Checking for accuracy and understanding of EM2WL

Nayners21

Starting a new thread in hopes to have everyone double check for accuracy. I am 5'2 and fluctuate between 174-178. I have lost 50 pounds in about a year eating around 1400 calories a day and now hit a plateau for the last 8 months. I have been trying to read all this information and feel like I have a good grasp on it, but want your expertise. My BMR calculates to be 1574 and my TDEE calculates to be 2439. ** Side note- I have a fitbit flex where it calculates me burning 2100 (on a non workout day), about 2500 (on a weight training/no cardio or little cardio), and sometimes 3000 (on a cardio only day resulting from a long run, 7+ miles). I workout at LEAST 4 times a week, usually the 5th day being cardio only. I have a desk job where I work about 6 hours a day. My weight training is circuits with little rest in between, higher reps. Just in the last 3 or 4 days of learning about all this, I upped my calories using the 15% cut from my TDEE. I have also upped my FATS but specifically good FATS. I now have about 40% of my calories from salmon, eggs, olive oil, avocado, almonds. I have found in the last couple days of eating like this that I "feel" better. I have tried to calculate macros, but there is so many differing opinions as to the ratios that it confuses me. I have preferred to be on a "lower carb" and higher fat/protein because I have been afraid of carbs in the past. However, I read that you should be supplying your body with carbs for workouts like I am doing. I have two main issues here: 1) I am a "scale *kitten*" (sorry for the language) It is important that the number on the scale go DOWN! I know, I should really just throw it out, but I can't seem to do it. And 2) I don't give myself enough time to be consistent enough to see if this is working. After 2 weeks, if I don't see what I like, I find another option.

Thank you guys for all your input!!!

leanne0627

Hi:) I can't help you with all your macros since I don't really know enough about that kind of thing, but I am so glad you are feeling better. You work out so much your body needed energy. I have an issue not weighing everyday too, but for the time being I had to hide my scale, you may want to consider it as you may gain some water weight or glycogen stores if you add some carbs, but from what I have understood it wont be much of the bad weigh and should come back off easily. Maybe you will find you end up burning more calories though now that your feeling better like I did. Keep track with your fitbit and see if you increase in daily burn. I will be interested to know if it wasn't just me. We are kinda in the same situation so just wanted to say good luck and keep me updated. I think you made the right choice because If you havn't lost weight in 8 months 1400 is now what you need just to maintain correct? And that's kinda scary because now you would have to go lower to lose more, and maybe suppress your metabolism even more, and when you go off the diet the minute you start eating more you could gain the weight back. I have been adding calories really slowly, an extra 100 a week or so. Are you doing the same? I have heard that for people on a bad plateau it sometimes helps to increase to their TDEE for two weeks, then cut back down a little to restart their weightloss. I think this may have something to do with increasing your metabolism then when you cut down you lose again, without having to further suppress your metabolism. Is that kinda what you are attempting? Anyways, hopefully someone will be able to answer your questions Good luck.

Nayners21

Leanne0627- Now that we are friends, we will keep each other up to date. I actually went full force and started eating the full amount of calories instead of increasing slowly. Oh well. My biggest hurdles will be on the weekends. I do great Monday through Friday afternoon, then all of a sudden, Friday night rolls around and life happens. Just got to try and do my best to make the better decisions.Thanks for the add and good luck to you too!

heybales

First - if you have this big fear of potential water weight gain, beholden to the scale, and only willing to give it a short time - do NOT increase calories by a huge amount.
If you have not been losing weight for 8 months, your literal TDEE right now is 1400 calories. Perhaps that's inaccurate logging not by weight, and it's really 1500-1600 calories.

But the point is - TDEE ain't 2100 - 3000. You will be eating a good 500 calories in surplus until such time as your body decides to speed up. And you can be assured that with that much extra after 8 months of craziness it saw, it's storing fat first.

Good, Fitbit, so you don't have to guess at your TDEE from 5 rough levels, you are given a daily infinite level TDEE. Sadly Fitbit is assuming a healthy average body - yours ain't. The calculations will be off and you aren't really burning that much right now.

Second - If you can successfully eat your calories despite changing amounts daily - stick with that, a reasonable deficit off each day's burn - once you get to that point anyway.
If you think you would do better with 1 daily goal amount no matter what - might want to switch to that. Use the Fitbit weekly summary to see TDEE, take deficit, manually set eating goal, unsync accounts.

Third - to your Fitbit TDEE estimates.

Do you manually log your weight training?
Because my Fitbit saw maybe 30 slow steps associated with my squats today in the time period I did them. Think I burned more than 30 slow steps would give me calorie burn for? You better believe it.
Hence the reason you MUST manually log non-step based workouts - totally underestimated. Swimming should be obvious, rowing, biking, elliptical, lifting/circuit training.

Walking and jogging flat/level is only thing Fitbit is going to estimate really well (if stride length is correct so correct distance is seen). So your runs may be covered accurately enough. It does gym classes and DVD classes for cardio decently too. Insanity/P90X isn't step based.

Fourth - to the macros.

Circuit training is huge carb burner, if you have the carbs to do it intense.
Sadly the feeling of doing it intense feels the same whether really doing it or not intense. It's only when you can compare to a different state that you find out.
Like someone can do all their workouts very tired, and feel like they are giving it their all. And they probably are - for being in a tired state anyway.
But that's just extra stress, not actually hard enough for the body to improve though, or at least not nearly as much as if you could do the workout full of energy.

So first, hopefully not circuit training day after day with same muscles, because it should be like lifting despite more reps and less rest. Last few reps should be almost failure.
And muscles need recovery next day without an intense load on them.

So you might try increasing carbs just a little and seeing if it has a good effect on your exercise. Yes you may increase carb stores in your muscles with attached water - so increased water weight. But that is body's response to your workouts, improvement and increased metabolism.
But guess what, when you started running your blood volume increased too with extra water. But I hope you don't think you should blood let to lose that weight.

40/30/30 is super rough guide to confirm you get enough protein in.
Even though protein and fat are both best handled by grams per lb of weight, and then whatever calories is left is carbs. For many that comes close to 40/30/30, for others with big TDEE's because of big workouts, it's a bunch of excess protein that is just going to be converted in to carbs anyway. Protein is 1 g per lb of goal weight, fat is 0.45 g per lb of goal weight. You actually need less protein when maintaining, because at goal weight it could be lessened.

So I'm guessing you ate in total, gross, that 1400 no matter what workouts you were doing? So not using MFP correctly?

In which case you've lost muscle mass, and for sure suppressed your system.
Basing BMR on bodyfat% would be very beneficial, and then adjusting Fitbit to use that value too would help. It still wouldn't have correct the fact your system is suppressed, but at least the potential TDEE it is saying is better goal to work up to.
Slowly.
100 extra daily for a week or two at a time.

heybales

I meant to give the other option if this direction scares you, despite the method your doing not working for 8 months.

Eat even less, and exercise even more. Your body can only suppress so much.
You will lose more muscle mass though, somewhere. Least used, first lost, for body to adapt.
You may suppress your system a tad more before the bottom is reached too.

Feel like eating 1200 for the last 50 lbs, with more and more exercise in order to keep losing, slowly?

And then maintenance will be a whole lot less than it could be, making it even easier for those weekends to cause an excess that will go on as fat each time it happens.

And if you get sick and can't exercise, or get injured, or go on vacation - you'll have to eat even less.

Can you sustain that, can you adhere to eating that low?

That's why so many fail when they crash land in to goal weight finally, they can't get their metabolism flying again, and can't eat that little constantly.

So think about short term annoyance of what seems like wrong direction, to long term success of the right direction.

Your body already crash landed, well away from goal runway. You gotta get it flying again. And oddly enough with this analogy, that's loading it up.

Nayners21

Heybales- Thank you for the pointers. Just to understand better
-1) If my actual TDEE is 1400 (makes sense since I am maintaining weight) what would be a safe amount to eat daily? 1600? It is extremely hard for me to eat anything under 1200 and I do not want to do that. That is for sure. I did forget to mention my body fat that was tested using calipers by my trainer in August. I was at 27% Body fat.
2) I do not log my weight training exercises and I totally get what you mean about fitbit not understanding the calorie burn with movements such as squats. My workouts at this moment involve working two muscle groups at a time. I change every 8 weeks depending on how bored I am getting. I work back and chest in one circuit, shoulders/tris/bis in another and finally legs in the third circuit. After about 8 weeks, I will switch it up to a "push/pull" workout. Back/biceps, chest/tris, legs/shoulders. I'm confused if I log in my weight training, because it doesn't give you a calorie burn for them. I used to, but it would not give me any exercise calories. Is that the point? Also, you are suggesting that I UNSYNC myfitnesspal and fitbit?
Macros- I calculated macros based on my body fat, weight,height, activity and for a CUT the numbers came out to 198g CARBS, 146g PROTEIN, 51g FAT. I have read that you can adjust carbs and fat. If I lower carbs I can raise fat? Does that sound accurate for you? Do these numbers sound about right?

And yes, I tried to eat 1400 calories no matter how much I burned. I never "ate back my calories" from exercise. To me, the bigger the deficit, the more successful I would be. Well, that has not been working for me obviously.

heybales

1 - 1500 for 2 weeks. 100 more. Then 1600 for 2 weeks. Even if your body did not want to increase daily burn, it would take 35 days to slowly increase 1 lb eating 100 over maintenance, and with good workouts it wouldn't even be fat.
It also proves out if you gained 1 lb in 3 days - it's obviously water weight. Good old needed going to gain it eventually back water weight, which increases metabolism to manage it in the muscle cells.
So skin calipers can be upwards of 5% accurate in skilled hands, we'll assume they are. Do you think you might be down towards the 22% range, or possibly other direction?

2 - You were logging your weight training in MFP under the section for tracking lifting progress. Not for calorie burn. That is logged under Cardio under.
But Fitbit has better selection of choices to increase accuracy. Besides, if you do decide to unsync accounts to do the TDEE deficit method, you'll have to do that anyway.
If your reps are between 5-20, and you rest between sets of 1-3 min, and it's heavy for you on last few reps, that is Weight lifting power lifting. If reps is 15-20 or high, rest up to 1 min between sets, that is circuit training. If it's all very easy, basically maintenance lifting, that's weight lifting easy.

And you would have to unsync accounts if you go for the single daily goal for TDEE deficit method. If you are good about meeting your daily goal, you can go for keeping accounts synced, but then you have to do some fiddling so that the adjustments given are correct.
But right now you just need to keep increasing eating level to even get close to TDEE.

Like I mentioned in prior post - which method do you prefer?

Macros are best done based on LBM, or BF%, for protein and fat, so those are good gram levels. And yes, if you want to keep carbs lower, you raise fat. Excess protein is just converted to carbs and ruins the effect you are going for.

heybales

Oh, and you aren't alone, near the worst effect. Someone in forums months ago was sharing her 100 lb weight loss success, had another 100 to go. Took 2 years the subject line said, so about 1 lb weekly.
I thought wow, someone doing it slow and very reasonable, but a good example.

Nope, had been eating 1200 the entire time, upwards to 1400. While weight loss first some weeks was huge as expected with over 300 lbs, rest of the years must have been miserable, and for average to be only 1 lb weekly about, the final months must have been terrible. Her exercise had continued to ramp up. Of course, only way to keep losing even at that miserly rate.

And I don't think she appreciated at all the implications for the next 100 lbs. Which I frankly didn't see as being successful.
Unless her food logging was just terribly inaccurate, and she had another 200-400 to cause deficit by getting more accurate. But still, for another 100 lbs.

I keep waiting for her to show up here.

Nayners21

Thanks again for the information. I will just have to trust the process.