New and hopeful. Advice appreciated.

hanneberries

Hi there!

I am new to the group, but not to MFP and weightloss. I joined roughly 3 years ago, though had a 16 month stint where I didn't track because I was in a foreign country with just not enough time, but since joining MFP I have lost 20kg (roughly 44lbs) bringing me from my all time high of 101kg, to my current 81kg. In doing so I have eaten roughly 1400cals a day, with exercise cals added after, though not always eaten back.

Of course I've been pleased with it, but now I "only" have 15kg to go until I reach my goal weight, and I've been struggling. Over the past few months, I've been consistently bouncing from a low of 78kg to a high of 82, and I can't seem to get over it. My low of 78 came after two weeks of high intensity work along with going to the gym almost every day, so I probably had a far greater deficit than I was supposed to. Now that I'm working normally again, I am sitting much more, and the weight has crept back on as I've tried to keep my cals lower again. During my high work weeks, I was eating more, too, but I thought that when I started to sit more, I should eat less to keep it off, but that hasn't worked.

Eating more to weigh less might work for me, at least, I hope it does. I want to give it a try, because bouncing around the same numbers for months is bringing me down and making me just want to give up.

But I am still slightly confused about numbers and whatnot, as it's a lot to take in, and surely will have a lot of trial and hopefully not too much error.

I'm 25, 165cm and currently as of this morning, 81kg. I usually go to the gym 4-5 times a week, for an hour long aerobic class (dance or step) or spinning, along with one personal trainer session, and two to three times a week, I plan to start trying to run 5k to improve my time. I only work 1-2 days a week in a bakery, but on those days it is a full day on my feet with heavy lifting and a lot of bends and squats and up and down.

Based on these numbers and assuming a 20% loss a week, my TDEE is 2454, and BMR 1583, putting my goal according to it at 1963, which I've put in as 1900 on MFP. Does this seem about right, or should I up it a bit more?

I would love some new friends doing EM2WL, for support and understanding when frustration creeps in.

Thank you for reading and any advice!

NK1112

I'm certain I don't have the answers you are seeking ... because I'm on here for similar reasons ... my weight loss stalls. This group has like zillion members but I don't see much activity on here and am starting to believe it's not an active group in that anyone is actually at the helm anymore. However, there is quite a bit of information from the announcements at the top of this group's page. Plus reading through the different posts might give you some more idea of where to go.

But, that being said ... as I understand it to be ... you are eating at a deficit from your TDEE (which I presume has an activity level entered) and you do not always eat your exercise calories back. You were eating at 1400 calories but now want to up it to 1900 or more ... but don't know if that's the right move to take.

Like I said, I'm not expert at this, and have been trying to find the correct balance for myself as well ... yet this is what I have taken awa from reading as much as I can from other postings and the announcements. ....

1 - Never eat below your BMR
2 - You probably are a good canditate for a 'reset'
3- When you try to up your calories to 'reset' your metabolism, it will take a long/ish time to get to that point without upsetting your metabolism/self even more ... so go slow. If you go quickly, your probably going to see a weight increase (water weight plus some fat)
4 - Up your calories by 100-200 extra a day for a week or two at a time until your reach your TDEE, and eat back half your exercise calories.
5 - Check every couple of weeks to see if your weight gain has stabilized.
6 - .... I'm still figuring the next steps out for myself.

Here are some postings on this group that have information in answer form to similar questions as you have. The posting Heybales impresses me as being very knowledgeable on this subect.

"Reset and TDEE" from November 8, 2014
"Do I have to reset Metabolism" from November 6, 2104
"How do you eat more?" from October 29, 2014

good luck
Niki

heybales

Good questions - because those rough 5 level TDEE tables are all about exercise stacked on top of otherwise sedentary desk job, they don't really work when work is more active, or partial days.

So I know you got the spreadsheet on my profile page already.

I'll just mention there, the Activity Calc assumes sedentary too, but then you can enter the number of hours on your feet at work. Average is just fine.
So if 1-2 days is 8 - 16 hrs, use 12 for standing time slow moving time. Unless you have a better estimate of hours.
If time with more action squatting and lifting adds up to say 30 min total, then add on 0.5 hr under labor trades.
If that whole time really is constant movement like labor trades, put almost all the time under that then to be honest. Don't be afraid, it's only equal to exercise like walking under 3 mph, so if you breathe harder and heart is pumping more than walking under 3 mph - for sure put the hours under labor trades as work is probably more effort than that.

Are you going to drop some of that cardio classes when you start the jogging, or you are going to be adding yet more exercise to the mix?
More is not better, it really just leads to mediocre workouts because you actually can't do the workout as hard - because you never got full recovery from prior workout.

Now, most cardio classes are limited in some way to increasing intensity as you lose weight, so you do burn less and it becomes less effort - so there may be little to recover from anyway. The beat of the music only goes so fast, you can only move your arms/legs so fast, you can only step up/down so fast, ect. Its stops being a reason for improvement for the body and just because a calorie burner, might say maintenance exercise.
Spin is not like that, you control the tension to increase the effort, to make the body still want to improve - if it gets a chance to recover in the first place.

And too much exercise, especially if it needs recovery but doesn't get it - is a stress to the body.
Too much diet is a stress. Lack of sleep, life, some foods perhaps, a disease, or sickness, ect.
Stress will fight against weight loss, unless you just keep going lower and lower or creating what appears to be more and more deficit.

And that's probably what your weeks of final loss last time were, you had already suppressed your system to a max, the extra exercise finally cause a real deficit to a suppressed TDEE, so you lost weight.

So picture those weeks clearly - do you want weight loss and maintenance to require close to that level of effort? Were those 2 weeks sustainable and adherable?

Because without letting your body speed back up, that's the only way to lose.

So I'd agree that good candidate for reset, as suggested, slowly increasing.

But gotta be honest with Activity Calc too for best TDEE estimate, I think you'll be surprised how high it potentially could be, even though right now, it's obviously been suppressed from that, or you'd be losing massive amounts of weight.