have a great time!!!

I also do the "crunch boot camp" that is available on youtube.com (& now the biggest loser at home challenge- not on youtube)

Thanks for all the information. This wasn't my thread; but I had the same question and found this to be quite helpful.
I gave birth to a little boy the day after you on 13 August 2012. I was 145 before pregnancy, lost quite a bit of weight due to morning sickness, but put it back on of course, by the end I was 162. Just 3 weeks after delivery I was down to 142 because I wasn't eating anything but a couple of bowls of cereal each day and I am exclusively breastfeeding (except for two weeks when I breastfeed and supplemented). My supply dropped (hence the supplementing) and I realized I needed to make a strong effort to eat a lot better no matter how tired I am. Even then I stayed fairly steady at 145 until two weeks ago.
Now I am back up to 149. Not a big difference to be sure; but the scale is creeping in the wrong direction! I don't know if it was the overeating during the holiday (love my mom's cooking) or the Depo shot; but I want to get back to eating HEALTHY foods and exercising again. I just found this website today. I love it so far; but the fact that there breastfeeding isn't taking into consideration with the calorie consumption left me feeling really bad when I counted my calories for the day. I was over what I should have been for a breastfeeding mom; but I was REALLY over what I should have been from their calculations.

shellebelle79

I think the best thing to do at first is to enjoy being with your new baby girl. Don't over due it give yourself time to heal. So you don't hurt yourself. You will be so busy caring for her that you will start to lose shortly after haveing he without even trying. To be so little they keep you busy! What I did after my first pregnancy was to limit my bread intake and tried to limit my junk food. Now I just had my 3rd and I'm trying to drop the weight again. Drink plenty of water and just take it day to day. Best of luck!