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hi I'm dr. Mike Rochelle and in this
installment of ask dr. Mike we're gonna
look at if it's possible for a
breastfeeding mom to also lose weight at
the same time
[Music]
so today's reader question comes from
Jill from Facebook and Jill asks I feel
like it's not possible to lose weight as
a nursing mom because I'm afraid of
losing my milk supply so she's wondering
what can she do so this is real good and
calm concern about new mothers who are
breastfeeding so you want to be able to
produce enough milk that you can feed
and nourish baby but you also want to
jumpstart the weight loss process so you
can lose any excess weight that you've
gained during the pregnancy so here's
the thing about weight loss so weight
loss is really about at its most basic
level the calorie deficit so it's about
maximizing this calories in calories out
equation right and you actually as a
breastfeeding mom have a really good
advantage that most other people don't
and that's the breastfeeding burns
actually a lot of calories so back to
Jill's question when she's afraid of
losing her milk supply so she's afraid
of restricting her calories too much
which is a good and valid concern
because if you restrict your calories
too much you're not going to have
everything you need to both fuel
yourself and also your baby so I'm
recommending against focusing too much
on calorie restriction instead focus on
getting enough nutrient dense foods
right so calories in versus calories out
is there are two parts to that equation
right the calories in part we don't want
to reduce those calories and too much so
what we'll do instead is maximize the
calories out so we can do that two
different ways the first way is through
exercise now there's not a whole lot of
research looking at the effects of
exercise on women who are breastfeeding
but what we do know is that exercise
doesn't seem to impact your milk supply
at all and there's some research to
suggest that it might actually improve
and increase it so what exercises then
that allow us to do is burn more
calories so it's going to bump up your
calorie burning which will put you in a
calorie deficit without having to reduce
your calories so much
so the other way that you can burn
calories is through breastfeeding it's
on now researchers estimate that you can
actually burn anywhere between 200 and
500 calories per day so that's a
significant amount of calorie burning
think about running a mile guesstimate
maybe you burn 100 calories so this
would be the equivalent of running 2 to
5 extra miles a day so that's a lot of
extra calorie burning ok so then if we
look at you an equation we did here
right here look at kind of I wanted to
show you kind of a math example of how
this works so if we say um use an
example of 150 pound woman right and
multiply by 10 and that gives about 1500
calories so that's about the basal
metabolic rate
of a woman that size so that would be
how many calories you need just to
basically exist not including any of
your daily activity so we're adding
exercise to the equation so assuming
saying exercising 3 maybe 4 times a week
so probably a moderately active life you
take this energy factor of 1.3 to 1.4 we
multiply that by 1500 and what you get
is between 1950 and 20 100 calories so
that's how much you would need to eat to
maintain your weight in this situation
not counting these calories so
traditionally if we're looking at weight
loss what we would do is we take this
equation or these numbers say 2,100
calories 2,000 split the difference say
2,000 calories and then we subtract
anywhere between two and five hundred
two hundred and five hundred calories to
create a calorie deficit to illicit
weight loss well in this situation
because of the calorie needs of breast
feeding we already have a two to five
hundred calorie per day deficit
so instead of focusing on dieting and
restricting your calories instead focus
on adding exercise right three to four
times a week and then you'll
automatically get your natural calorie
deficit from your breast feeding and
that's going to allow you to lose weight
without having to worry about
compromising your milk supply or the
nutrition to the baby okay so you can
actually use these equations I use just
the example of 150 pounds but you can
plug in whatever your body weight is
there to estimate your basal metabolic
rate and get about how many calories per
day you need but the key is focus on
we're going to focus on burning more
calories instead of taking in less
calories so that's through exercise and
then through the breastfeed and they are
all ready to like okay so Jill hopefully
that answers your question that's going
to wrap it up for this issue of ask dr.
Mike post as many questions and comments
as you can't below the video I'd love to
hear from you I'll respond to every one
of them and make sure you subscribe to
the YouTube channel as well all right
that's going to wrap it up have a great
day
