***Breastfeeding Moms***

vanessaduke
vanessaduke Posts: 6 Member
in Motivation and Support
Are you averaging the calories you lose from nursing?
300-800 per day?
If you are how are you doing/logging this?

Replies

  • janjunie
    janjunie Posts: 1,200 Member
    I log it under cardio exercise, but u can also log is under food and it will give a negative adjustment .
  • vanessaduke
    vanessaduke Posts: 6 Member
    I also, log it in as cardio. How do you know the amount to log. What are your #s?
  • janjunie
    janjunie Posts: 1,200 Member
    My baby is now 14 months so I had a while to play around with numbers. I started adding 600 calories when he was ebf and was losing weight back then. Now, I'm maintaining my weight and add just under 400 extra calories, he eats half solids and the other half is milk on average. If you know how much milk you are making you need roughly 20 extra calories for every ounce you produce.
  • vanessaduke
    vanessaduke Posts: 6 Member
    No idea how much I'm producing. I don't pump. Hate it. I only make as much as she needs from nursing straight from the source. I've heard what you make from pumping is not accurate anyway because they are much more efficient at nursing and get more that way. I was just curious. Some days I nurse all day, some less because I work or she's not as hungry. I just average it out...I think I'm finally starting to lose some weight. I'm more interested in how I feel and how my clothes fit than the # on the scale.
    Thanks for responding! Have a great day!
  • janinestill
    janinestill Posts: 2 Member
    You also need to base the calories a bit on how rich your milk is - both my babies were skinny when ebf, and whenever I saved some expressed milk in a bag I could see that the layer of fat on top was very thin, so I only logged 300 calories.
  • klala042
    klala042 Posts: 175 Member
    My daughter is ebf stil and I just log it as a straight 500 calories. However, mfp only gives me 1200 calories a day, so that plus the 500 gives me 1700 for a day. I've been losing 1-2 lbs a week if I stick to that 1700 limit. Once she starts eating solids I will probably lessen it to 350 and see how that goes. I drink at least a gallon of water a day, which I think helps maintain my supply.
  • dw920
    dw920 Posts: 41 Member
    This is my second baby, but my first time actively trying to lose weight while breastfeeding. My pediatrician wants me to take in around 2,000 calories a day to keep my milk supply up, so when I started MFP last week, I just set it as "maintaining current weight", and it gives me around 1,900 calories a day. This allows me to take in enough to make enough milk but lose some weight. I've lost 3 pounds in my first week.

    Side note... I can't remember where I heard it, but you burn about 50 calories for each ounce of milk you produce.

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