How many extra calories?

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kara1622
kara1622 Posts: 1 Member
in Getting Started
Hi! I have recently started some basic exercising and dieting. I am exclusively pumping for my 3 month old. How many extra calories should I factor in for the pumping? I am worried my supply will drop if I do not consume enough but also want to lose the extra weight

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  • DomesticKat
    DomesticKat Posts: 565 Member
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    Set your account to maintenance for 3 or 4 weeks. Follow that calorie goal and log all of your food with MFP. A food scale helps with that. Find a weight trending app that shows your rate of loss and deficit per day (like Libra) and start weighing yourself and tracking your weight loss trend. Do that consistently for 3 or 4 weeks, and you'll know what kind of deficit expressing milk is creating. Then you can adjust up or down accordingly.

    I don't recommend losing more than a pound a week, or starting off by eating in a deficit when you don't know what pumping is doing deficit-wise on its own. I'm nursing my soon to be one year old and losing about a pound a week with 2070 a day. There are calculators and stuff out there for estimating breastfeeding calorie burn but I've found them to significantly underestimate the calorie burn for myself so I don't use them. It's not really possible for anyone to know how many extra calories you need so it's important to collect your own data over time and manually adjust.
  • missysippy930
    missysippy930 Posts: 2,577 Member
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    You should really have this discussion with your physician.
  • adarbyem
    adarbyem Posts: 83 Member
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    I second the idea of speaking with your doctor. Personally, I would be reluctant to have you in a caloric deficit while you are nursing, but I am no doctor.
  • DomesticKat
    DomesticKat Posts: 565 Member
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    For women who are overweight or obese after pregnancy, breastfeeding can be a good opportunity to lose weight without restricting food intake like a typical dieter would. Nature intends for women to gain extra fat stores during pregnancy and use those fat stores after birth in order to fuel milk production. Yes, for someone who doesn't have the fat stores to lose, they should make sure they're filling in the deficit breastfeeding creates by eating more in order to not hurt their milk supply. This is also why the recommendation of not losing more than a pound a week exists.

    Absolutely, speak to your doctor if you have questions or concerns. Frequently, the advice is to eat "intuitively" while breastfeeding and trying to lose weight. In other words, eat when hungry and stop when full. That works well for some women, but for others they require a bit more precision with logging and tracking calories.
  • Courtscan2
    Courtscan2 Posts: 498 Member
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    I was told 200 calories a day when I was bfing my babies - but my youngest baby is now 6, so the recommendations may have changed.

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