Confused...Slightly Frustrated....Working Hard!

JennLH81

As the title says I'm confused and slightly frustrated because I've been working hard at logging all my food (except Easter and one celebratory dinner) and getting to the gym almost 6 out of 7 days since 3/18....yet the scale has minimally moved in the last week or so.

I'm confused because I still can't understand the whole goal, exercise, net calorie thing. I'm synced up to FitBit and EVERY single day it tells me I'm below my calorie goal. I feel like I'm eating a lot and making MUCH healthier choices than I was, but I just don't understand how much I'm supposed to be eating. My goal is "1400" and I don't get how I can be under goal when I'm eating over that every day. Sometimes I eat my exercise calories, but never all of them. I'm starting to wonder if that's why the scale isn't moving?!?!? How much and I supposed to be eating?!?!?! My diary is public for what it's worth.

I'm frustrated (and I understand I shouldn't be!) that the scale really hasn't budge in the last 1.5 weeks. I "feel" lighter and "feel" like my body is changing, but I want to see it too. I'm not one for taking measurements or pictures, so I guess I'll have to get used to the scale frustration!

Does anyone have advice or words of wisdom for me? I KNOW it's a marathon not a sprint, and I know I didn't gain weight quickly, so I won't lose it quickly....but I wanted some small things to celebrate!

callsitlikeiseeit

weight loss in not linear. some weeks you lose, some you gain, some stay steady.

your logging is not accurate/ consistent, either. (ie: 15 grapes) -get a scale and weigh EVERYTHING.

JennLH81

I have a scale and have been using it to weigh some items. Even if I weighed EVERYTHING that wouldn't solve my dilemma on how many calories I should be eating....

DemoraFairy

If the scale's moved, even minimally, it's still moved! And one week is nothing anyway, just keep at it.

I'm also not sure what you're confused about? Your goal is 1400. If you sat around all day and did nothing, that's how much you'd eat. When you get up and move around you burn calories, so you need to eat them back, which is why your Fitbit tells you to eat more. Just eat whatever MyFitnessPal tells you to eat.

jiigglybutt

JennLH81 wrote: »

I "feel" lighter and "feel" like my body is changing,

That is something to celebrate!!

Becka4Real

Sometimes its trial and error. Try a week of not eating back exercise calories, (Unless that makes you miserably hungry), and see how that works. You can manually change your calories in the settings. What they give you is just a guide.

JennLH81

DemoraFairy wrote: »

If the scale's moved, even minimally, it's still moved! And one week is nothing anyway, just keep at it.

I'm also not sure what you're confused about? Your goal is 1400. If you sat around all day and did nothing, that's how much you'd eat. When you get up and move around you burn calories, so you need to eat them back, which is why your Fitbit tells you to eat more. Just eat whatever MyFitnessPal tells you to eat.

So do I eat all the "green" calories that it says? Once it gets past the line into the diagonal bar, do I stop?! And what is the whole purpose of the "net calories" thing? Should I be paying attention to that?

scottacular

JennLH81 wrote: »

I have a scale and have been using it to weigh some items. Even if I weighed EVERYTHING that wouldn't solve my dilemma on how many calories I should be eating....

But you'd know how many calories you were eating. If you don't know for sure, you'll more than likely never lose.

DemoraFairy

JennLH81 wrote: »

DemoraFairy wrote: »

If the scale's moved, even minimally, it's still moved! And one week is nothing anyway, just keep at it.

I'm also not sure what you're confused about? Your goal is 1400. If you sat around all day and did nothing, that's how much you'd eat. When you get up and move around you burn calories, so you need to eat them back, which is why your Fitbit tells you to eat more. Just eat whatever MyFitnessPal tells you to eat.

So do I eat all the "green" calories that it says? Once it gets past the line into the diagonal bar, do I stop?! And what is the whole purpose of the "net calories" thing? Should I be paying attention to that?

Yes, eat all the green calories. Not sure what you're talking about with the line into the diagonal bar, but stop when you hit 0 or it goes into the red (don't worry about going a bit over or under of course, no one can hit exactly their goal every day!). Net calories is calories eaten - exercise calories. For example, if you eat 1400 and do no exercise, you've netted 1400 - 0, so 1400 calories. If you burn 200 calories at the gym one day and eat 1600, then 1600 - 200 = 1400, so you've netted 1400. You want to net your goal each day, so when your Fitbit syncs and adds exercise calories you want to eat them back. When you net your goal it will say you've got 0 calories left as you've eaten the right amount for the day. Does that make sense?

snowflakesav

Keep going. Weight loss is not linear. give it another 20 days before you reevaluate.

notwhatyouthink

A couple of things: Better to go with 1200 -700 calories. Also, dont do the " eating back calories" philosophy. Vicious cycle that never ends. When you go to the gymn, do you do solid workouts like cardio or circuit training,bike,etc. Or are you the type who might bike for five minutes, rest, then do the same on the stair climber? Not judging, just saying because youll know your style and adjust accordingly.

JennLH81

I've been using the Running for Weight Loss ap, taking spin classes, aqua aerobics, group classes. I give it 110% when I'm at the gym!

JennLH81

Plus strength training which I don't log. Arms, legs, or core....alternating days

PeachyCarol

There's a Fitbit users group that might be able to help you. You are eating back a lot of your exercise calories. I don't know how accurate Fitbits are, I think, from what I've read, that some models are more reliable for burn figures than others.

Do start weighing EVERYTHING, though. You have no idea how many calories you're eating until you do.

ArkMom35

I've lost a good amount of weight by eating all my goal calories plus 50-75% of exercise calories. I seem to go through phases in my weight loss and certainly have periods where the scale doesn't move. Feeling lighter, having your clothes fit looser, experiencing an increase in energy or mood, these are all great signs of a healthy journey without a scale loss. As everyone else said, weight loss is not linear, but just keep at it, and the weight will come off. Also, make sure you are drinking lots of water.

kpkitten

notwhatyouthink wrote: »

A couple of things: Better to go with 1200 -700 calories. Also, dont do the " eating back calories" philosophy. Vicious cycle that never ends. When you go to the gymn, do you do solid workouts like cardio or circuit training,bike,etc. Or are you the type who might bike for five minutes, rest, then do the same on the stair climber? Not judging, just saying because youll know your style and adjust accordingly.

With respect, I'd recommend eating back 75-100% of a Fitbit adjustment, and the more usual 25-75% of a manual exercise entry rather than advising not to eat any Fitbit exercise calories. Not sure if that's what you were saying, or you just didn't notice the Fitbit reference the OP made.

Fitbit basically tells you your TDEE for the day (how many calories you burned doing everything like just existing, walking around, eating etc. Yes it's probably not 100% accurate, but it's better than MFP's activity level settings, because whilst it might over/underestimate your burns (if your bf% is higher or lower than average, or you have a lower metabolic rate or whatever), it's not reliant on you reporting your activity, where over/underestimation is more likely.
If you swim/gym/cycle etc (anything except walking or running, really), then enter an exercise record manually in either Fitbit or Myfitnesspal, but unless you use a Heart Rate Monitor to work out your calories from that exercise, you should manually override the "calories burned" to 50% of what it suggests (if you find you're losing faster or slower than expected after a few weeks doing this, either increase or decrease the % as required). This is because most of the time, these burns will be overestimated.

So if you have a day where Fitbit says you burned 2500 calories, and you've got it set to a 500 calories deficit (this should be the same in MFP and Fitbit, btw, make sure they both target the same weekly weight loss!), then Fitbit will think you can eat 2000 calories. This will show up in Myfitnesspal as 600 calories earned from exercise, and will increase your "daily goal" to 2000 calories. If you ate exactly 2000 calories, the horizontal bar would say you netted 1400.

On another day, maybe Fitbit said you burned 1700 calories, but you also spent an hour cycling at the gym. When you go to enter your workout, Myfitnesspal says that an hour of "moderate pace cycling" burns 600 calories. You think that sounds a bit high, so you manually change it to 300 calories. Now Fitbit says you burned 2000 calories, so if you take off the 500 deficit, it thinks you can eat 1500. So today you have 100 calories earned from exercise, and your daily goal will be 1500 calories. If you eat all 1500, the horizontal bar says you netted 1400 again.

Here's why I'd recommend manually overriding calories burned for non-walking/non-running activity, rather than eating back none, or just a % of your "exercise calories". If Fitbit said you burned 2500 calories, and you also spent an hour cycling and MFP said that was 600, so you left it as 600 intending to eat back only half that, you'd end up with a "daily goal" of 2600 calories, which would be 1200 exercise calories. But wait, that's both your Fitbit activity and your cycling! So would you eat only 600 (half) of the exercise calories? Would you try to work out how much of the adjustment was from Fitbit, and how much from cycling? Whatever amount you decided to eat, if it was less than 100% of the adjustment, you could eat exactly what you intended to, and Fitbit/MFP would think you had eaten less than your goal. They'd predict a bigger weight loss (demotivating if you didn't hit it!) and if you used reports to check your progress, it wouldn't match up because it would look like a bigger deficit when it wasn't.

Sorry this ended up being so long, but hopefully it explains what some of the different things mean, and gives you an idea of how to caluclate your calories best going forwards!
To summarise:
- make sure MFP and Fitbit have the same target deficit
- enter all exercise except walking or running into Fitbit or MFP
- manually override calories burned for this exercise, enter 50% of what the system tells you
- Eat back 100% of exercise calories

lemurcat12

JennLH81 wrote: »

I'm confused because I still can't understand the whole goal, exercise, net calorie thing. I'm synced up to FitBit and EVERY single day it tells me I'm below my calorie goal. I feel like I'm eating a lot and making MUCH healthier choices than I was, but I just don't understand how much I'm supposed to be eating. My goal is "1400" and I don't get how I can be under goal when I'm eating over that every day. Sometimes I eat my exercise calories, but never all of them. I'm starting to wonder if that's why the scale isn't moving?!?!? How much and I supposed to be eating?!?!?! My diary is public for what it's worth.

You are doing it basically correctly, but there are some tricks.

First, don't overthink the goal. It sounds like you have a sensible one (1400 + exercise calories), but the goal is going to vary based on how much you tell MFP you want to lose per week. People get this idea that if they don't have the precise right goal it won't work, but that's not so--what happens is you either lose what you were aiming for or more or less and if more or less you adjust something (but you have to measure that over a longer period, since any week can be weird for any number of reasons).

Second, the tricks that can screw you up are exercise calories and logging. You are doing it right in that you are eating back exercise calories, and given that you are exercising intensely and have a reasonably low goal to start with (1400), you do want to eat back some calories based on exercise. The possible problem here is that MFP can estimate exercise calories high and they are really hard to estimate anyway, so what a lot of people do until they see how they are losing (and to the extent they feel good) is cut the calories some--either eat back 50% or 67% or vary depending on the activity. I just looked at one of your days where you had logged an activity I happen to do (spinning), and that's one I always cut because I think MFP estimates it high. If once you get going it turns out that you are losing more than expected, then you can revise and eat back more.

(Since you are eating back some but not all exercise calories, this is pretty similar to what you are doing now. You might just want to be more systematic about it. But it's not what is messing you up.)

The final thing is logging. There ARE tricks to accurate logging, that have to do with finding the right entries and weighing everything (not everyone has to do this, but if you aren't losing or aren't losing as much as expected it's a great place to start). Serving sizes on cans or boxes can be misleading, restaurant foods can be way more calories than one might think. It matters if you weigh meat raw vs. cooked, stuff like that. (Weigh raw unless you find an entry that specifies cooked.) The best entries for whole foods are the ones MFP put in which have no asterisk and lots of unit options. Be careful with packaged foods as there are usually several really similar options and it's easy to find one that's wrong. I haven't gone through your logging to figure out any specific issues, but these are common ones for new people. (There's a really good thread on logging tips somewhere that I hope someone will link.)

Finally (okay, real final thing) is what you noted yourself--expectations. Sometimes the scale just takes a bit of time to catch up. It sounds like you are doing the right things and making healthy changes, so that's really great and important. The scale shouldn't undermine that for you--some people also find that the time of the month makes a huge difference and they lose more in some weeks than others.

Anyway, I'm sure you will get this figured out!

JennLH81

kpkitten wrote: »

notwhatyouthink wrote: »

A couple of things: Better to go with 1200 -700 calories. Also, dont do the " eating back calories" philosophy. Vicious cycle that never ends. When you go to the gymn, do you do solid workouts like cardio or circuit training,bike,etc. Or are you the type who might bike for five minutes, rest, then do the same on the stair climber? Not judging, just saying because youll know your style and adjust accordingly.

With respect, I'd recommend eating back 75-100% of a Fitbit adjustment, and the more usual 25-75% of a manual exercise entry rather than advising not to eat any Fitbit exercise calories. Not sure if that's what you were saying, or you just didn't notice the Fitbit reference the OP made.

Fitbit basically tells you your TDEE for the day (how many calories you burned doing everything like just existing, walking around, eating etc. Yes it's probably not 100% accurate, but it's better than MFP's activity level settings, because whilst it might over/underestimate your burns (if your bf% is higher or lower than average, or you have a lower metabolic rate or whatever), it's not reliant on you reporting your activity, where over/underestimation is more likely.
If you swim/gym/cycle etc (anything except walking or running, really), then enter an exercise record manually in either Fitbit or Myfitnesspal, but unless you use a Heart Rate Monitor to work out your calories from that exercise, you should manually override the "calories burned" to 50% of what it suggests (if you find you're losing faster or slower than expected after a few weeks doing this, either increase or decrease the % as required). This is because most of the time, these burns will be overestimated.

So if you have a day where Fitbit says you burned 2500 calories, and you've got it set to a 500 calories deficit (this should be the same in MFP and Fitbit, btw, make sure they both target the same weekly weight loss!), then Fitbit will think you can eat 2000 calories. This will show up in Myfitnesspal as 600 calories earned from exercise, and will increase your "daily goal" to 2000 calories. If you ate exactly 2000 calories, the horizontal bar would say you netted 1400.

On another day, maybe Fitbit said you burned 1700 calories, but you also spent an hour cycling at the gym. When you go to enter your workout, Myfitnesspal says that an hour of "moderate pace cycling" burns 600 calories. You think that sounds a bit high, so you manually change it to 300 calories. Now Fitbit says you burned 2000 calories, so if you take off the 500 deficit, it thinks you can eat 1500. So today you have 100 calories earned from exercise, and your daily goal will be 1500 calories. If you eat all 1500, the horizontal bar says you netted 1400 again.

Here's why I'd recommend manually overriding calories burned for non-walking/non-running activity, rather than eating back none, or just a % of your "exercise calories". If Fitbit said you burned 2500 calories, and you also spent an hour cycling and MFP said that was 600, so you left it as 600 intending to eat back only half that, you'd end up with a "daily goal" of 2600 calories, which would be 1200 exercise calories. But wait, that's both your Fitbit activity and your cycling! So would you eat only 600 (half) of the exercise calories? Would you try to work out how much of the adjustment was from Fitbit, and how much from cycling? Whatever amount you decided to eat, if it was less than 100% of the adjustment, you could eat exactly what you intended to, and Fitbit/MFP would think you had eaten less than your goal. They'd predict a bigger weight loss (demotivating if you didn't hit it!) and if you used reports to check your progress, it wouldn't match up because it would look like a bigger deficit when it wasn't.

Sorry this ended up being so long, but hopefully it explains what some of the different things mean, and gives you an idea of how to caluclate your calories best going forwards!
To summarise:
- make sure MFP and Fitbit have the same target deficit
- enter all exercise except walking or running into Fitbit or MFP
- manually override calories burned for this exercise, enter 50% of what the system tells you
- Eat back 100% of exercise calories

WOW!!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to do clearly explain the whole calorie thing! I think I get it now. I do manually enter all exercise, except regular walking and strength training into MFP. I will take your advice and override the number to be 50% of what it estimates. I should then eat ALL my green calories!

kpkitten

JennLH81 wrote: »

kpkitten wrote: »

notwhatyouthink wrote: »

A couple of things: Better to go with 1200 -700 calories. Also, dont do the " eating back calories" philosophy. Vicious cycle that never ends. When you go to the gymn, do you do solid workouts like cardio or circuit training,bike,etc. Or are you the type who might bike for five minutes, rest, then do the same on the stair climber? Not judging, just saying because youll know your style and adjust accordingly.

With respect, I'd recommend eating back 75-100% of a Fitbit adjustment, and the more usual 25-75% of a manual exercise entry rather than advising not to eat any Fitbit exercise calories. Not sure if that's what you were saying, or you just didn't notice the Fitbit reference the OP made.

Fitbit basically tells you your TDEE for the day (how many calories you burned doing everything like just existing, walking around, eating etc. Yes it's probably not 100% accurate, but it's better than MFP's activity level settings, because whilst it might over/underestimate your burns (if your bf% is higher or lower than average, or you have a lower metabolic rate or whatever), it's not reliant on you reporting your activity, where over/underestimation is more likely.
If you swim/gym/cycle etc (anything except walking or running, really), then enter an exercise record manually in either Fitbit or Myfitnesspal, but unless you use a Heart Rate Monitor to work out your calories from that exercise, you should manually override the "calories burned" to 50% of what it suggests (if you find you're losing faster or slower than expected after a few weeks doing this, either increase or decrease the % as required). This is because most of the time, these burns will be overestimated.

So if you have a day where Fitbit says you burned 2500 calories, and you've got it set to a 500 calories deficit (this should be the same in MFP and Fitbit, btw, make sure they both target the same weekly weight loss!), then Fitbit will think you can eat 2000 calories. This will show up in Myfitnesspal as 600 calories earned from exercise, and will increase your "daily goal" to 2000 calories. If you ate exactly 2000 calories, the horizontal bar would say you netted 1400.

On another day, maybe Fitbit said you burned 1700 calories, but you also spent an hour cycling at the gym. When you go to enter your workout, Myfitnesspal says that an hour of "moderate pace cycling" burns 600 calories. You think that sounds a bit high, so you manually change it to 300 calories. Now Fitbit says you burned 2000 calories, so if you take off the 500 deficit, it thinks you can eat 1500. So today you have 100 calories earned from exercise, and your daily goal will be 1500 calories. If you eat all 1500, the horizontal bar says you netted 1400 again.

Here's why I'd recommend manually overriding calories burned for non-walking/non-running activity, rather than eating back none, or just a % of your "exercise calories". If Fitbit said you burned 2500 calories, and you also spent an hour cycling and MFP said that was 600, so you left it as 600 intending to eat back only half that, you'd end up with a "daily goal" of 2600 calories, which would be 1200 exercise calories. But wait, that's both your Fitbit activity and your cycling! So would you eat only 600 (half) of the exercise calories? Would you try to work out how much of the adjustment was from Fitbit, and how much from cycling? Whatever amount you decided to eat, if it was less than 100% of the adjustment, you could eat exactly what you intended to, and Fitbit/MFP would think you had eaten less than your goal. They'd predict a bigger weight loss (demotivating if you didn't hit it!) and if you used reports to check your progress, it wouldn't match up because it would look like a bigger deficit when it wasn't.

Sorry this ended up being so long, but hopefully it explains what some of the different things mean, and gives you an idea of how to caluclate your calories best going forwards!
To summarise:
- make sure MFP and Fitbit have the same target deficit
- enter all exercise except walking or running into Fitbit or MFP
- manually override calories burned for this exercise, enter 50% of what the system tells you
- Eat back 100% of exercise calories

WOW!!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to do clearly explain the whole calorie thing! I think I get it now. I do manually enter all exercise, except regular walking and strength training into MFP. I will take your advice and override the number to be 50% of what it estimates. I should then eat ALL my green calories!

Exactly It's OK to be +/-100, because you can't plan down to the very last calorie, but just make sure that it's not always +100 at the end of the day! (as in 100 red calories)
As you use Fitbit and MFP together like this, you'll get to know what your daily goal is likely to be, which makes planning much easier. If you know that a work day you get 300 more calories than the weekend (or vice versa) you can plan around it, rather than being surprised in the evening, and then snacking for the sake of it!

StaciMarie1974

The way all these systems (Fitbit, MFP) work is that your goal is to eat at a deficit of 500 calories a day when you aim to lose 1 pound a week. (250 for .5 pounds, 750 for 1.5 pounds...)

Your goal # to eat may initially be 1400, but it changes because your Fitbit calculates your actual calorie burn per day. If you burn more than MFP assumes you will, then you earn more calories. Whether or not you eat them all is up to you, based on how you feel. Such as if your goal is a 500 deficit, and you actually burn 2200 (rather than 1900) then you've burned 300 more than anticipated.

What everyone is saying: weight loss is not linear - is true. Meaning you won't see consistent results each & every week. This is largely because of water weight. It will sometimes mask results. But it is temporary. Common causes are sodium, stress, change in fitness routine, hormones/TOM. As women hormones/TOM is a big one. For that reason I suggest that you compare your weight now to your weight a month ago. It negates the TOM water weight and helps you to see the big picture.