I'm currently breastfeeding my 8-month-old. I've lost about 40 pounds since I had her in January.
The breastfeeding does help (it adds about 500 to your required calories, so I was able to lose weight on 1800-2000 kcal/day instead of my usual 1300-1500), but it also means kind of walking a tightrope between low enough calories to lose weight and high enough calories to maintain your milk supply. For the first six months, I had to watch my intake VERY closely. If I ate over 2000 calories per day, I wouldn't lose weight, but if I went under 1800, my milk would shut off and I'd have a hungry baby. Exercising too much (like more than an hour a day, or anything in extremely high heat) shut off the milk, too. Now that she's eating solids too, though, I can be a bit more flexible about lowering calories or exercising more without damaging the milk supply.
I'm pretty experienced with the breastfeeding + weight loss thing by now (8 months with her, and 2 years breastfeeding my older kid, with about fifty pounds lost during the first year of that), so if you've got any questions, I'd be happy to try to help.
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