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Metabolism - Advice Please

slk_5555
slk_5555 Posts: 177 Member
edited January 27 in Health and Weight Loss
I'm new to MFP so any advice would be much appreciated. Background info: I'm 35yr old female, currently 174lb and 5 ft 7 tall.

Ive been doing WW for a long time & managed to loose 21lb, but this has been such a slow journey (literally years) & I have now effectively been hovering around the same weight for months. I came to the conclusion I needed a change so swapped to MFP intending to try the 5:2 Fast diet. At WW I was effectively on 1200 cals per day (net - as I was not exercising). I then started 5:2 about 4 weeks ago but rather than eating normal on feast days I was eating 1200 still and then 500 on fast days. I lost 5 1/2 lb in the first week & now nothing for the last 3 weeks.

I'm very rapidly coming to the conclusion that I have been 'dieting' all be it unsuccessfully for so long now, that my metabolism is probably through the floor. I started exercising last week - walking 1 1/2 hrs briskly twice a week & then a combination of cardio and resistance/free weights 2-3 times per week. I want to continue the exercise going forward, as I know from the past that it is great for toning & body sculpting. But I'm now really struggling to get my cal intake right as I still have a further 21 - 28lb to loose.

I really need advice on how to get my metabolism back to some degree of normal. Should I steadily increase my Cals on non fast days? Or might it be best to come off plan & eat completely normal for a couple of weeks & then start at a higher daily cal rate. All the different TDEE and BMR calcs give such different results. I have currently re set MFP to a goal of about 1600 cals per day (bearing in mind I will still be doing 2 feast days of 500 cals each week. Mentally it is quite hard now to eat more, as I'm preparing myself for the fact that I may well gain for some weeks, before I start to loose again.

Any advice or past experience with this would be much appreciated. I'm so tired of sticking to plan & getting no results. I eat a lot of freshly prepared nutritious food & I weigh & track everything (liquid & solid) so its definitely not a case of misjudging calorie intake. Also, I don't really want to have to eat back exercise cals, as from past experience there is a lot of guess work involved in working out calories burned in the first place.

Any advice welcome to get my metabolism working again - many thanks.:smile:
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