Calculating Calories Per Day

Determining Caloric Needs

On many of the mom blogs/facebook sites I follow, one question that I see arising quite frequently is “How do you maintain your milk supply while losing weight?” Another question in this topic I also see is “What method do you use to try and lose weight?”

As I have said before, I think the best method of losing weight is simply, diet and exercise. This coming from my health/exercise science and nursing degrees. Yes there are other methods out there, and they may work for you. However, I am just going to talk about what I do, which is diet and exercise.

First and foremost, DIET. UGH… that ugly, four letter, curse word. Right?! WRONG! As I have discussed before I strictly calorie count and give myself 1-2 cheat meals per week (usually on the weekend). But how many calories should you eat per day?

Many programs and apps can work great for calorie counting and logging. If you type in your age, weight, gender and height, they may also provide you with a daily calorie limit. However, be weary, those sites simply use an equation but can often times be robotic. What I mean by this is that they use a formula to calculate your daily calorie count and how much to decrease your intake by to lose weight. However, they may not take into consideration your BMR and the minimum that you need per day. There is actually a point where going too low in your daily intake becomes harmful, and if you go past that point, you might actually retain weight.

One of the better ways to determine your calorie count is to use the Mifflin St. Jeor equation. This equation helps determine your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). That’s fancy lingo for the minimum amount of calories your body needs for essential functions like breathing, digesting, etc. (aka to stay alive). This is a number you should never go under.   

Men
10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5
Women
10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) – 161.

To determine your weight in kilograms take your weight in pounds and divide it by 2.2

To determine your height in centimeters take your height in inches and multiply by 2.54

Example:

A 130 pound (59kg), 5’8” (172cm), 29 year old, female

[10 x 59] + [6.25 x 172] – [5 x 29] – 161

590 + 1076 – 145 – 161

1360 calories/day.

So as you can see, per the example, that individual should not eat less than 1360 calories per day. This is the minimum number that she would need to maintain her bodily functions. This number is presuming you basically sit on a couch all day and do nothing but breathe! Hehe. This doesn’t include the amount of calories burned walking around, doing chores, exercising, or producing breast milk.

If you play around with the numbers, you can see that as you age and lose weight, your body needs less calories per day. That is because as we age our metabolic rate decreases naturally. When you lose weight, there is less of “you” (i.e. fat) that your body has to maintain, thus decreasing your basal metabolic rate.

Total Calories Per Day

To determine how many calories you need per day including exercise/physical activity, you will need to multiply your BMR by your physical activity level (see chart below). This is just an estimate based on average physical activity level. When trying to determine what category you are in, be honest with yourself. If you over estimate or under estimate, then you might not see the appropriate results. 

Lifestyle	Description	Multiplier
Sedentary	Little to no regular exercise	1.2
Mild Activity	Exercise for at least 20 minutes, 1-3x per week. (ex. Bicycling, jogging, basketball, swimming, etc). Also includes no exercise but a busy lifestyle that requires frequent walking for long periods.	1.375
Moderate Activity	Exercise for at least 30-60 minutes, 3-4x per week.	1.55
Heavy (Labor Intensive) Activity	Exercise for 60 minutes or greater 5-7x per week. Labor intensive jobs also qualify for this level (i.e. brick laying, carpentry, construction work, farming, landscaping, etc).	1.7
Extreme Activity	Exceedingly active or demanding activities such as marathon training, multiple daily training sessions, assembly line jobs. Note: this level of activity is very difficult to achieve and highly unlikely for the general population.	1.9

Let’s use the same girl from the above example. Let’s presume that she exercises for about 60 minutes 3-4 times per week and on the days she doesn’t workout, she has a fairly laborious job where she walks 3-4 miles during her workday. She would probably qualify under “moderate activity” using the chart from above.

If we used her total calories earlier (1360) and multiplied them by 1.55 (moderate activity), then we would get 2108. So this female needs about 2100 calories per day to MAINTAIN her weight. This number does not include calories from breastfeeding/milk production.

Breastfeeding Caloric Needs:
To continue this example above and presuming the individual breastfeeds, one would need to add in the additional calories burned from producing milk. This equates to about 20 calories per ounce of milk produced. For those who exclusively pump (like myself) the amount of calories is super easy to figure out. I simply multiply my daily total pumped (usually around 50 ounces) by 20. This number equates to about 1000 calories (for me) burned from breastmilk production.

For those who actually breastfeed from the boob, the way to determine caloric needs is a little more difficult. Some individuals will say “breast feeding is about 300-400 calories more per day.” This may be true, but if you have an over-supply, twins to feed, or your baby just consumes a lot more than the average baby, your production may be higher than 20 ounces per day. The best way to determine how many ounces is by weighing your baby pre and post feed using a baby scale. This type of scale can convert to ounces. By subtracting your pre from your post, you can see what your baby actually consumed. You could do this for every feed or just do it once and then multiply by how many feeds per day baby has (more of an estimate). [Note: make sure you weigh after a good feed, rather than just a snack].

Once you determine this number, you need to add it to your total activity that you previously calculated. So for the female above, let’s say she also produces 50 ounces of breastmilk per day, she would need to eat 2100 (daily total) + 1000 calories (breast milk). That’s about 2360 calories per day. That’s a lot of calories just to maintain your weight!

For those of you who are dieting and breastfeeding and wondering why your supply isn’t being maintained, check out how many calories you are eating per day. If you are trying to lose weight and cutting your calories significantly, then your body may not be getting enough food to make the milk your babe needs!

SUMMING IT UP

1.  Figure out your BMR
2. Use your BMR and multiply it with your daily activity level  
3. Add in calories from breast feeding.

The number you get is an estimate that you need to eat to maintain your weight!

Stay Tuned for more information on creating a calorie deficit, to help lose weight!

Couch to 5k - Run #3

Well, after 5 days of the flu/strep throat, this momma is back in action, however, little man is not. :( poor kiddo. We have a pediatrician appointment today.

Today marked run number three of my couch to 5k journey with jogger and baby in tow. It's getting much easier to push that little dude around! I do need to look into an "elements protector" for the jogger and baby. It was super windy this morning. I doubt that helped the babe with his cold. Eek! Worst mom award goes to me today! I think they make clear, plastic covers to block the wind. I might need to check those out.

I'm also loving the C25K app that I've been using. A few features on the app that I just stumbled across are the distance graph along with the pace graph. The distance graph plots out the distance you've ran for each run, and shows the goal of 5k along the top. The pace graph shows the average minutes/mile for each run. Theoretically, if I'm improving as I hope to be, the distance graph should trend upwards and the pace should trend downwards.

So, one thing I wanted to talk about on here that I have been seeing a lot about on the mom blogs I follow, are comparisons of other moms. One mom posts about her messy house and how to keep it clean. Another mom posts a picture of her ultra clean house. I think as moms we all need to stop comparing ourselves and trying to "one up" other moms! We are all in this crazy mess together! Everyone has a different situation and just because one house is clean compared to another doesn't make that mom "better!" I think we all forget sometimes that at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we have a happy healthy child/children/family. Are our kids growing strong? Are they learning and developing? Are they having fun? If so, I say you are doing a great job at being a momma! Who cares about the mess? In 30 years when your kids are grown, they won't remember or care that the house was a mess. They will remember, however, you being too busy to play because you were constantly cleaning or organizing! So to all you mom's out there, I say grab that coffee mug, take a deep breath, and go sit on the floor and play with your baby... or play outside with your gradeschooler, or whatever!! That's a SuperMom to me!

Rain Rain Go Away

I think one of the hardest parts of becoming a mom (for me) is not the sleeplessness, the dirty diapers, managing schedules, having a dependent, etc. I would say the biggest challenge for me was learning FLEXIBILITY. Oh my gosh. Is it ever a challenge.

Prior to becoming a mom, I was your average type A, OCD, life.planned.to.a.t gal. (Okay lets be honest, I still am) Everything was planned out, schedules made, etc. Every morning I would get up, work out then eat breakfast (because who can workout on a full stomach?), do some housework, get ready for the day, run some errands, etc.

Life definitely changed when P came along.  The first few weeks I spent enjoying our new guy, dealing with postpartum "things." P grew, and so did I. We thought life was superb after 4 weeks. We had him on a schedule, he was sleeping through the night by 6 weeks, things were looking good. I  was getting a new routine down (because as I said before you can't work out with a full belly, and you can't workout with full boobs, but you have to eat constantly to maintain your supply - oh the conundrum). Then hit the 4 month sleep regression.

To all you new moms and mom's to be, JUST WAIT. It was rough. P went through teething, developmental leap, growth spurt, and sleep regression ALL at the same time. Nap times went from an hour and a half to 25 minutes at best, unless being held of course. Some days it took 20 minutes of rocking in the bathroom with the water running just to get him to actually fall asleep. Awake times were filled with a tad bit a lot more fussiness. Who was this child? Surely not the happy little child robot I programmed to fit into my perfect little routine? I was spinning out of control.

Trying to stay healthy and active was my priority (after the more important things like family and faith). This meant finding a new rhythm. Pumping and eating was done while the babe was awake. Workouts were now completed on a full (or partially full) stomach. After P would finally get to sleep. I'd run to the treadmill, hop on and go until lil' man woke up. Some days I would get 20 minutes of running in, some days maybe 40 (if I was lucky). Some days I would workout for 20 minutes, and then finish my run a few hours later during P's next nap. It may not have been ideal, but at least I was getting my workout in!

We are hopefully (knock on wood), getting to a point where teething is slowing (we have two already!), the developmental leap is leveling, the growth spurt has stopped and naps are maybe trending back to normal (we have had two days of hour and a half naps).

Tuesday marked the first day of my 5k training with P and the jogger. Of course, I was up, rearing and ready to go on Wednesday. I took a peek outside and pure down pour. Of course. I looked sadly at the workout calendar I posted on my door and realized again, flexibility. It rained and rained with no hopes of getting P out in the jogger for a run. I modified my day and did an "at home" circuit instead. I decided I would move a few days around and do my other two runs for the week Friday and Saturday. All will be okay. I'm typing to you now from the comfort of my couch with a raging Strep Throat infection and no hopes of running Friday or Saturday. The (recently) old me would have had a tizzy. The fairly new, attempting to be flexible, mom says ITS OKAY.

Life is funny like that always throwing curve balls. Flexibility is key to surviving this new mom thing. I'm sure all you moms with 2+ kids are laughing at my realizations :) Do the best you can moms! Just keep momma-ing on. It will all work itself out. You are awesome!

Here's the rain day workout I did:

100m run (equates to .06 miles on the treadmill) ***
10 burpees
10 push ups
10 mountain climbers
10 full situps
10 sumo squats

Repeat whole workout 5 times.  Afterwards, I walked on the treadmill for a bit until I got bored ;)

*** If you don't have a treadmill, you could always jog in place, high knees, jog up and down the stairs, etc. The 100 m run took me about 35-40 seconds, therefore just jog in place for that amount of time.