Extra calories from carrying kids and babywearing

[ErinWeed]

I'm a new mom to kiddo #3. I spend a good part of my day carrying children, and if I'm going for walk, I usually have my 3 month old attached to me. Ordinarily I wouldn't be so concerned about an accurate calorie estimate, but since I'm breastfeeding, I want to make sure I'm not compromising my supply. Any ideas how I might improve the accuracy of my calories burned?

[Heybales]

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@ErinWeed wrote:

I'm a new mom to kiddo #3. I spend a good part of my day carrying children, and if I'm going for walk, I usually have my 3 month old attached to me. Ordinarily I wouldn't be so concerned about an accurate calorie estimate, but since I'm breastfeeding, I want to make sure I'm not compromising my supply. Any ideas how I might improve the accuracy of my calories burned?

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That is a tough one.

With corrected stride length and mass, Fitbit knows what sort of impact to expect for your steps, and decides how long specific ones must be to cause the impact seen.

So with harder impact carrying more weight, it may think you are jumping, and at least give some increased calorie count.

You might compare to see if it is picking up the heavier steps.

In your Log - Activity - daily graph, find some steps you know were with and without her attached, or just do a quick test actually, using the Fitbit clock, walk around the house for 5 min without, and then with child.

Then compare the graphs.

Did it see about the same steps, was the calorie count the same or higher?

If higher, it thinks you took longer strides because of that extra impact and went farther distance. So you may be covered.

If the same, I don't think they'll be any nice way.

I know what to do if walking as exercise with specific time period, manual entry with increased weight. But for all day carry, tough one.

I'll mention something that at least 3 others have said they are doing during nursing.

The eat at maintenance - no deficit. Nursing causes the deficit, and that increased weight you are carrying around.

So you don't add back in nursing calories, or set Fitbit to nursing, you just set it to no deficit, to maintain weight.

Eat that daily goal, and know you are actually burning a fair amount more with extra weight and nursing that Fitbit doesn't realize you are burning. That means don't manually log nursing as some sort of workout either to get extra calories.

[Colinm39]

@ErinWeed You could try a manual activity Hike (not hiking) and select "I don't know distance" and select with a 0-9 lb pack and examine those calories. With me 40 minutes of that gives me equivalent to about 40 minutes of an exercise walk which is too high..

You could temporarily change your weight to include the babies weight and see how that affects your walking statistics. So a before and after and you can measure the difference.  Make sure you sync first.

There are some thoughts to add to @Heybales post and hopefully other mom's will chime in..

Enjoy #3, your'e probably instilling some healthy vibes.

[LZeeW]

@ErinWeed  Set your profile to breastfeeding -- this will account for the increased BMR for milk production.

On the drop down menu of activities, there is a choice for "Walk carrying an infant up to 15 pounds".  I think this is the best choice for you.  It is an easy choice, even if the weight isn't accurate.  There are other options in the drop down menu, such as walking with pushing a stroller, and so on.

Your Fitbit is technology with limits.  An good judge of your calories in and out is your weight from day to day.

[ErinWeed]

Good options. I didn't see the carrying an infant one in the activities, so I'll explore that. I think I'll also do some experimenting to see what the fitbit can figure out on it's own.

[Heybales]

I'm not sure I'd agree with a good way to tell is day to day weight changes.

Normal water weight fluctuations can easily be 1 lb. But if that was assumed to be fat, are you going to eat 3500 less calories the next day because morning weigh-in was high?

Hope not. Even goal weight should be a range or you'd drive yourself batty with 1-2 lb changes that have nothing to do with fat.

Plus, a woman's BMR literally changes through the month, you can't get useable data shorter than 28 days to make a decision on, and even the weigh-in days need to be valid to minimize known and expected water weight fluctuations.

If you weigh every day, you really need about 2 months worth of all that noise to start seeing an actual trend in direction.

I'd suggest weekly valid weigh-in days, and whatever body part you know increases first, usually stomach, either ab at belly button, or waist at narrowest part.

And then confirm you are bloated from prior day's meal.

[ErinWeed]

My weight has been fairly stable since the week I had this baby, but a couple of weeks ago it started dropping. It dropped 5 lbs the week before I started this weight loss challenge with my dh last week (ensuring he'll win for sure), and I've lost another 3 lbs in the past week. Obviously there's more to what's going on here than my caloric intake...

All I'm doing is increasing my walking and eliminating sugar. Seeing as how I have a major sweet tooth, getting enough calories now that I'm sweetener free has been a challenge!

[ErinWeed]

I did an experiment...

I took the dog for three walks. 1st was just the dog, 2nd was the dog + two kids in jogging stroller, 3rd was dog + babywearing infant. I pulled out my heartrate monitor for fun too so I could compare calories.

My heartrate monitor picked up the difference in effort as I would have expected.

21 calories for dog only

27 for dog + double stroller

24 for dog + babywearing

My fitbit totals were

48 calories for dog only

45 for dog + double stroller

44 for dog + babywearing

Although my steps and times weren't exact, they were pretty close.  A longer experiment would probably give more difinitive results, but I think it's safe to say the fitbit didn't notice the change in my effort.

My next thing to figure out is why the difference in calories between my fitbit and heartrate watch. Perhaps setting up the watch after a glass of wine had something to do with it.

[Colinm39]

@ErinWeed Thanks for providing the forum with your statistics. Both of my heart rate monitors are very accurate with my Fitbit's for a typical flat terrain brisk walk. 

What Fitbit do you use? 

Because about 75% of our daily calorie burn is BMR the HRM figures surprise me. I'm no expert but reading many posts over the years on Fitbit I see two things come up. 

HRM aren't accurate with a HR below 80 bpm and some HRM's may not include BMR. @Heybales can comment because that is out of my league. 

[Heybales]

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@ErinWeed wrote:

I did an experiment...

I took the dog for three walks. 1st was just the dog, 2nd was the dog + two kids in jogging stroller, 3rd was dog + babywearing infant. I pulled out my heartrate monitor for fun too so I could compare calories.

My heartrate monitor picked up the difference in effort as I would have expected.

21 calories for dog only

27 for dog + double stroller

24 for dog + babywearing

My fitbit totals were

48 calories for dog only

45 for dog + double stroller

44 for dog + babywearing

Although my steps and times weren't exact, they were pretty close.  A longer experiment would probably give more difinitive results, but I think it's safe to say the fitbit didn't notice the change in my effort.

My next thing to figure out is why the difference in calories between my fitbit and heartrate watch. Perhaps setting up the watch after a glass of wine had something to do with it.

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Love the testing sequence and data.

The difference is because Fitbit uses formula for walking/running based on pace and mass level. No incline, no extra weight.

It has no idea pushing lawnmower over bumpy ground is reason for slow walk, and calorie burn is actually equal to walking 4 mph with 20 lb packback.

Or pushing heavy stroller up and down hill taking more energy either direction, or even walking up or down hill which does to.

So it can get pretty close with normal life where up and downs balance each other out and the pace is slow enough it wouldn't matter much anyway.

And to Collins point, the walking the dog was probably not in aerobic range anyway, so more inaccurate for the HRM. Well, unless you really walked them.

What would be more interesting, is what was the avgHR during the tests?

Because I would trust Fitbit more on the walking with dog, unless you had a lot of effort fighting to hold it back from running or something.

Fitbit result differences is exactly what I'd expect, lower for the efforts that made you go slower.

But HRM differences show the real deal for effort, harder pushing 2 than carrying 1. That's why actual HR would be interesting too.

Did you ever confirm your stride length and manually correct it? That would be one reason for calorie burn to be off, if it is.

If that is correct as can be, perhaps based on treadmill, then there is something you can do using the HRM but Fitbit better estimate of walking/jogging when no extra's being handled.

Get avgHR for stroller with dog and then baby on body with dog.

Now get away for a moment by yourself, and walk fast enough level to hit those same 2 avgHR's for about 5 min each.

Now when you look at the Fitbit cal burn for those efforts of just walking, you know they match level of effort with extras loaded on.

Now you can log your own activity with increased calorie burn.

But still doesn't do anything for all day baby-on-board scenario.

That's where my idea of eating at maintenance for no baby, and nursing and that extra burn give you built in deficit.

[ErinWeed]

I am liking your idea of eliminating my calorie deficit more and more. Better to loose weight slowly and healthily than to quickly. I'm a bit of a data nerd though, so I am having fun exploring it!