Should I try less than 1200 calories a day?

JayRuby84

I don't have a food scale but everyone's responses here make me want to go buy one.

tomatoey

diannethegeek wrote: »

I agree with others on getting a food scale, but the first thing that popped out to me is that you say you're "lax" on the weekends. Depending on how your goals are set and how small your deficit is, it's entirely possible that you're undoing your deficit with two cheat days a week. I would start logging those, even if you go over, just to see what they're doing to your weekly calories.

Yeah, if weekends aren't going in, they probably should.

I actually didn't use a food scale during my big loss, just because it didn't occur to me. I did lose 50 lbs, BUT I think it's because I must have been eating far more than I thought I was before I started logging, so that even the sloppy cup estimates were a significant enough deficit to make a difference. I also think I had a much wider margin of error than you do now, though (my aim was to eat 1800 calories then, and burn another 250 off).

I am also not using a food scale now, but it's only because I bought two (cheapies), and both broke. What I do instead is google things like '1 cup cooked chicken with skin in grams' and then do a calculation for the database entry every time I log. That is a much bigger pain in the butt than just using a food scale, imo. (If I do get another, it'll be a quality one.)

With such a narrow margin of error, you will have to be much more careful about amounts than I was. (Like say you stick with the cups - are you levelling things off right at the line, or are they generous "cups"? Not a big deal, except if you (like most people) are tempted to fudge a bit, it'll hurt your progress [again, just because you have no margin for error]).

If I were you, I would measure with a food scale (I think you're getting the point), I would NOT go under 1200 cals, and I would add a 1/2-1 hour of very easy cardio every day, just to tick off a few more calories here and there. It won't be a huge burn, maybe 100-200 calories, but if you go too intense, your hunger will also increase and you'll set yourself up for overeating, which would defeat the purpose.

Easy cardio would be things like biking at no resistance or walking (not strolling, not sweating, but with purpose and briskly).

segacs

The food scale thing: They're cheap (usually under $20 for a digital one on Amazon) and mainly, they're enlightening. Before I got mine, I really honestly thought that portions were much bigger than they actually are.

Now, I don't think that food scales are absolutely essential to losing weight or anything. I mean, if you're overestimating but you're consistent about it, then all that will happen is, let's say you're losing 1lb/week and you think you're eating 1400 calories but really eating 1600 calories? Well that just means your TDEE is actually 2100 instead of 1900.

The thing is, consistency is tough. A food scale keeps me honest and helps me measure portion sizes for foods I'm not sure about. Eyeballing has tons of room for error, and when you add that together with all the other room for error built into this process (the 10-20% variance on food labelling, the difficulty in estimating exercise burn accurately, etc.) and when you consider that at my goal of less than a pound a week, room for error is SMALL... well, it's worth the investment.

It's helped for restaurant food, too. I don't take it with me, of course. But measuring at home is good practice, so it helps me eyeball portions in restaurants more accurately because it gives me a reference point for comparison.

jkal1979

Are you eating back any of your exercise calories that you burn? If so that may be another part of the problem. Along with eating more than you think you may be burning less than you think and that can wipe out your deficit. Try eating back only half of them if you are eating any at all.

Aemely

missiontofitness wrote: »

I also wouldn't use the word "manical" to describe people who use food scales. There are a good majority of us on that fully advocate them and have used them with great results.

If you have the time, energy, and motivation to weigh everything, that's great! I've found that I can lose weight without weighing everything (although I do measure most things, like peanut butter), but I totally understand that this approach may not work for everyone.

Aemely

jkal1979 wrote: »

Are you eating back any of your exercise calories that you burn? If so that may be another part of the problem. Along with eating more than you think you may be burning less than you think and that can wipe out your deficit. Try eating back only half of them if you are eating any at all.

Yes, very good advice.