Need help nursing mom

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Rebekah718
Rebekah718 Posts: 134 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
With my other kids I lost a bunch of weight and then when I stopped nursing I gained tons. I told myself I'm just not going to do anything until after I was done nursing but I find the scale going up how does this app figure in nursing or how do I keep from making the same mistakes

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  • ncboiler89
    ncboiler89 Posts: 2,408 Member
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    I thought this was going to be a thread about someone nursing a mom. Wow. glad it's not.
  • Rebekah718
    Rebekah718 Posts: 134 Member
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    ncboiler89 wrote: »
    I thought this was going to be a thread about someone nursing a mom. Wow. glad it's not.
    That's a good one :D
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,626 Member
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    I thought the same thing, "Nursing mom?!...Wait, she is one."
  • sojerj
    sojerj Posts: 5 Member
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    I can realte to this! My first child the weight just fell off whilst breastfeeding but it didnt with my second. The advice I was given was to make sure you dont lose weight too quickly,take it gradually and slowly and definately no fad quick fix diets which I am sure you wouldnt do as this would be harmful to your precious babe and you. It was a long time ago but i think i had about 1800 calories a day ? I was able to lose 12 kgs suceesfully and kept it off and went on to feed my little boy till he was 2 yo with no problems in milk supply. I ate lots of healthy fresh nutritious filling foods.The trick is with little ones it can be a bit hard to prepare meals so I used to make multiple lots of a meal and have that for a few serves. I also use to have a meal plan again tricky if you are pushed for time but knowing what I was going to eat that day and it was within calorie count really helped me stay on track.Hope this helps.
  • Rebekah718
    Rebekah718 Posts: 134 Member
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    sojerj wrote: »
    I can realte to this! My first child the weight just fell off whilst breastfeeding but it didnt with my second. The advice I was given was to make sure you dont lose weight too quickly,take it gradually and slowly and definately no fad quick fix diets which I am sure you wouldnt do as this would be harmful to your precious babe and you. It was a long time ago but i think i had about 1800 calories a day ? I was able to lose 12 kgs suceesfully and kept it off and went on to feed my little boy till he was 2 yo with no problems in milk supply. I ate lots of healthy fresh nutritious filling foods.The trick is with little ones it can be a bit hard to prepare meals so I used to make multiple lots of a meal and have that for a few serves. I also use to have a meal plan again tricky if you are pushed for time but knowing what I was going to eat that day and it was within calorie count really helped me stay on track.Hope this helps.

    Thank you that really helps
  • Julia10morgan33
    Julia10morgan33 Posts: 11 Member
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    I went into nursing thinking that the weight would just fall off with the extra calories u burn, but I have found that is a common misconception. I need to loose about 30 lbs, but the scale hasn't even budged. I am hoping that counting calories and exercising will get things moving in the right direction.
  • Katiebear_81
    Katiebear_81 Posts: 719 Member
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    If I were you, I would just track really meticulously for a week to get an idea of how many calories you are actually consuming. The next week, try reducing that by about 250 calories. This is a really modest deficit, and *shouldn't* effect your supply. If nothing happens after a few weeks, take it down another 250 calories. And keep going until you start to see either a stability in your weight or a slight decrease WITHOUT noticing a dip in your supply.

    I don't know that MFP does anything for nursing itself. I think it might be counted under exercise (in that it gives you back some calories), but honestly... Don't know how often you're nursing, or how old your baby is, etc. I think you'd be smarter to do the math on your own, vs. trying to get a logarithm to do it for you. :)

    I tried losing weight when nursing my last and figured I'd do a whole 30 to get things moving (I was mostly paleo at that point, but with loads of starches including rice). Well, I dropped 10 lbs in that month and almost completely dried up. I ended up quitting on day 25 and gorging on nothing but water and oatmeal no-bake cookies (I knew that it would boost my supply - it had helped me during my first baby and earlier while nursing my second baby). My supply bounced back, but I didn't really have supply issues. So that's why I would encourage you to take it slow and not do anything drastic.
  • c613477
    c613477 Posts: 296 Member
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    OP, if you are exclusively nursing, start with adding 500 calories a day. If you have an older infant that is already on solids, tried adding closer to 300 calories a day to what MFP gives you. I only add 250 since mine us a toddler and it had been about right. You add breastfeeding as a food. Lots of choices will show up ( it adds a negative number so subtracts from what you are already.
  • learningtolove
    learningtolove Posts: 288 Member
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    You can enter breastfeeding as a "good" only it deducts calories instead of adding them. It's important ( and hard!) to find a balance between getting enough nutrition to maintain a good milk supply and overeating to offset the work your body does to make that milk.
  • LKArgh
    LKArgh Posts: 5,179 Member
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    Breastfeeding burns 300-500 calories per day. So, you can simply tell MFP that you want to eat at maintenance, and breastfeeding will create the deficit you need. And unfortunately as the child stops nursing, you suddenly need to eat all these calories less :(
  • zdyb23456
    zdyb23456 Posts: 1,706 Member
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    I guess I was lucky cause I'm pretty sure I burned over 1000 calories nursing/pumping... I was an over producer though and pumped a lot of extra milk. I think I had read somewhere you burn about 25 calories per ounce of milk produced. I ate whatever/whenever I wanted and kept losing weight - that was a lot of fun :)

    I did notice that as soon as I weaned the weight came back on fast - though I got pregnant shortly after weaning 2 times. For the third time I was ready, when I started weaning my third I started watching what I ate and started back up running (I had taken a 6 year break!) - that's when I joined MFP to start logging calories. I got up to high of 123 trying to figure things out. I'm now down to 115 which is a goal weight, but I've since changed it to 110.
  • captgalactic
    captgalactic Posts: 11 Member
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    I had MFP calculate the number of calories I need to lose 1lb a week, and then added 400 calories to that. That seems to be working well for me. Definitely take it slow. I didn't after my first kid, and ended up struggling with supply when he was 9mo to 1yr.

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