Big deficit?

katerinawaller wrote: »

I'm not able to breastfeed, I tried. (I tried everything, including pumping every 2 hours day and night for weeks

I wasn't ever able to either. Three kids, lactation consultants, last leche league, pumping, etc etc. Sometimes you just can't. That's what formula is for.

I think you are ok. If you are still losing rapidly, and are hungry, you may want to up your calories a bit. But other than that, well done!
And, congrats on the baby!

Unless you've noticed a difference in the way your clothes fit it might be mostly water weight...but surely you've achieved some actual weight loss. If you're not working out then that calorie goal seems fine (this without knowing your individual stats).

If you start to notice that your pants are starting to fall off after only like a month then it's probably too fast of weight loss. But it's good that you don't feel tired or lethargic. This is all trial and error anyway so you do something until it doesn't work or you experience ill-effects and then you try something else. Congrats on your little one and good job!

After baby it's fairly normal to have a larger loss for a little. I had it after my two little ones but then my weight jumped up again. I wouldn't worry too much about that much loss yet but if you keep seeing too fast of a decrease then I'd adjust your intake higher.

katerinawaller wrote:

I wanted to lose around 35lbs. MFP says I should eat around 1500 calories a day to lose 1lb a week. I've been eating around 1300-1500 (not exercising yet), and I've lost around 14lb in 4 weeks. I'm 5'7, and 160lbs.
Is this probably water weight do you think? Is it unhealthy that it's dropping so fast?

At your height, 119-160 is a healthy weight based on BMI.
http://www.eatright.org/bmi/
Since you're already at a healthy weight, it's better to go slowly.
1 lb a week is probably a bit much; don't worry if it slows to 0.5 lb or less.
And losing 35 lb would put you toward the lower end of a healthy weight range.
Have you considered aiming for maybe a 10-15 lb loss, then increasing your weightlifting? You might be happy at a slightly higher weight if you were trim & strong, which is what weightlifting can do for you.

To some degree this is a guessing game with the fine-tuning of "how many calories can I eat?".

This calculator https://www.bcm.edu/cnrc-apps/caloriesneed.cfm says that if you're active less than 1 hour a day you need 2291 cal/day to maintain your current weight and 2219 to maintain at 145. So cut 500 from that to get 1700-1800 and you should be losing 1 lb per week (which again, with so little to go would be a big loss). So it looks like you could eat a bit more if you want to, slow the rate of loss a bit.

This calculator https://www.bcm.edu/cnrc-apps/healthyeatingcalculator/eatingCal.html says that if you're active less than 1 hour a day you need 1842 cal to maintain at 145. So the 1300 you've been eating (500 cal deficit) would put you at 1 lb lost per week. (That will also show you how many servings of which food groups you should be eating.)