Breastfeeding/weight loss/tracking

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mysty018
mysty018 Posts: 10 Member
Is there any way to change the app to accommodate for breastfeeding and needing a higher calorie count.

Also any ideas/stories about successfully loosing the weight with out loosing your milk supply? Very very afraid that I will loose my.milk supply and have been avoiding anything that I think will affect it.

Replies

  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    I had passed on from several mothers on a blog, a method I've passed on to several and they had success.

    Set MFP to Lightly Active (since you will be easily).

    Set to Maintain.

    Do not account for the calories used for milk.

    If you exercise, log them honestly if there is a speed or pace component and eat them back.
    Strength Training is Weight lifting, and while low calorie burn, that's true.

    If general (like Spinning or Elliptical) then change the calorie burn to 75 - 50% of suggested, depending on how hard you think you did it.

    You have created a reasonable deficit.

    Log food accurately, by weight grams, not by spoons or cups.
  • thedafftone
    thedafftone Posts: 13 Member
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    I easily lost my baby weight using breastfeeding to create my deficit. I lost steadily eating 2000+ calories a day (if I had extra hungry days I ate as much as I needed) and by 6 months was the lightest I've ever been.
  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
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    How old is baby? Typically if you are primarily breastfeeding that is considered an extra 500 cals a day. So maintenance would be your maintenance calculated by mfp + 500 calories for breastfeeding.

    You can either add the calories daily by loggig it like food ( there sre breastfeeding entries in the database that will add calories) or just manually set your goal higher in the goals tab.

    Since you are worried about supply I would recommend starting to log at maintenance + breastfeeding calories and slowly decrease from there. Try 100 less calories the next week and monitor supply. If all is well drop another 100 the next week. So on, if you do see a drop in supply go back to maintenance for a few days, get the supply back up, and slowly drop back down to where you were before your supply backed off.

    Some women can successfully cut quite a bit and still have good supply, and others can't so take it slow and find out what works for you.

    Congrats on the little one and good luck!
  • mysty018
    mysty018 Posts: 10 Member
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    Thanks for the help!

    My baby is 4.5 months. I got food poisining almost 2 months after having her and my supply dropped from 10-12 oz per session to 2 oz per session. I've had to work really hard to get it back up to 3-4 oz per session. Needless to say I'm very worried about it dropping again. But these are some great ideas!
  • yasminromero66
    yasminromero66 Posts: 2 Member
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    I just had my second son two weeks ago and also breastfeed a good way to keep your milk supply is adding oatmeal to your diet and drinking lots of water. Also try mothers tea it helps produce milk I wish the best of luck to you and your diet (:
  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
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    @yasminromero66 why does oatmeal help?
  • trjjoy
    trjjoy Posts: 666 Member
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    Just feed more often to increase your supply.
  • MeginBliss
    MeginBliss Posts: 30 Member
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    I have been nursing my daughter for 15 months now (she still eats every 2 hours), and have struggled with supply the entire time. I've been losing weight consistently since November and actually notice an increase in supply with the increase in water and rich nutrients I'm taking in. Pumping or feeding on a schedule is essential. Feed your baby on demand, but if baby goes a few hours without feeding, pump instead. This isn't advice for everyone, people with a healthy supply don't always need to do this, but as someone struggling with supply, it was the best advice my lactation consultant gave me. Milk supply is supply and demand, the more you empty the more milk you'll make.
  • Tryckster14
    Tryckster14 Posts: 17 Member
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    I just had my second son two weeks ago and also breastfeed a good way to keep your milk supply is adding oatmeal to your diet and drinking lots of water. Also try mothers tea it helps produce milk I wish the best of luck to you and your diet (:

    All of this works! I'm drinking mother's milk tea, eating oatmeal and cookies and drink lots of water, it doubles the quantity!
  • Musicalpolarbear
    Musicalpolarbear Posts: 21 Member
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    Thank you for asking this, I'm feeding my four and a half month old daughter and wasn't sure what to do. She takes bottle top ups too as my supply isn't quite enough (tried everything, she's just really hungry!) so I'll halve the advice given here. Thanks all!
  • VeryKatie
    VeryKatie Posts: 5,949 Member
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    Check out the post below. It's very informative and addresses your question.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10176233/gaining-weight-during-pregnancy-and-losing-it-post-partum