How Many Calories Does Breastfeeding Burn?

How many calories can I burn breastfeeding?

You’re a new mom, and you’ve heard that breastfeeding will help you to drop the baby weight. But, is this true? And how much does breastfeeding really help in shedding those unwanted pounds?

Here’s the scoop: while we know that making milk is natural for mamas, we sometimes forget that it’s a pretty miraculous feat to create food with your body. Being a milk making machine means your body is hard at work and all that effort results in pretty solid calorie burn. In fact, you burn about 20 calories for every ounce of milk your body makes, which totals somewhere around 400 to 600 calories a day (#MomPerk).

For a comparison, a 155 lb. woman would have to do somewhere between 80 and 120 minutes of yoga to burn the same amount of calories. Yoga is great, but we’d say that getting to feed your baby is a much easier and more enjoyable way to knock of several hundred calories a day. Or you could breastfeed AND do yoga if you really want to be an overachiever!