Breastfeeding and lifting

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kjbradley91
kjbradley91 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello. I’m totally lost at this point. I have a few pounds of belly fat I’m targeting after my baby was born, I lift 5-6 times a week and cardio 5 days a week. I mostly breastfeed as well. I’m at 1936 calories a day. 500 deficient and I burn about 500 a day.
Clearly I’m doing something wrong, I want to loose my last few pounds but build muscle. Someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong here.

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  • lnd0718
    lnd0718 Posts: 22 Member
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    Those hormones are real. Everyone is different but, a lot of people keep the weight until they are finished with breast feeding and it's almost like a whoosh of weight that falls off. I say time. Not sure how far along post partum you are but, time.
  • LiveOnceBeHappy
    LiveOnceBeHappy Posts: 434 Member
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    It's been 20 years since I breastfed a baby, but as I recall you can mess up milk supply with calorie deficits. Congrats on the new baby!
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,940 Member
    edited February 2022
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    Muscle building tends to take place in a continuum.

    You need your programming and performance impetus (the exercise trigger to tell your body to build some muscle)

    Then, the more late teens / early 20s, more male, and more well fed you are, including at a surplus gaining weight, the more muscle you build.

    The corollary is that if muscle is important smaller deficits, ones small enough that weight change is hard to see amidst normal weight fluctuations, well, that's where you're maximizing your muscle building subject to losing (or weight stability) instead of gaining weight.

    During general reading of "recommendations" I've run more than once into the idea that breastfeeding burns a good 3-500 calories especially in the beginning. If a new mother eats at normal maintenance, breastfeeding will yield close to a lb a week in weight loss which for many mothers (once initial water weight losses unrelated to the deficit take place) is enough to bring them to their former weight before the baby is weaned.

    Not sure why you would be running a deficit without taking into account breastfeeding or exercise calories. And yes, deficits can mess with milk supply.

    That said, while 500 seems quite high of an estimate for net weightlifting Calories that should be eaten back, it does NOT seem heigh for weightlifting+milk production Calories
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    What does your lifting program look like? Just "lifting 5-6 days per week" doesn't really have any context. A lot of people waste a ton of time in the weight room lifting without any kind of structured programming, or their programming is sub-optimal at best to achieve their desired results and the wheels just spin and spin and spin with nothing much to show for it.

    Also, how long have you been doing this? Contrary to the marketing gimmicks of 30 days this and 30 days that, building one's desired physique takes time...lots of time...generally on a continuum of months and years, not several weeks. Furthermore, large deficits are counterproductive to building any muscle at all regardless of the quality of your program. Maintaining muscle requires fuel...building muscle requires more fuel. If building muscle mass is important while losing fat, the calorie deficit can't be hugely aggressive.

    Lastly, you mention targeting belly fat...that is not something that is biologically possible. You can't spot reduce fat outside of surgery.

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