Why am I not losing?

morkiemama

There is absolutely no way to know if you should eat more or less until you track accurately for at least a month and see what results you get. Start there.

This.

I highly recommend a food scale.

Raddichio

First, congratulations on your weight loss to date, and I hope you're successful in reaching your goal.

I have read the various comments here, and I truly hope that you can review them yourself in a less defensive manner and pick the gems of wisdom that are here. I think that many, if not most, of the comments about not logging accurately are NOT saying that you are not logging truthfully. They are pointing out that, for the logging to be accurate, you have to be extremely diligent---measure everything you can, include EVERY ingredient in your meal when it is prepared at home. I am astounded by how comprehensive the food database at MFP is---and if you have the nutrition information on the package, you can enter it yourself. You also can enter your own food combinations in various ways. One example, is that I like to cook 1/2 basmati and 1/2 brown rice. So when I eat the resultant rice mix, I measue out 1/2 cup of the cooked rice and enter it as 1/4 C basmati and 1/4 C brown rice---in fact, I saved it as one of my custom "My Foods." Then, with just one click, I can enter it again every time I eat rice with a meal. There are many components to weight loss, but accurately recording in our Food Diary is one of the keys. As you said, no one can be 100% accurate and sometmes we just have to estimate as best we can---but it clearly does work, as seen by the many success stories here.

I know it can sound overwhelming or cumbersome to be so detailed in the Food Diary, but why not try it? You're out of school right now, so why not spend some time learning more about all the tools you can use to increase the accuracy of your logging? Maybe it will make a difference and maybe it won't, but what do you have to lose by trying (other than some more pounds)? Also, once you're familiar with the various tools, logging will become so much easier---you can save favorite food combinations, meals, or recipes and enter them in your Food Diary every time you eat them with just one click. Perhaps you already know how to do this, but if you don't, the following is a post I wrote to someone else a short time ago. It outlines some of the steps you can take to use some of the wonderful features in the Food Diary---just start clicking on some of the tabs and I'm sure you'll figure out how they will work for you. You can learn just by playing around with different features. After you've done that, if you have any questions, start a new thread to ask.

---

Here's my old post to someone else:

Something else that helps, as you get more used to tracking food, is to enter the food BEFORE you eat. I have always liked to plan meals (our main meal---usually dinner) about a week ahead. I go ahead and enter what I'm planning to make & eat when I do my weekly meal planning. It helps me balance my eating through the day so that I don't end up with a lot of calories left uneaten at the end of the day or, conversely, with too many calories consumed or being really hungry at the end of the day because I've consumed too many already.

After you've been logging for a while, investigate using other features, such as the tabs at the top of your Food Diary page, including "Recipes," "My Meals," and "My Foods" (the latter being a place to enter foods you eat that aren't in the database so that you'll be able to include it in your food diary). Most of the features are pretty intuitive, but come back and ask questions if you need to.

One tip I'll give you now is, if you like certain combinations of food, you can use the "Quick Tools," then choose "Remember meal." It will allow you to name the ''meal',' and after that you can just go to your list of meals (by clicking on the "My Meals" tab at the top of the page) and choose that---all the items will be entered in your food diary automatically, which saves a lot of time. I use this feature for favorite sandwich combinations---if I vary the ingredients slightly, I just click on the item to increase or decrease the quantity or on the red circle at the right of that item to delete it entirely. Then, just add anything else you're eating or drinking at that meal. I also use it for favorite food combos, i.e., tilapia, mango salsa, rice, and zucchini and carrots. After I've entered all those components of our fish dinner once, I add it to "My Meals" as described above. The next time we have that, I simply click on "Tilapia, rice, and zucchini" in "My Meals," and everything is entered for me---so easy and fast. If we had tartar sauce that night instead of the mango salsa, I just delete the salsa and insert the tartar sauce.

As you grow accustomed to the site and take advantage of its many features, you'll find that logging food becomes very quick and easy, not cumbersome at all.

PepperWorm

I'd really look at investing in a $50 fitbit. I'm really questioning your TDEE. I get that heavier people burn more, but I've only hit 2900 ONCE and that was when I worked out for 2 hours (intensely) and walked/ran nearly 8 miles as well as being generally active the rest of the day.

Gonna have to agree.

You're supposed to update and re-tally your goals every 5-10 lbs you lose.

It also sounds like you lead a sedentary lifestyle other than the 1 hr of exercise 5 days a week. That's Moderate Activity, at most.

yarwell

was doing about an hour cardio (roughly 700 calories burned)

Seems pretty unlikely TBH. 400, maybe.

morkiemama

First, congratulations on your weight loss to date, and I hope you're successful in reaching your goal.

I have read the various comments here, and I truly hope that you can review them yourself in a less defensive manner and pick the gems of wisdom that are here. I think that many, if not most, of the comments about not logging accurately are NOT saying that you are not logging truthfully. They are pointing out that, for the logging to be accurate, you have to be extremely diligent---measure everything you can, include EVERY ingredient in your meal when it is prepared at home. I am astounded by how comprehensive the food database at MFP is---and if you have the nutrition information on the package, you can enter it yourself. You also can enter your own food combinations in various ways. One example, is that I like to cook 1/2 basmati and 1/2 brown rice. So when I eat the resultant rice mix, I measue out 1/2 cup of the cooked rice and enter it as 1/4 C basmati and 1/4 C brown rice---in fact, I saved it as one of my custom "My Foods." Then, with just one click, I can enter it again every time I eat rice with a meal. There are many components to weight loss, but accurately recording in our Food Diary is one of the keys. As you said, no one can be 100% accurate and sometmes we just have to estimate as best we can---but it clearly does work, as seen by the many success stories here.

I know it can sound overwhelming or cumbersome to be so detailed in the Food Diary, but why not try it? You're out of school right now, so why not spend some time learning more about all the tools you can use to increase the accuracy of your logging? Maybe it will make a difference and maybe it won't, but what do you have to lose by trying (other than some more pounds)? Also, once you're familiar with the various tools, logging will become so much easier---you can save favorite food combinations, meals, or recipes and enter them in your Food Diary every time you eat them with just one click. Perhaps you already know how to do this, but if you don't, the following is a post I wrote to someone else a short time ago. It outlines some of the steps you can take to use some of the wonderful features in the Food Diary---just start clicking on some of the tabs and I'm sure you'll figure out how they will work for you. You can learn just by playing around with different features. After you've done that, if you have any questions, start a new thread to ask.

---

Here's my old post to someone else:

Something else that helps, as you get more used to tracking food, is to enter the food BEFORE you eat. I have always liked to plan meals (our main meal---usually dinner) about a week ahead. I go ahead and enter what I'm planning to make & eat when I do my weekly meal planning. It helps me balance my eating through the day so that I don't end up with a lot of calories left uneaten at the end of the day or, conversely, with too many calories consumed or being really hungry at the end of the day because I've consumed too many already.

After you've been logging for a while, investigate using other features, such as the tabs at the top of your Food Diary page, including "Recipes," "My Meals," and "My Foods" (the latter being a place to enter foods you eat that aren't in the database so that you'll be able to include it in your food diary). Most of the features are pretty intuitive, but come back and ask questions if you need to.

One tip I'll give you now is, if you like certain combinations of food, you can use the "Quick Tools," then choose "Remember meal." It will allow you to name the ''meal',' and after that you can just go to your list of meals (by clicking on the "My Meals" tab at the top of the page) and choose that---all the items will be entered in your food diary automatically, which saves a lot of time. I use this feature for favorite sandwich combinations---if I vary the ingredients slightly, I just click on the item to increase or decrease the quantity or on the red circle at the right of that item to delete it entirely. Then, just add anything else you're eating or drinking at that meal. I also use it for favorite food combos, i.e., tilapia, mango salsa, rice, and zucchini and carrots. After I've entered all those components of our fish dinner once, I add it to "My Meals" as described above. The next time we have that, I simply click on "Tilapia, rice, and zucchini" in "My Meals," and everything is entered for me---so easy and fast. If we had tartar sauce that night instead of the mango salsa, I just delete the salsa and insert the tartar sauce.

As you grow accustomed to the site and take advantage of its many features, you'll find that logging food becomes very quick and easy, not cumbersome at all.

Thank you for posting this! I actually had no idea about the "Meals" feature. This will come in handy.

Raddichio

Morkiemama, You're welcome. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

ilovefitness36

In all honesty, my main concern would be your cholesterol level from eating all that fast food. Never mind the calories.

Keep that in mind. In the long run, if you try your best to cut down on the fast food, and replace it with whole foods, while still allowing your 'cheat meals' to be fast food, your health, more than anything, will improve.

Sorry, just sayin'.

JLHNU212

Bump for the logging tools! Thanks!