Eating more to lose weight

Kalikel · August 2015

If you're not losing eating what you eat now, eating more will not help you lose more.

If you aren't losing, you need to eat less, move more or both.

lemurcat12 · August 2015

Lots of times when people have a calorie goal that they can't stick to they end up eating well above that goal (either by blowing it regularly or having a few unlogged/bad days). So I don't see that as necessarily inconsistent. Better to raise the goal, be consistent, and then see if she's losing. If not, work on logging accuracy at the proper goal level.

leooftheyear · August 2015

here is the link for the Eat More to Weigh Less group, please go to this group and ask for better advise there. While there are some people giving you sound advise, i disagree with all the people ripping you apart telling you you're eating more than you think.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/3817-eat-more-2-weigh-less

atypicalsmith · August 2015

If not eating more than she thinks, how could she possibly gain weight?

janejellyroll · August 2015

It isn't "ripping someone apart" to note that if you aren't losing weight, you are not in a deficit.

BWBTrish · August 2015

The whole point is..how much calories does she really consume
When she doesn't weigh her food on a scale you dont know.

The whole "eat more, weigh less" thing also only works when you have a deficit. You can eats lots more indeed..just a couple hundred under your maintenance level and still lose weight..but it is slower.

science is counts for all of us...3500 calories is a pound....eat 3500 less than you burn and you will lose that pound simple
this is over a week...two weeks a month whatever...

I eat around 1450 atm which gives me a deficit from around the half to a whole pound a week...and i can eat more indeed and lose weight..But i will lose less its that simple. However i weigh everything on a scale so i know about-ish what my intake is. So i also know how much i can and be able to cut to lose weight.

999tigger · August 2015

Care to explain how she is eating less than 1200 calories and not losing over time? Care to explain how her body is making up the deficit? We are all ears becayse you should be able to back your statement up.

LivingtheLeanDream · August 2015

^^ this

vismal · August 2015

I didn't see a single person "rip anyone apart" as you suggested. I saw several people, myself included, suggest that if the OP isn't losing weight, it's because they are not eating less calories per day than they burn. Miscounting calories is extremely common. I would venture a bet that almost all newcomers are eating quite a bit more than they think. I know I was. I was eating what I thought was 16-1800 calories when I first started tracking. In reality it was probably 2500 or more. Add in my once a week cheat day that I didn't count at all my average was probably closer to 2700-3000. Fortunately for me I was also obese and still able to lose weight eating that much. If my tracking habits didn't improve dramatically, I would have stalled BIG TIME along the way. 1600 calories should cause weight loss in an obese man, but I wasn't really eating 1600. So increasing calories wouldn't have solved anything. It would have taken me further from the answer. Once calories were being tracked with extreme accuracy, I was able to increase my calorie goal to 2000. Note that I wasn't actually eating more food, my goal was simply higher because it was an accurate count. I was still eating less, but looking at my diary, you'd think I was eating more to lose weight. I wasn't. Eating more calories doesn't cause weight loss in the long term. The laws of physics are pretty clear on that one. Anecdotally, eating more can cause weight to drop off in the form of water, or can cause increased compliance. If eating more helps you stick to your deficit, well you aren't really eating more are you? You simply are not breaking diet as often. The bottom line is, that if you are not losing weight in the long run, you are not in a deficit. You must eat less calories. The reason you are not in a deficit is either compliance, or inaccurate tracking. For new people, it's usually both.

cwolfman13 · August 2015

the difference will be the size of your energy deficit...but so long as you are in an energy deficit, you will lose weight.

If you weren't losing weight on 1200 calories then you were eating more than you think.

If you maintain on, for example, 2000 calories than a 1200 calorie diet would provide for an 800 calorie (energy) deficit...1600 calories would provide for a 400 calorie deficit. The first would be around 1.5 Lbs per week...the second would be just shy of 1 Lb per week.

math.

SLLRunner · August 2015

What? Nobody is ripping her apart.

Fact: if you're not losing weight, you are eating too much. It's 100% science, even if you have a medical issue where you need to work a bit harder to find the calorie deficit that works for you.

Eating more is to fuel your body only and to lose weight at a slower rate. You still have to stay in your calorie deficit. For this to work you (1) have to already be losing weight and (2) know how much you are eating.

Liftng4Lis · August 2015

Winner get's to eat the most and still lose.

NotGnarly · August 2015

^^THIS! Go to the link OP. Glad I bypassed the forums.

sheermomentum · August 2015

Once you get really committed to eating in a certain range, yes, it can just feel somehow wrong to eat more. If you're at the right level, you might even call that feeling self-discipline. But, given the facts that you're sharing, it seems like the right level is NOT 1200 calories, right? So maybe it will help if you can think of it as tweaking your commitment a little bit. Pair that with a commitment to weight and measure faithfully, and see how it goes for a month. A person can definitely lose on 1600 (or more) calories as long as they are burning up more than that.

NotGnarly · August 2015

So true!

Eating more to lose weight

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