Calories Dilemma

wmeyerbill455

No worries. Living right is hard work.

healthygreek

dennshah01 wrote: »

@mumblemagic: You are assuming that the amount of energy a body burns through is unaffected by what they eat. This is not something that I grabbed out of thin air. Two different experienced and amazing trainers explained to me that if you eat too little, your body will reduce it's base metabolic rate to compensate for the low calorie intake. Basically, your metabolism slows down. With the amount of exercise I was performing in a week, they recommended between 1700-1900 depending on how I felt. Some days I felt like eating less, others I would go above 1900. I tested it. If I ate too little, I lost little to no weight. If I ate a little more, I would lose at the normal 1-2 lbs rate.


Age makes a big difference too. When I was under 30, I dropped weight way easier than I do now. As you can see in the above BMR calculation, Sedentary is 1964 calories, which is less than the 1650. Your body may lose weight in the beginning, but eventually it will break down and stop. I am not only speaking from experience, but have seen it with others as well.

I'm sorry but your amazing trainers are wrong!
If OP is not losing its because she's eating at maintenance not at a deficit!
She either needs to eat less or exercise more!
I would further add that it might help her if she weighed all her solid food on a digital scale and measure with measuring cups all her caloric liquids.

SingRunTing

rowenaaitken wrote: »

For the benefit of everyone I weigh using a digital scale. No cups or other weights. The only regular measuring spoon is a tablespoon portion. Perhaps, yes, I have been missing the odd thing - i'm only human.

The only drinks I have are filter coffee with a splash of skimmed milk - no sugar or sweeteners, water, herb or fruit teas and occasionally squash and then it's the sugar free kind.

About my job: i'm a freelance illustrator who works from home so my commute is to the bedroom next to mine. I've lowered any alcohol intake to once a week, if that, to the recommended units for a woman in the uk.

Everything gets logged.

All I know is that something isn't right and only a fool carries on the same course of action and expects different results so i'm willing to try to find out what works for me.

I've upped my calorie intake by 100 as of today and I will see how things progress for the next two weeks.

I have lost a lot of weight years ago without the help of calorie counting but at the time I paid only £65 a year! for unltd use of the uni swimming pool so I went 5 days a week.

Regarding running I track my calories using a Polar heart rate monitor as I found that using GPS on my phone was WAY off. That's all set up correctly.

If everything you are eating gets logged and you are measuring accurately (per your post above) and you haven't lost weight in months, then you need to increase (or create) your calorie deficit.

If it had only been a few weeks, I would say wait it out. But you indicate you haven't lost in months.

I would either increase your activity level, decrease your calories, or both. Don't do anything drastic, but its time to change something. Personally, I would drop by 200 calories (I already work out regularly) and see what happens over the next few weeks, then reassess.

Remember that online calculators are for population averages. You started there, but you need to adjust for your body. This is all assuming you are measuring your intake accurately, which is what you are saying (I'm not calling you out, I'm just adding that in for any lurkers).