Breastfeeding, TDEE & stalling. Insight?

deenafort
deenafort Posts: 3 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
I am down 20 lbs since I started counting calories in June. Eating 1500-1700 calories a day helped me get to where I am, but I have been stalled for several months now eating the same amount. I figured out that my TDEE is about 1700 calories, which means that eating 1700 allows me to maintain, and 1500 means a super slow loss. I am breastfeeding my newly minted one year old, and while 1500-1800 is the recommended calorie range for breastfeeding moms, I know I will absolutely not lose any more eating that way. There is no way that breastfeeding my toddler who eats a significant amount of solid food burns anywhere close to 500 calories, especially considering eating within the range given to moms to lose weight has me stalled.

I am considering dropping down 500 from my TDEE like I have done in the past to lose weight successfully. Has anyone done this while breastfeeding their toddler?

I'd ideally like for my kid to self wean, but I am not willing to forgo feeling good about myself until whenever that is, so I know I need to do something.

Insight?

Replies

  • HealthyBodySickMind
    HealthyBodySickMind Posts: 1,207 Member
    edited September 2017
    I quit counting calories for breastfeeding at all when my girl turned 1, and I cut it down from the 500 when she started eating solids (around 5 months). While it still costs your body energy to make milk, it becomes negligible the less they nurse.

    The general rule of thumb I would use would be to quit counting breastfeeding calories whenever your breasts stay the same cup size all the time (as opposed to 3 different cup sizes in a day).
  • deenafort
    deenafort Posts: 3 Member
    HealthyBodySickMind wrote: »
    I quit counting calories for breastfeeding at all when my girl turned 1, and I cut it down from the 500 when she started eating solids (around 5 months). While it still costs your body energy to make milk, it becomes negligible the less they nurse.

    The general rule of thumb I would use would be to quit counting breastfeeding calories whenever your breasts stay the same cup size all the time (as opposed to 3 different cup sizes in a day).

    So did you eat however many calories MFP gave you at the pint where your girl turned 1?
  • HealthyBodySickMind
    HealthyBodySickMind Posts: 1,207 Member
    deenafort wrote: »
    HealthyBodySickMind wrote: »
    I quit counting calories for breastfeeding at all when my girl turned 1, and I cut it down from the 500 when she started eating solids (around 5 months). While it still costs your body energy to make milk, it becomes negligible the less they nurse.

    The general rule of thumb I would use would be to quit counting breastfeeding calories whenever your breasts stay the same cup size all the time (as opposed to 3 different cup sizes in a day).

    So did you eat however many calories MFP gave you at the pint where your girl turned 1?

    Okay, so the disclaimer I didn't put up was that I wasn't really trying to lose weight. I was just logging what I was eating. I added calories to the "calories out" side for the breastfeeding during her first year, cutting down the amount for the calories out for breastfeeding each month until she turned 1, at which point I considered the calories out from breastfeeding to be negligible, and so stopped counting them.

    In other words, no I didn't eat what MFP gave me, I just ate intuitively and logged as accurately as possible both for calories in and calories burned, like I always have, but I would not recommend that someone trying to lose weight just eat intuitively.

    From my tracking, for the first 6 months postpartum I ate an average of 551 calories per day more than my average daily calories before pregnancy (when I was weightlifting/in maintenance), which is more than the average daily calorie increase for my third trimester (an extra 418 cal per day on average).

    And most of the baby weight was gone in that first 6 months:

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  • deenafort
    deenafort Posts: 3 Member
    Ah, I see. I think I'll definitely try a 500 cal deficit from my TDEE, a little over 1200 a day. My milk supply is definitely stable at this point, my kid eats 3 meals a day and snacks, and generally I'm just not scared anymore by the thought of somehow tanking my supply. I'm sure that'll get me on a downward trend.
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