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Doing Everything Right and No Results
a_vettestingray
Posts: 654 Member
Hey Sara and SideSteel!
I am stuck, stumped, and pretty pessimistic right now. Can you guys take a look? I have a feeling I know what you are going to say, but I am putting this out there anyways. Thanks in advance!
Provide your stats (height/weight/age/bodyfat% if you know it/etc) 5’6.5”, 130lbs, 27 y/o, 18-9ish% BF
What's your current gross intake of calories, on average? 2,000, my fitbit puts my TDEE around 2,000 (but that doesn’t calculate weight workout calories, so I manually add 99 calories for each workout). I am netting 1800-1900 calories when I track (see below).
What's your current average intake of protein, carbs, and fats, in grams? I aim for 120g protein, at least 50g fat, and let the rest fall where they may – usually around 170g carbs
Do you use a food scale and measure everything? Yes, when I track during the week.
Do you track all of your intake, daily? (Everything?) I used to, but I started getting neurotic and backed off of weighing and tracking everything as it was becoming a bit OCD. I am trying IF (14/10 for 7 weeks now) and trying to learn to eat intuitively, however I still track during the work week.
Do you take cheat days or days off? I am beginning to log daily again, but, I do not log on the weekends.
How much weight have you lost so far and over what time period? I lost 6lbs from Oct to Jan when I first began SL5x5 and logged daily, netting an average of 1800-1900 calories. I tried to bulk from Jan to the end of April and was able to gain 6lbs to 130 (eating 2200-2400 cals/day with a TDEE of 2000). I began cutting for summer and dropped my intake to 1800-2000 and am still sitting at 130lb, 9 weeks later.
Describe your activity and did you change that activity within the last couple of months? I work a desk job so I sit a lot. I do full body strength training 3 times a week, cardio at least 3 times a week (brisk walk on treadmill for 30min to 60min) and yoga a couple times a week. At home, I walk around a lot after work taking care of the dogs and making dinner, cleaning, etc. Then I sit on the couch for a couple of hours before bed. I get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. I started a new lifting program on 4/22, it consists of deads, pullups, ohps, planks; bb lunge, inverted rows, pushups; and squats, bb row, and dips (5x6 the first month, and 6x4 the second month - I move into a different workout phase at the end of these 8 weeks). I also started consistently doing “cardio” during the last seven weeks.
I really want to decrease my BF%, and get as lean as I used to be – when I didn’t have to think about how many calories I was eating or if I did enough cardio that week (a few years ago, i.e. before I met my husband). It seems like I have been stuck since 1 March; when comparing progress pictures, there hasn’t been any noticeable change.
I am confused as to why I haven’t seen any scale loss since the beginning of April.
I am stuck, stumped, and pretty pessimistic right now. Can you guys take a look? I have a feeling I know what you are going to say, but I am putting this out there anyways. Thanks in advance!
Provide your stats (height/weight/age/bodyfat% if you know it/etc) 5’6.5”, 130lbs, 27 y/o, 18-9ish% BF
What's your current gross intake of calories, on average? 2,000, my fitbit puts my TDEE around 2,000 (but that doesn’t calculate weight workout calories, so I manually add 99 calories for each workout). I am netting 1800-1900 calories when I track (see below).
What's your current average intake of protein, carbs, and fats, in grams? I aim for 120g protein, at least 50g fat, and let the rest fall where they may – usually around 170g carbs
Do you use a food scale and measure everything? Yes, when I track during the week.
Do you track all of your intake, daily? (Everything?) I used to, but I started getting neurotic and backed off of weighing and tracking everything as it was becoming a bit OCD. I am trying IF (14/10 for 7 weeks now) and trying to learn to eat intuitively, however I still track during the work week.
Do you take cheat days or days off? I am beginning to log daily again, but, I do not log on the weekends.
How much weight have you lost so far and over what time period? I lost 6lbs from Oct to Jan when I first began SL5x5 and logged daily, netting an average of 1800-1900 calories. I tried to bulk from Jan to the end of April and was able to gain 6lbs to 130 (eating 2200-2400 cals/day with a TDEE of 2000). I began cutting for summer and dropped my intake to 1800-2000 and am still sitting at 130lb, 9 weeks later.
Describe your activity and did you change that activity within the last couple of months? I work a desk job so I sit a lot. I do full body strength training 3 times a week, cardio at least 3 times a week (brisk walk on treadmill for 30min to 60min) and yoga a couple times a week. At home, I walk around a lot after work taking care of the dogs and making dinner, cleaning, etc. Then I sit on the couch for a couple of hours before bed. I get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. I started a new lifting program on 4/22, it consists of deads, pullups, ohps, planks; bb lunge, inverted rows, pushups; and squats, bb row, and dips (5x6 the first month, and 6x4 the second month - I move into a different workout phase at the end of these 8 weeks). I also started consistently doing “cardio” during the last seven weeks.
I really want to decrease my BF%, and get as lean as I used to be – when I didn’t have to think about how many calories I was eating or if I did enough cardio that week (a few years ago, i.e. before I met my husband). It seems like I have been stuck since 1 March; when comparing progress pictures, there hasn’t been any noticeable change.
I am confused as to why I haven’t seen any scale loss since the beginning of April.
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Tagging0
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Hey Sara and SideSteel!
I am stuck, stumped, and pretty pessimistic right now. Can you guys take a look? I have a feeling I know what you are going to say, but I am putting this out there anyways. Thanks in advance!
What do you think we're going to say?0 -
Track EVERYTHING for four weeks and then report back.0
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This is an interesting case.
First of all if you have any issues regarding being OCD about tracking, then the best solution is to find a way around that in my opinion.
Mental health is important.
The way I see things right now when I collectively look at data in your diary, if I eliminate the days you do not track and just take the tracked days and average out the caloric intake, you're eating 2050 calories.
Your results plus this information suggest to me that you're eating at maintenance or close enough to it that you're just not creating enough of a deficit to see results over that time-frame.
The solutions to this are to either reduce your intake or increase your activity.
Seeing that your intake is quite high for your size I would reduce intake.
HOWEVER this is somewhat complicated because going through individual days in your diary, I see several quick-add calories that are added into your tracked days. This throws the data off because your macronutrients do not add up to your caloric intake.
For example, your average calorie intake is 2050 but your average macro intake looks like this in May (eliminating days that are not logged at all):
164.92c 63.36f 111.68p
The quick-add feature does not apply macronutrients and you use it frequently enough that the above numbers are way off of reality.
You need to START by reducing your caloric intake by about 10% over the next two weeks.
If you were meticulously tracking I would set your average intake to the following values for the next two weeks:
1800 kcals
120p
50f
215c
And I would monitor results and adjust according to change in weight. If you don't see any progress I would make another reduction to:
1650 kcals
120p
50f
180c
But this is somewhat complex. Intuitive eating can work for some people and fail miserably for others. If you attempt to make a caloric restriction but your intuition is to eat to maintenance calories, your caloric restriction will just be offset by increased intake on ad-lib eating days.
I'm going to discuss this further with Sara and leave this thread open. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on how to apply the information I've laid out above.0 -
Thanks SideSteel,
You are right about mental health being important - I need to find a balance between logging my intake and maintaining sanity when I am out and about with measuring tools!
I am sort of shocked that you find my intake high; I seemed to think it was on the low end of other lifting ladies - who are maintaining on 2200-2500/day.
I will track EVERYTHING for the next two weeks; of anything - to establish a good baseline and then see where I stand. I appreciate your help in this.0 -
Thanks SideSteel,
You are right about mental health being important - I need to find a balance between logging my intake and maintaining sanity when I am out and about with measuring tools!
I am sort of shocked that you find my intake high; I seemed to think it was on the low end of other lifting ladies - who are maintaining on 2200-2500/day.
I will track EVERYTHING for the next two weeks; of anything - to establish a good baseline and then see where I stand. I appreciate your help in this.
I think a reasonable estimate on maintenance will range from person to person with 14-16 kcal/lb being a good baseline. Given that you only weigh in the 130's it would seem plausible to me that you maintain lower than you think you do.
But regardless of what any estimation tool tells us, results are telling us that your current intake (which by your own admission has some additional guess-work) is too high to get you to lean out, and I'm very comfortable recommending a decrease in calories potentially more than once to get you in a better spot to get a bit leaner. You have plenty of room to reduce intake, at least as I see it when I consider your stats and your activity.
For reference, I cut between 2250 and 2350 for the most part, which is only ~200-300 calories higher than your current food intake and this is assuming your intake is accurate, which given all your ad-lib eating it's probably not (I'm not judging you in the least with that statement, just FYI).0 -
Thanks SideSteel,
You are right about mental health being important - I need to find a balance between logging my intake and maintaining sanity when I am out and about with measuring tools!
I am sort of shocked that you find my intake high; I seemed to think it was on the low end of other lifting ladies - who are maintaining on 2200-2500/day.
I will track EVERYTHING for the next two weeks; of anything - to establish a good baseline and then see where I stand. I appreciate your help in this.
Just to put some perspective here regarding calorie levels. I am at about the same level of activity as you but am about 20lbs heavier (well, actually 30lbs heavier now) and that level of intake (the 2,200 - 2,500) is my bulking calories.0 -
Thanks SideSteel,
You are right about mental health being important - I need to find a balance between logging my intake and maintaining sanity when I am out and about with measuring tools!
I am sort of shocked that you find my intake high; I seemed to think it was on the low end of other lifting ladies - who are maintaining on 2200-2500/day.
I will track EVERYTHING for the next two weeks; of anything - to establish a good baseline and then see where I stand. I appreciate your help in this.
Just to put some perspective here regarding calorie levels. I am at about the same level of activity as you but am about 20lbs heavier ([/u]well, actually 30lbs heavier now[/u]) and that level of intake (the 2,200 - 2,500) is my bulking calories.
.....And it's all *kitten*.0 -
I probably should have asked sooner, 1800kc net or gross? Ive been eating a flat 1800kc and my net comes in a lot lower than I am used to. Thanks!0
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I probably should have asked sooner, 1800kc net or gross? Ive been eating a flat 1800kc and my net comes in a lot lower than I am used to. Thanks!
Gross.0 -
Dang.0
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Dang.
Sorry :flowerforyou:0 -
Locking for now so we can keep track of currently active threads easier. Please PM ether myself or SideSteel when you are ready to update us, and include a link to this thread and we will unlock. Also, please feel free to reach out earlier if you have any further questions or comments.0
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Unlocked at OPs request0
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So, I had a deficit of 1856 calories, averaging out to 1814 calories/day. This is what my weight did from the 3rd to the 16th and I have been a slightly over the past few days, leading the weight to creep back up to around 129. I fluctuate a lot and its really hard for me to tell what a real loss is and what is fluid retention/loss.
6/3 – 130
6/4 – 129.3
6/6 – 129.3
6/7 – 127.6
6/8 – 126
6/10 – 126.8
6/11 – 127.2
6/13 – 128.3
6/16 – 126.5
6/18 - 128.90 -
Can you keep doing what you are doing for another 2 weeks so we can take the water weight fluctuations out of the equation. It looks like it is trending down but the fluctuations make it a bit hard to tell.0
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I will try to be good - I have an overnight trip to "little bavaria" planned at the end of next week with the in-laws and have planned to consume large amounts of imported german beer and fresh sausages. :drinker:0
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In for sausage :bigsmile:
*kitten* wrong thread
Again.
Haha sorry I couldn't help myself :laugh:0
This discussion has been closed.