exercising and brebreastfeeding

I personally, was never able to lose weight while breastfeeding,
...

...

.....Eat lots and lots of food.

I think I found the reason why...

women tend to grossly overestimate how much food their babies actually need. I would eat at maintenance or maybe a moderate surplus.

I think you didn't read her post .

Having breastfed 2 babies for a total of 40 months over both (and no formula), I have a bit of experience with this . Here's my advice:

1) Start by setting your goals for a 500 calorie/day deficit, based on no exercise and no breastfeeding.
2) Assume that by exclusively breastfeeding burns about 500 calories per day (it's really anywhere from 300-500 or a little more for a huge eater). Add this to your diary every day. It's in the food database, but I don't like that method because it doesn't account for your personal macro settings. I always added it by adding a cardio exercise for it - you can create your own, and just make sure that it says the number you want every day (it may adjust itself as your weight changes). Adjust the amount down as you start to supplement with solid foods and/or formula (and the baby nurses less).
3) Plan to eat most, if not all, of your exercise calories.

Start there. Then, you can scale back a bit each week if you're not losing at the rate you would like, maybe removing 100-150 daily calories at a time until you're at a point where you feel like you're eating enough to support nursing and activity but at a big enough deficit that your weight is changing at an acceptable rate for you. It will take some tweaking, but you'll get there. Remember that your baby only needs your breastmilk for the first year or so but you have the rest of your life to lose the weight - if nursing is very important to you and you find yourself losing supply, up your calories a bit and slow down the loss for awhile.

Also, lots of cardio can make your milk a little salty tasting. It won't hurt the baby in any way, but some babies turn their nose up at the taste a little. If you find this happening, you might need to scale back the cardio a little.

I also agree with 500 calories, and plenty of water.

With my first, the weight fell off while breastfeeding and then I started gaining after weaning.

I didnt count calories or exercise, only simply made sure I was eating healthy foods.

I wonder if an HRM would pick up any burn during breast feeding sessions?

I'm still nursing and working out pretty heavily as well. I teach cycling and lift weights and run some sprints. I was setting my calories at 500 extra and not losing any weight. I decided to just set my calories at maintenance and eat back my exercise calories and I've lost a couple pounds and a ton of bodyfat. That's what's been working for me but since we're all different I would experiment like Barbie said. When I was nursing exclusively (before my son started eating real food) I would get so lightheaded if I didn't eat enough. I was also a lot more concerned with lack of supply so I didn't really worry about weight loss at all. After he turned a year I started worrying a little bit more about myself and a little less about my supply. He still seems happy to nurse though so I think I've finally found the happy medium . I'm getting my body back for the most part (except this pesky little pooch ) and he is still able to nurse.