Breastfeeding/exercising and eating these calories back..

Snunu

Hello, I keep reading posts about eating your exercise calories back and totally got confused. It does makes sense but from other side, if I look to my situation, I don't know what shall I do..

I breastfeed my 3 month old baby and I want to start loosing weight. I set up calories limit 1500 and if I add 500 calories for breastfeeding and, e.g. 500 calories for exercise, I'll get 2500 in total which is way too much for losing weight. I feel I'm missing something.. Please comment and help me understand how my calories intake shall be.. Or direct me to some posts I can read about the same question..

Thank you all in advance!

Lumen1505

Hi - I'm no expert but a lot of people use the scooby's calculator to factor their daily cal allowance which works on your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) this factors in your exercise so you dont necessarily need to log it as well (that will help if you have a new bubba) - I'm not sure of the lonk but if you use the search function it will come up. I'm not sure it will account for breastfeeding cals but there may be another calculator on here that does.

Hope this helps & good luck x

neandermagnon

losing weight is about eating less than you burn off. 2500 is not way too much for losing weight if you're burning off 2800 cals/day. If you're burning only 2200 cals a day, then it's too much. However if you're breastfeeding and exercising you are probably burning off more than you think.

are you logging your exercise and eating back the calories burned, or just adding 500 cals to cover all exercise? The first one is what you should be doing. i.e. do your exercise, log it, then eat back the calories burned. The number you start with, 1500, is set to be less than you'd burn off if you weren't doing any exercise or breastfeeding, so you'd be able to lose weight eating 1500 cals/day without exercise or breastfeeding. You need to add around 500 cals/day to ensure you are eating enough to sustain the breastfeeding, then eat back what you burn when you exercise. Even eating back all your exercise and breastfeeding calories you will still be eating less than you burn off and will still lose weight.

Eating too little is very counterproductive when you're trying to lose weight, it can lead to bingeing and excessive hunger and that makes it much more difficult to stick with the plan. If you eat too little in the long term your metabolism can slow and you'll be more likely to regain the weight back again. However, if you have a small deficit (i.e. eating a bit less than you burn off) fat loss is slower, but it's much easier and you can stick to it in the long term, and it's a lot less likely to be regained. So focus on long term success. Also, when breastfeeding, if you don't eat enough you are more likely to suffer nutritional deficiencies and it can affect your milk supply. So eat back your breastfeeding calories, then eat back your exercise calories according to what you burn from exercise.

ETA: the suggestion above re scooby's calculator, is a good one, it's a different method of calculating how much you burn off. If you do the MFP method you eat back breastfeeding and exercise calories. If you do the TDEE method, you get one number that's for everythign (including exercise and breastfeeding) and eat that.

csimmons0914

I myself anm trying to find a healthy balance. I have a 8 week old and I breastfeed exclusively.