Does Pumping Help Lose Weight Like Breastfeeding

One thing that many new parents struggle with is losing the baby weight while they are breastfeeding. How many calories does breastfeeding burn, exactly? Here’s how you can figure that out.

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After he was born, I didn’t feel happy with my body and wanted to lose some of that baby weight. During the first month postpartum, I lost the 10ish pounds that constituted the baby, placenta, and amniotic fluid, plus another 20 or so pounds of water.

Eating Healthy While Breastfeeding

That left me with about 25 pounds to lose, and I wanted to get started – but I wasn’t sure exactly how breastfeeding would impact how much I should be eating. Here’s the info I came up with after hours of searching for evidence-based answers.

Before we talk about how many extra calories you burn, let’s discuss how many calories are in the breast milk that you produce.

This matters because the energy that goes into breast milk isn’t spontaneously created in your breasts – it has to come from the food that you eat or from your fat stores.

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Each ounce of breast milk has about 20 calories; for those using the metric system, 10 mls of breast milk has about 6.8 calories.

When you are pumping and able to accurately measure your milk output, you know exactly how many ounces (or milliliters) of milk you are producing.

The thing is, “breastfeeding” can mean a lot of things, and the calorie burn for all of them is different. For example, you’ll produce a much different amount of milk – and thus burn a different amount of calories – if you are exclusively breastfeeding twins than if you are combo nursing and formula feeding one child.

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At one point with my son, I was pumping 50 ounces per day, which is 1, 000 calories of milk produced. That is an awful lot more than that 300-500, which would explain why I was so freaking hungry.

Multiplying by the 20-22 calories in the milk does not take into account the energy that your body requires for the internal process of making your breast milk.

The total calories that you burn by breastfeeding are the calories in the milk plus the energy burned to producing the milk.

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The production efficiency for breast milk production is 80% of the energy in the milk itself. This means that of all the energy required to produce breastmilk, 80% of it ends up in the milk, while 20% is used by your body to make the milk.

We can modify the formula from above to take the production efficiency into account in the below breastfeeding calorie burn calculation formula.

First, you would multiply the 20 oz by the 20 calories that is in the milk, which would give you the 400 calories that are in the breast milk.

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Then, you would divide that by .8 (the production efficiency), which gives you 500 – the total calories burned by breastfeeding, including the milk you make (400 calories) AND the energy you burned making the milk (100 additional calories).

Another way to think about the production efficiency thing – which can be confusing – is that, in this example, your body devoted 500 calories to making breast milk. Of that, 400 (80%) made it into the milk, while 100 (20%) was used by your body.

Say you’re nursing your baby and she nurses like a champ, but your body doesn’t respond well to the pump and you don’t pump much milk when you’re at work. You would burn fewer calories at those pumping sessions than you would if you were nursing then, because you are producing less milk.

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On the other hand, say you’re exclusively pumping and have a large oversupply. You’re burning MORE calories that you would if you if you were nursing, because you’re producing way more milk than your baby would otherwise eat.

I wrote this post not to encourage new parents to lose the baby weight, but because if you want to understand how breastfeeding and calories work, you deserve better information than a vague, one-size-fits-all number.

Hopefully this helps answer any questions you have about how many extra calories you burn while breastfeeding! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments.

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Want more information about losing weight while breastfeeding? You can read about exercising and breastfeeding here and my experience with losing weight while breastfeeding here.When people find out you are pregnant, they (usually women) feel the need to tell you that breastfeeding is the best way to lose the baby weight.  It certainly helps!

The weight loss will not happen overnight (at first) but once it does, look out!  Does it matter if you breastfeed or pump when it comes to weight loss?

Before we can talk about the number of calories you burn when breastfeeding or pumping, I think we need to get into how many calories you need to be taking in.

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A highly active woman needs more calories than her sedentary counterpart, for example. The best thing you can do is talk to your doctor to find out your exact number, but a good rule of thumb is to add 300-500 calories to your baseline pre-pregnancy calorie needs.

This is the ultimate question isn’t it?  You might have heard that the average calories burned is anywhere between 300 to 500 a day. That seems like kind of a wide range of calories, right?

It can be the difference between having another slice of pizza or not.  That is a big deal (at least for me, but I can’t be alone in this).

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So how do you really know what you are burning? Let’s look at the difference in calories burned between breastfeeding and exclusively pumping.

By exclusively pumping, you can measure exactly what you are producing, so you can you can accurately count your caloric output.  Then you will know how much extra you need to take in (avoiding the vague numbers).  But how?

First, you have to know that each ounce of breastmilk has 20 calories.  So, by doing some simple math (none of this common core stuff) you can accurately determine how many calories you are losing or need to replenish.

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So, if you are pumping 30 ounces a day (you need a stock in the freezer!) you are using an additional 600 calories.  That is a lot!

But what if you are not pumping at all and are exclusively breastfeeding?  Not to worry, I got you covered, you’re not left in the dark.  You won’t be getting as accurate of a number, but you can get an idea of what you are burning.

Weigh your baby before a feeding, and then weigh him after.  You don’t have to lay your newborn on the cold, hard scale.

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You can get a general idea of how much you are producing (keep track for a day), then figure out how many calories you are burning from breastfeeding.

Another common question that I see new moms asking: can I diet when I’m breastfeeding? Well, that depends on what you mean by “dieting.”

If you’re talking about making healthier choices (cottage cheese instead of cookies, for example), eating balanced nutrition, and just cutting back on the junk, absolutely! You can not only diet, but you’re encouraged to do so.

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If you’re talking about starting a new fad diet (and there is a new one every day), taking weight-loss supplements, or starving yourself, then no.

Even those fad diets that sound good in theory (like eating like a caveman or eating only raw foods) can be dangerous. Your needs are different while breastfeeding and cutting out entire food groups can throw your body totally off whack.

The same goes for those trendy “detox diets.” Please, please, please: do not detox during breastfeeding without talking to your doctor in great detail about your plans to do so.

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These diets drastically limit not just your caloric intake but your overall nutrition. Your body isn’t a coffee maker, it doesn’t need to be descaled with vinegar to clean it out, especially when you’re breastfeeding and supporting a new little life.

Here is a fun little story of hope.  I knew a mom who at one point was pumping 50 ounces a day. That is equal to 1, 000 calories a day!  She was always hungry (no wonder!) so if she were just to go by what the recommendations are…she would have remained hungry!

Luckily she was aware of this fun little way to track, so she was able to replenish her body with good foods, and replace the calories lost.  After all, it is about feeding your baby.

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When it boils down to it, there really is no difference between breastfeeding and pumping when it comes to weight loss. Unless you’re pumping gallons of extra milk a day, it pretty much evens out.

You have the added extra benefit of knowing just about exactly what you are burning by pumping, but like I said, you can estimate it even if you are exclusively breastfeeding.  And if you are doing