Well, I bottle fed my second son — having had complete reconstructive surgery left me without the natural equipment, so to speak. So, when I realized I was not losing as fast as I thought I should, I decided to use Slim Fast for two weeks. Awful — yes, but it “tricked” my body just long enough to get it going and losing.

With each of the pregnancies that resulted in a live birth, I’ve lost every single pound I gained by six weeks. I attribute that to exclusive breastfeeding and it sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the weight loss came to a SCREECHING halt when I hit my pre-pregnancy weight, despite nursing for years after that six week point. And since I was 250ish to begin with, that pregnancy weight was just a drop in the bucket.

On the other hand, the one pregnancy that lasted long enough to gain weight but didn’t end up with a baby, every single one of those pounds stuck to me, since there was no baby to nurse. I imagine I’d be in your shoes had I been unable to nurse. Wish I had some witty or helpful advice. :(

I breastfed both of mine for 2-3 years, and my weight did not come off fast at all. Lack of exercise, and too much chocolate likely canceled out the additional calories breastfeeding uses up.

I have lost 30 pounds in the last year though, now that my kids are 3 and 6. I do think exercise is important, but the most important part for me has been building up my muscle mass. When you add muscle to your body, you burn 200-400 extra calories a day just by living your life. I know you’re busy, so you could just try to do push-ups and squats, or get the 30 day Shred DVD. You will get so much more from resistance training than by doing only cardio. Unfortunately, it’s also very important to control calories and to choose good foods. http://www.fitday.com is great for tracking calories and nutrition. And the bonus is that you can see when you’ve got enough calories left to indulge in a guiltless treat with no gain. :)

Oh, Katie! I am right there with you. Baby Quatro is 6mo old, and the weight is coming off ever so slowly. Of course, like you say, I am not seriously striving for it, I’m also not doing anything different than I did with my previous pregnancies. It seems that the weight sticks around longer with each one, in my experience. I gained the same amount of weight with each, as well. A good friend of mine and I have had our children realtivley close together – she has breastfed, I have bottle fed, and it seems like every time we were losing (or not losing, in this current case!) at the same pace. Maybe by his 2nd birthday I will be back into my single digit jeans!

Well, I have gained while breastfeeding. Some people lose appetite when tired. I can’t stop grazing. Sleeping in forty minute increments made me permanently exhausted and ravenous. I would only eat healthy stuff – plain Cheerios, fruits, veggies, but still the amount consumed made me gain about 25 pounds with the first baby and about 15 pounds with the second.

I lost weight also very fast with the breastfeeding – for 2 months. After that…. I had to eat and eat, otherwise there would be no milk. (And yes, I tried to put baby on the breast to make the milk come, but baby wouldn’t latch and just “stimulate”, by sucking an empty breast, hell no, he was screaming his head off and hitting me with tiny fists, demanding milk and food, not a live soother. So no, milk didn’t much come from that sort of close body contact… So I just ate, so I have milk, and the kilos came slowly back. When I stopped breastfeeding, I did loose the weight during looooooong walks pushing the buggy, but since I’m back in the office, those kilos are back, and way more are back than previously! :(

For me breastfeeding burned all that weight off – and then some more! I was really shocked at how quickly it went. I know it was the b/f as when I travelled with my then 5 month old and as I shared a room with her she went from feeding once a night to every few hours (exhausting!) and despite the fact I was visiting home and eating all my favourite junk food that I can’t get where I live, I ended up weighing less than I had my whole adult life. So I am positive for me b/f is the ultimate baby-weight fighter. Let’s hope it comes as easily for this next baby as it did with my first.

I formula fed and lost all the weight (about 40 pounds) in three and a half months.
I did it by severe calorie restriction. That’s it. Not the healthiest way to lose weight, but that’s what works for me.

I gained during my twin pregnancy but I found that I gained even more while on mat leave. I live in Canada where mat leave is a full year. In that year, while caring for my twin boys 24/7 mostly by myself (hubby worked) I ate what I could when I could. Unfortunately that included chocolate and other things that aren’t good. I was in such a haze caring for my babies that I didn’t realize my weight was creeping up until the boys were about 6 months old and I had gained 10lbs since the initial weight loss after they were born. Not good. And it didn’t get any better. This coupled with my diastasis recti (torn stomach muscles) makes me look 6 or 7 months pregnant still. And my boys will be 3 at the end of January. Talk about depressing. Now if I could just find the time to excercise and the willpower to make better food choices, all would be wonderful. A girl can dream.

Losing weight is pretty simple in concept: breathe out and excrete more carbon than you take in, or in more colloquial terms, burn more calories than you consume.

If you take out the water, breast milk is about 56% carbohydrates, 36% fatty acids, 6.5% proteins, and 1.5% minerals. That’s why you lose weight faster if you breastfeed. But you still have to eat fewer calories than you’re burning if you want to lose weight!

I like to look at it as a carbon economy. Every breath you breathe out is enriched to about 5% CO2, that’s how you normally lose your weight. Fat is about 85% carbon, you lose about 270 grams of carbon a day even if you’re just sitting around. That’s about 11 grams per hour. If you exercise you can lose up to about 80 grams of carbon per hour.

But breast feeding gives you another way to get rid of carbon and thus fat, that’s why many women lose it so quickly. The main thing is still to not eat so much or do more exercise or both.

What you eat (meaning more fattening foods like peanut butter) does not affect how much milk you have. Maybe you were just more relaxed because you were eating whatever you wanted.

I didnt breastfeed & have lost 40 lbs in 5 months postpartum cause i do zumba regularly & also eat 1500 cals a day….it takes motivation but id much rather be size 9 than 16 which i was after birth.