I was having problems losing my last 5-10 pounds while breastfeeding my second daughter and I discovered that I had to set my weight loss goals at a half pound a week or at maintenance in order to lose anything. It was SOOO hard to eat more when everything you know says to eat less to lose weight! But it seems like the lower I went, the harder my body fought to hold on to my fat. Once I started eating around 2300 calories ( that includes exercise calories, around 250-300 a day) I started seeing results. And I had to be extra careful about nutrition too. I really tried to make every bite count and stay away from junk. They say you burn around 500 calories bfing but that is just an average. My babies all nurse on demand around the clock and I have a very plentiful supply. When I was exclusively bfing I budgeted 750 calories because my daughter ate about 12 times in 24 hours at an estimated 3-6 ounces every time. The average ounce of breastmilk has 22 calories in it. If I fed her 12 times, 4 ounces each feeding, that is 1056 calories I was making in 1 day!!!! That helped me feel better about eating more. lol I'm now trying to lose my last 10 pounds after having my 3rd daughter 14 mo. ago and it's hard staying in that eating more mindset. I try to listen to my body more. If my body says i'm truly hungry, I eat no matter what my diary says. Even if it says I have no more calories left, I eat if i'm hungry.

I would try upping your calories by 100 a week. Do you feel like you're still hungry sometimes? It's better when you're breastfeeding to create your calorie deficit by exercising rather than cutting calories. So you could set your calories at maintenance and then to create a deficit you would have to exercise but not necessarily eat those calories back since they are your deficit. So on the days where there was no exercise, there would be no deficit. With my first dd I ate what and when I wanted after I had her and lost all my baby weight (24 lbs) plus an extra 7 lbs. With my second, I lost half fairly quickly ( I gained 31 all together) and then I couldn't get the rest off. Ironically that was when I first started counting calories. I had gained more with her pregnancy in all the wrong places (haha) and I was anxious to get it off. I didn't lose the rest of it until I stopped restricting myself. With my last, I didn't diet afterwards (28 lb weight gain) and I lost most of it by 2 mo. post partum. The rest came off not too long after that. I eat pretty healthy normally which I'm sure helps and i'm pretty active because I have 3 young kids to chase around. lol I do know that a lot of people can't lose the last 10 pounds no matter what until they're done nursing. It just depends on the person I guess.

69margaux-Congrats on your baby girl. I had my first baby girl 7 months ago right before my 40th b-day. Whenever I see a 40+ mama on her it gives me hope that I can try for another baby I just wanted to say that I'm eating 2100 cal/day and just introduced solids to baby last month. My only exercise is taking walks right now and carrying my 18 lb baby all day and I'm still losing weight when I don't want to. I weigh 113 lbs and I'm 5'3 so my goal it to gain 5 lbs of muscle now. My experience with MFP is that it calculates BMR on the low end so I always need to add about 1-200 extra calories to what they recommend.

Here is the calculator I used http://www.iifym.com/tdee-calculator . Multiply it by .80 (for 20% off) and then add in breastfeeding calories which is 20 times the number of ounces your little one consumes. I know that is hard since you don't really know. I guessed 30 ounces for my little one or an extra 600 calories. This has worked so well for me so far. It brought my supply back up and I'm averaging 1.5 to 2 pounds a week again.