Confused about my weight.

sarndorman

I've always been active growing up (3 season varsity athlete in high school, competitive swimming for 12 years) and I'm still pretty active (I work in a restaurant and am on my feet for 6-8 hours 6 nights a week, and work out every night for about 25 minutes). I don't eat much, as I don't have a large appetite to begin with, usually just lunch around 2 and dinner. I'm still overweight despite all of this. What should I do differently?

tomteboda

You're in a great place to find out!

I have a rather functional view of weight. If your weight is causing you difficulty in doing what you want to do, it's a problem. If it isn't, then your weight is not a problem for you.

I'm not convinced the bmi tables are a great authority on overall health ; multiple stories have suggested adjustments for age, ethnicity and other factors. The group with lowest mortality is actually the bmi=overweight group.

That said, if your weight is bothering you, then spend some time reviewing the stickied discussions in this forum. Best advice I can give us log everything you eat and be consistent about it. Many people eat far more than they think (myself included) when they aren't meticulously measuring /weighing and logging.

tbilly20

I had the same mindset 2 years ago. I have been an athlete all my life. I thought I was eating well and could not see why I was overweight. I decided to start logging my calories and found that I was snacking and eating far more than I estimated. My portions were way off. There were many snacks that I justified as "not a meal".
For me, the key to starting here is to log everything you eat. See where you are really starting from and analyze where you can do better. My next step is to attack those weak points. For instance, I snacked during the day a lot. Now I eat a bigger breakfast and lunch to feel full longer. I also log any snacks right away to keep from trivializing those discretions.
Another problem I had was overestimating my calories burned by exercise. This app/site is awful at estimating caloric expenditure. Get a heart rate monitor, power meter whatever!
It's taken a lot of work, but I have been at or below my original goal for almost two years now. The reward is worth the effort!

mylittlerainbow

Agree heartily with the logging/tracking - you don't eat much and you only eat lunch and dinner, but how much do you eat at lunch and at dinner? Where in the food pyramids do those meals fall? What about beverages? The first step is to find out what you're already eating by logging on here. Then you can start to adjust as appears helpful. Good luck!

prettysoul1908

Logging my food was an eye opening experience for me! First time I joined MFP I quit because I couldn't imagine keeping up with everything I put in my mouth. From that experience (in retrospect) I saw I ate less meals (the only thing I counted as "calories" at that time) and snacked and DRANK a lot of calories (between juice and wine... I was drinking a few meals worth of calories a day).

Second time I joined MFP I was determined to give it a valiant effort which made me get those things in check. I'm a little over 50 days in and am almost 13 pounds down. You are losing so you're doing something right. It sounds like with some tightening of logging (those sneaky liquid calories are an easy way to go over) you could see more consistent results

Keep up the good work and stay encouraged! I'm about two weeks "plateaued" but MFP has helped me not stress over that

dramaqueen45

All of the above-- sometimes it's small things that add up. I saw it once posted that BLTs (bites, licks and tastes) can add up to a LOT. I have a tendency to grab a bite of something or just a lick of a spoon or a taste of something and had stopped losing. when I stopped doing this I started losing again. I also work with someone who has gained 30 pounds in the last couple of years. She doesn't eat breakfast or lunch, but she admits that she goes home, makes a big dinner, eats the entire time she makes it and then eats her kids' leftovers, eats and snacks the rest of the evening, you get the picture.