No weight loss exclusively breastfeeding!
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For me the scale didn't start moving until I stopped adding the BF calories. And even then, I decided to take it slow. I'm averaging about 0.5 a week right now. Any more than that, and I was compromising supply. It took me about 4 months to find the right balance for my Chunk and I, but we got there.0
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SafioraLinnea wrote: »I have doubt that people who claim they can't lose are accurately tracking their intake and activity levels. Every single person I have talked to about post baby fat loss and has done what I do find success.
I'm more than 30 pounds below my pre-pregnant weight. I eat at maintenance calories. I use breastfeeding to create a deficit. If I exercise (and I do!) I eat back those calories.
In the last six months it has been 5 pounds a month averaged out over that time. I lost about 25 pounds before my 6w postpartum check up but that was not intentional as I did not try to lose until after that checkup.
If you eat at maintenance and nurse you will lose weight. It is not a linear process - some weeks I lose next to nothing and others I lose 3lbs - but with patience and time and persistence and accurate logging it will happen.
The purpose of eating at maintenance is to not lose your milk supply. So the post-baby steps to successful fat loss:
1. Do nothing until after your 6w check up. This allows your body to heal, hormones to balance and milk supply to be secured.
2. Accurately calculate your maintenance calories. Use several different calculators to get an idea of the accuracy of the number. MFP underestimates my maintenance calories, scooby does a decent job.
3. Eat ALL of your maintenance calories and no more! Regardless of how hungry you think you are. Maintenance is all you need.
4. Breastfeeding creates a deficit.
5. If you exercise, accurately calculate your exercise calories and eat all of those.
6. Follow this accurately and over a long period of time. A week is not enough. A month is probably enough to see some difference.
7. If you lose 5 pounds or more recalculate your maintenance calories.
I think this partially has something to do with how much you weigh to start. I'm eating 2400 calories a day and losing just from breastfeeding deficits BUT I'm 220 lbs so I can eat that much and list weight. Someone who is smaller and needs to eat 1500 calories for maintenance might actually be hungry all the time.
Second I wouldn't tell a new mom to just eat at maintenance even if she is starving. Because if it's a choice between a healthy mind or a healthy body always go with the mind first!8 -
How much are you eating? Are you using a food scale?
Since baby is 9 months old, you could try a small deficit (-250) since supply should be well established.0 -
SafioraLinnea wrote: »I have doubt that people who claim they can't lose are accurately tracking their intake and activity levels. Every single person I have talked to about post baby fat loss and has done what I do find success.
I'm more than 30 pounds below my pre-pregnant weight. I eat at maintenance calories. I use breastfeeding to create a deficit. If I exercise (and I do!) I eat back those calories.
Good for you. BUT for some of us any kind of a deficit, even one created by breastfeeding = loss of supply.7 -
Thaks a lot ladies! This has helped a lottt. I am planning to log everything I eat and eat at maintainance and continue my workout routine.
Luna, no I don't use a food scale and my maintance is about 1800cal that I am allowed which is actually enogh for me and I have a good supply on it. So fingers crossed hopefully I will see some results now. Xxxx0 -
SafioraLinnea wrote: »I have doubt that people who claim they can't lose are accurately tracking their intake and activity levels. Every single person I have talked to about post baby fat loss and has done what I do find success.
You're not hearing what they're telling you. They're *not* saying "I'm logging maintenance calories, breastfeeding to create a deficit but not losing weight". They're saying "If I don't eat maintenance+500 calories, my milk supply drops".
You don't believe it because it didn't work that way for you - but that's because you won the hormone lottery. You got hormones that continued to tell your body to produce milk even though you were running a deficit. Not everyone is so lucky.
I never got to exclusively breastfeed. With my second baby, I never got to breastfeed at all. Deficit or no deficit. Regardless of how many supplements and medications I took to try and make it happen. Regardless of how many hours of my life I spent pumping. BREASTFEEDING IS NOT EQUALLY EASY FOR EVERY WOMAN!!! If it was easy for you, congratulations! But that doesn't give you the right to negate other women's experiences.9 -
Thaks a lot ladies! This has helped a lottt. I am planning to log everything I eat and eat at maintainance and continue my workout routine.
Luna, no I don't use a food scale and my maintance is about 1800cal that I am allowed which is actually enogh for me and I have a good supply on it. So fingers crossed hopefully I will see some results now. Xxxx
The food scale has really helped me. Wish I would have used it sooner!1 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »SafioraLinnea wrote: »I have doubt that people who claim they can't lose are accurately tracking their intake and activity levels. Every single person I have talked to about post baby fat loss and has done what I do find success.
You're not hearing what they're telling you. They're *not* saying "I'm logging maintenance calories, breastfeeding to create a deficit but not losing weight". They're saying "If I don't eat maintenance+500 calories, my milk supply drops".
You don't believe it because it didn't work that way for you - but that's because you won the hormone lottery. You got hormones that continued to tell your body to produce milk even though you were running a deficit. Not everyone is so lucky.
I never got to exclusively breastfeed. With my second baby, I never got to breastfeed at all. Deficit or no deficit. Regardless of how many supplements and medications I took to try and make it happen. Regardless of how many hours of my life I spent pumping. BREASTFEEDING IS NOT EQUALLY EASY FOR EVERY WOMAN!!! If it was easy for you, congratulations! But that doesn't give you the right to negate other women's experiences.
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This x 1000
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With my second baby, I was determined come hell or high water to lose the baby weight. I lost it for sure, and I looked good. But he was suffering nutritionally. He was a very happy, easy-going baby, so I didn't realize what was happening, but he wasn't growing the way he should've been and I naively thought that my body would do what it takes to give him the milk he needed. Imagine my guilt when I switched him to formula at ten months and he started thriving. I wish I could go back and do it differently.
With baby three, I was determined not to make the same mistake. The weight came off a lot more slowly, but I did eventually lose most of it (and I think I would've lost it all if I had not gotten pregnant when she was 10 months old).
In my opinion, a year flies by. You'll nurse your little baby and then suddenly it'll be over, and you'll never have that time again. But you will have the rest of your life, when your hormones return to normal, to focus on your figure. So give it a try, try eating at maintenance and using a food scale and all that, but if your priority is establishing healthy exclusively nursing relationship, don't stress the weight-loss too much. It will come off.6 -
So glad I found this thread! 11 weeks PP, breastfeeding, and haven't lost any pregnancy weight yet. Just wanted to add that my OB shared about 1/3 of the moms in her practice don't lose any weight until they are done nursing. Calorie deficit alone doesn't necessarily solve the problem because of the body's hormone regulation.
Way to go to all the mamas out there, pregnancy and childbirth are tough enough - nursing isn't a walk in the park either! I look forward to getting my prepregnancy body back someday, but for now I'm just focusing on eating healthy and exercising 3-5 times a week and keeping up my supply while nursing.3 -
My son is 17 months, 13 1/2 corrected
I express after i feed so i can see when im struggling with supply
I weigh foods and measure liquids and i have to be very very careful with my intake as if my body decides my intake is too low my supply dips and i have to make an effort to eat and drink more to get it back up
( my signs of supply dip are fussy baby at boob, switching side to side to side, needed to feed more often particularly in the middle of the night and barely able to express )
In 17 months i lost 21lb, more to go1 -
I've been nursing since October 2014. Baby #2 will be 1 year old 12/24/16. I want to do one year with nursing him but that's what I said with my first and that didn't happen. I nursed through my pregnancy and was EP for the first 3 months due to baby having a high palate. Now I only pump while I work and have noticed my supply drop when I don't eat as much (especially carbs). I am 30lb heavier than my pregnancy weight from baby #1. I'm pre diabetic (didn't have diabetes during my pregnancies) and really want to cut carbs but maybe an increase in activity will help?1
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SusanMFindlay wrote: »You're not hearing what they're telling you. They're *not* saying "I'm logging maintenance calories, breastfeeding to create a deficit but not losing weight". They're saying "If I don't eat maintenance+500 calories, my milk supply drops".
You don't believe it because it didn't work that way for you - but that's because you won the hormone lottery. You got hormones that continued to tell your body to produce milk even though you were running a deficit. Not everyone is so lucky.
I never got to exclusively breastfeed. With my second baby, I never got to breastfeed at all. Deficit or no deficit. Regardless of how many supplements and medications I took to try and make it happen. Regardless of how many hours of my life I spent pumping. BREASTFEEDING IS NOT EQUALLY EASY FOR EVERY WOMAN!!! If it was easy for you, congratulations! But that doesn't give you the right to negate other women's experiences.
Thank you for saying this. I also really struggled so hard with my supply and spent several 100s of dollars on nursing supplements and different pump parts, etc. I power pumped multiple times a day for weeks. Baby had a tongue tie at the beginning which got things off wrong. Breastfeeding for me is harder than the birthing process and I had a 36 hour labor with 3.5 hours of pushing, a failed forcep delivery, followed by an emergency c-section.1 -
I did lose weight nursing, without trying. I nursed my 10-pound newborn to being 28 pounds before she was willing to eat much solid food. I effortlessly got down 10 or more pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight.
That said, I don't discount people who say that they have a very difficult time losing the last 10 pounds or more, because I have never, ever been so conscious of the metabolic processes that work to maintain weight as when I was nursing that adorable little lamprey.
I calculated that she was taking in more than 600 calories a day at one point - all of it from me, all of which had to be created by me (adding metabolic processes, presumably).
I dropped weight very quickly, and then I hit a point that my body seemed to really, really want to defend. I'd be cruising along, and she'd hit a growth spurt nad demand more - and I would lose another pound or two - and then I would find myself in front of my fridge, eating meat and cheese and eggs, and I would have gotten there on automatic pilot - like I hadn't made a conscious decision. I craved high-density nutrition - not sugar, not fruit, but meat, eggs, milk. I normally don't crave that kind of stuff.
I'd eat like that for a few days, my weight would rebound up above that certain point, and .... I'd eat normally again.
It was frankly weird. It made me a believer in set point theory, among other things. Even pregnancy didn't make me feel so much like my body was doing things and running processes that were outside of my conscious control. VERY strange.
(In the same line, I was in childbirth class with a macrobiotic vegan woman who started eating meat during her pregnancy. She explained "I started dreaming every night of birds flying into my mouth, and decided it meant something.")5 -
This has been very interesting to read of other women's experiences.
I have had 3 babies now and with every single one of them, I held on to about 20 extra pounds until they stopped nursing, no matter what I did. I usually gained 40 pounds with pregnancy so those first 20 pounds came off very quickly but after that, it was extremely hard and even if I did manage to start to lose those 20 pounds my weight would shoot back up within a week. I was always envious of some of my friends who did nothing but breastfeed and ended up below their pre pregnancy weight.
I remember always being ravenously hungry and fighting to eat at maintenance. It felt like my body physically couldn't do it and that my supply was affected. Eventually I decided just to try to get regular exercise and to stop worrying about it. They stop nursing eventually!
After I stopped nursing the weight started to come off slowly with all 3 babies, but I had to work at it. Sigh...0 -
Our bodies do not "hold onto" fat reserves while we're nursing. You need to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. Eat at maintenance and you'll lose weight as breastfeeding creates the deficit.
Just curious, do you have experience nursing? I don't mean for this to sound confrontational--it's an honest question. The notion that women lose their baby weight from nursing works in theory and some (lucky) women are quite successful at maintaining a steady loss without losing their supply. I was never able to achieve any significant weight loss while nursing my son without compromising my supply--even with an industrial breast pump. I had "friends" pointing out how they "got so thin while breastfeeding" and they "couldn't understand" what was wrong with me.
I'm 4 months post-partum and 2kg under my pre-pregnancy weight. I am breastfeeding on demand 24/7 and THAT is the secret of maintaining a healthy milk supply. Even the skinniest moms manage to breastfeed.
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Our bodies do not "hold onto" fat reserves while we're nursing. You need to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. Eat at maintenance and you'll lose weight as breastfeeding creates the deficit.
Just curious, do you have experience nursing? I don't mean for this to sound confrontational--it's an honest question. The notion that women lose their baby weight from nursing works in theory and some (lucky) women are quite successful at maintaining a steady loss without losing their supply. I was never able to achieve any significant weight loss while nursing my son without compromising my supply--even with an industrial breast pump. I had "friends" pointing out how they "got so thin while breastfeeding" and they "couldn't understand" what was wrong with me.
I'm 4 months post-partum and 2kg under my pre-pregnancy weight. I am breastfeeding on demand 24/7 and THAT is the secret of maintaining a healthy milk supply. Even the skinniest moms manage to breastfeed.
My daughter had a lip and tongue tie.. no matter how much time I put her on the breast (not to mention how much she screamed when I tried) would not have improved the situation. We saw three lactation consultants.. finally saw Dr. Jack Newman and got the ties corrected and it helped. But not all breastfeeding stories end up that way.
Again, just because you are having such an easy time with breastfeeding does not mean it is easy for others. There are so many things that can go wrong and thinking that it has a simple solution is not true.5 -
Our bodies do not "hold onto" fat reserves while we're nursing. You need to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. Eat at maintenance and you'll lose weight as breastfeeding creates the deficit.
Just curious, do you have experience nursing? I don't mean for this to sound confrontational--it's an honest question. The notion that women lose their baby weight from nursing works in theory and some (lucky) women are quite successful at maintaining a steady loss without losing their supply. I was never able to achieve any significant weight loss while nursing my son without compromising my supply--even with an industrial breast pump. I had "friends" pointing out how they "got so thin while breastfeeding" and they "couldn't understand" what was wrong with me.
I'm 4 months post-partum and 2kg under my pre-pregnancy weight. I am breastfeeding on demand 24/7 and THAT is the secret of maintaining a healthy milk supply. Even the skinniest moms manage to breastfeed.
Yeah no...0 -
Our bodies do not "hold onto" fat reserves while we're nursing. You need to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. Eat at maintenance and you'll lose weight as breastfeeding creates the deficit.
Just curious, do you have experience nursing? I don't mean for this to sound confrontational--it's an honest question. The notion that women lose their baby weight from nursing works in theory and some (lucky) women are quite successful at maintaining a steady loss without losing their supply. I was never able to achieve any significant weight loss while nursing my son without compromising my supply--even with an industrial breast pump. I had "friends" pointing out how they "got so thin while breastfeeding" and they "couldn't understand" what was wrong with me.
I'm 4 months post-partum and 2kg under my pre-pregnancy weight. I am breastfeeding on demand 24/7 and THAT is the secret of maintaining a healthy milk supply. Even the skinniest moms manage to breastfeed.
My daughter had a lip and tongue tie.. no matter how much time I put her on the breast (not to mention how much she screamed when I tried) would not have improved the situation. We saw three lactation consultants.. finally saw Dr. Jack Newman and got the ties corrected and it helped. But not all breastfeeding stories end up that way.
Again, just because you are having such an easy time with breastfeeding does not mean it is easy for others. There are so many things that can go wrong and thinking that it has a simple solution is not true.
I'd love to meet Dr Newman! This is a discussion about the efficacy of breastfeeding as a weight loss aid. I, too, have struggled to breastfeed. My little girl, too STILL has a lip tie. That has not prevented us from breastfeeding, though it sure as hell has been difficult and sore. Far, far, far more painful than giving birth.
Any woman who breastfeeds is engaging in a calorie-burning activity. Her lifestyle determines just how big or small a caloric deficit breastfeeding will be.
Some women's appetites increase and they start eating more, thus negating the caloric deficit. Other women fill up on low-calorie vegetables ALL DAY LONG and stay within a reasonable caloric allowance.1 -
Our bodies do not "hold onto" fat reserves while we're nursing. You need to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. Eat at maintenance and you'll lose weight as breastfeeding creates the deficit.
Just curious, do you have experience nursing? I don't mean for this to sound confrontational--it's an honest question. The notion that women lose their baby weight from nursing works in theory and some (lucky) women are quite successful at maintaining a steady loss without losing their supply. I was never able to achieve any significant weight loss while nursing my son without compromising my supply--even with an industrial breast pump. I had "friends" pointing out how they "got so thin while breastfeeding" and they "couldn't understand" what was wrong with me.
I'm 4 months post-partum and 2kg under my pre-pregnancy weight. I am breastfeeding on demand 24/7 and THAT is the secret of maintaining a healthy milk supply. Even the skinniest moms manage to breastfeed.
You're one of the lucky ones then. I also nursed on demand for a year. My son never had a drop formula. If I didn't eat back my breastfeeding calories my supply diminished. You happen to be one of the lucky moms who can nurse and lose weight without compromising their supply. Some of us are not so fortunate and struggle to even maintain a supply, despite nursing around the clock (which I did).3
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