No weight or inches lost in 4 months

rosekittie

I've been on mfp for 3ish years. Constantly read the boards and know what I think is the basis for healthy diet and exercise. I'm about 30 lbs from the healthy weight I should be and calculated I'm at 32% body fat. I started trying to lose weight again 4 months ago by eating healthier, logging, and going to yoga 3 times a week. After 3 months I felt stronger, but no changes at all in weight or inches. I was going to post then, but I knew the answer would be that I needed to ramp up cardio.

I spent the past month doing a mixture of yoga, cardio, weights, and constant logging to see if I was messing up somewhere. I'm still at no change from when I started, not even by one pound or half inch.

I would appreciate some advice or feedback from my diary. I have had blood tests recently, which ruled out any hormonal issues. I just hate trying to push so hard and not getting any results. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

MCinBC

As we know, we need a deficit of 3500 calories to drop 1 pound. I looked at your daily and I don't think you are close to 3500...You need to make it an average of 500 per day. I would suggest to aim for 700 per days as not exact science to estimate calories intake as well as burned by exercises. But since you do not eat that much, I think you need to pick up on exercises?
Don't give up, Good luck.

macgurlnet

rosekittie wrote: »

I've been on mfp for 3ish years. Constantly read the boards and know what I think is the basis for healthy diet and exercise. I'm about 30 lbs from the healthy weight I should be and calculated I'm at 32% body fat. I started trying to lose weight again 4 months ago by eating healthier, logging, and going to yoga 3 times a week. After 3 months I felt stronger, but no changes at all in weight or inches. I was going to post then, but I knew the answer would be that I needed to ramp up cardio.

I spent the past month doing a mixture of yoga, cardio, weights, and constant logging to see if I was messing up somewhere. I'm still at no change from when I started, not even by one pound or half inch.

I would appreciate some advice or feedback from my diary. I have had blood tests recently, which ruled out any hormonal issues. I just hate trying to push so hard and not getting any results. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Looked at a few days and it doesn't look like you're weighing food - are you using a food scale for everything you eat at home? If not, start doing so and weigh everything in grams. Just keep eating what you've been eating and log it accurately so you can see how many calories you're truly eating.

From there, make adjustments.

~Lyssa

strong_curves

From looking at your diary, my suggestions:

Food scale, weigh/measure every single thing you eat & drink
try to find more accurate food entries, try using usda.gov
if you are eating your exercise calories back, try 50-75% eaten back

rosekittie

macgurlnet wrote: »

Looked at a few days and it doesn't look like you're weighing food - are you using a food scale for everything you eat at home? If not, start doing so and weigh everything in grams. Just keep eating what you've been eating and log it accurately so you can see how many calories you're truly eating.

From there, make adjustments.

~Lyssa

You're right. I recently bought a food scale to do that and will be using it more. One issue with counting is my job has me eating out at tasting events a few days a week, and that's always difficult to calculate. Thanks for the advice.

cwolfman13

if you aren't losing weight then you are eating at a maintenance level of energy....

macgurlnet

rosekittie wrote: »

macgurlnet wrote: »

Looked at a few days and it doesn't look like you're weighing food - are you using a food scale for everything you eat at home? If not, start doing so and weigh everything in grams. Just keep eating what you've been eating and log it accurately so you can see how many calories you're truly eating.

From there, make adjustments.

~Lyssa

You're right. I recently bought a food scale to do that and will be using it more. One issue with counting is my job has me eating out at tasting events a few days a week, and that's always difficult to calculate. Thanks for the advice.

Be as accurate as possible with everything else - if it's liquid, measure with a measuring spoon/cup; if solid or semi-solid (like peanut butter) weigh it. Even things like slices of bread or items that are just one serving - weigh them and see if the grams listed match the actual weight. They can be off by a bit and those little things can add up over time.

You might even want to avoid eating out, other than when necessary for work, for a couple weeks, just to get an accurate count for what you're currently eating.

~Lyssa

Liftng4Lis

BUT, are you in a deficit?

TavistockToad

cwolfman13 wrote: »

if you aren't losing weight then you are eating at a maintenance level of energy....

This

Dmaster1214

strong_curves wrote: »

From looking at your diary, my suggestions:

Food scale, weigh/measure every single thing you eat & drink
try to find more accurate food entries, try using usda.gov
if you are eating your exercise calories back, try 50-75% eaten back

I'd agree with this.

Also, be careful when adding exercise calories. That is a dangerous game as calorie calculators online and on machines are ridiculously inaccurate. Take that number with a grain of salt.

You're also not at a very big deficit to be begin with, so when you decide to eat a cheat meal in the weekend be wise.

I noticed some of your entries seem inaccurate with fast food.

For example, multiple of your "chipotle burrito bowl" entries are wrong by almost 300 calories. I checked with the website. How did you get the lower numbers? I'm assuming you went by the MFP or maybe you didn't eat it all and tried to guesstimate?

These little things count in the long run. Hard to be accurate with fast food as serving portions vary.

Let's say every day you miscalculate your calories eating 100 more/less than you thought.

In 30 days that is 3,000 calories. Almost a pound of fat lost or gained.

rosekittie

Dmaster1214 wrote: »

strong_curves wrote: »

From looking at your diary, my suggestions:

Food scale, weigh/measure every single thing you eat & drink
try to find more accurate food entries, try using usda.gov
if you are eating your exercise calories back, try 50-75% eaten back

I'd agree with this.

Also, be careful when adding exercise calories. That is a dangerous game as calorie calculators online and on machines are ridiculously inaccurate. Take that number with a grain of salt.

You're also not at a very big deficit to be begin with, so when you decide to eat a cheat meal in the weekend be wise.

I noticed some of your entries seem inaccurate with fast food.

For example, multiple of your "chipotle burrito bowl" entries are wrong by almost 300 calories. I checked with the website. How did you get the lower numbers? I'm assuming you went by the MFP or maybe you didn't eat it all and tried to guesstimate?

These little things count in the long run. Hard to be accurate with fast food as serving portions vary.

Let's say every day you miscalculate your calories eating 100 more/less than you thought.

In 30 days that is 3,000 calories. Almost a pound of fat lost or gained.

This. You all have been very helpful thank you. Sometimes I just search for entries that others have posted without checking them myself. I should just add most of my own. I can see the opinion is I need to be more accurate in my logging and have more of a deficit.

Kexessa

Are you weighing the alcohol? Alcohol can be really high in calories and add up quickly if you're just eyeballing or guessing how much you're having.

Unfortunately a lot of your entries are incorrect calorie wise. Try weighing everything in grams then looking up the calories per gram. Make your own entries for yourself if you have to. You can't rely on a lot of the database entries to be accurate. You seem to be doing really good at logging, just incorrect totals.

Try it for a month and see how it goes. Good luck!

JillianRN527

Food scale and HIIT!

astrampe

Are you at your current weight in your profile pics?

Mr_Knight

Looked at the diary. Eat-out calories, unweighed calories, quick add calories, over-estimated burns.

I think our work here is done...

GaleHawkins

At least now you know how to eat at maintenance now.

arditarose

rosekittie wrote: »

I've been on mfp for 3ish years. Constantly read the boards and know what I think is the basis for healthy diet and exercise. I'm about 30 lbs from the healthy weight I should be and calculated I'm at 32% body fat. I started trying to lose weight again 4 months ago by eating healthier, logging, and going to yoga 3 times a week. After 3 months I felt stronger, but no changes at all in weight or inches. I was going to post then, but I knew the answer would be that I needed to ramp up cardio.

I spent the past month doing a mixture of yoga, cardio, weights, and constant logging to see if I was messing up somewhere. I'm still at no change from when I started, not even by one pound or half inch.

I would appreciate some advice or feedback from my diary. I have had blood tests recently, which ruled out any hormonal issues. I just hate trying to push so hard and not getting any results. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Actually the answer is to eat less. Tighten up your logging, use a food scale. You could literally STOP doing cardio, but log properly using the calories mfp tells you to to eat and still lose weight. You're eating too much.

Christine_72

You only mentioned exercise in your post. What about calories?

I could literally slog it out at the gym for 5 hours a day every day, but if my calories IN are more than my calories OUT I would gain weight.

Weight loss starts in the kitchen.