If calories in vs. calories out is what matters, why no weight loss?

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  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
    edited April 2016
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    Tedebearduff wrote: »
    misschellechelle wrote: »
    I am trying to lose my last 5-7 pounds. I weigh all of my food and log absolutely everything! I also wear a fitbit to get a general idea of calories burned.

    Last week, I was 7,000 calories under maintenance for the week. I eat 1200 calories a day and end up burning about 2100-2300 calories a day. When I weighed in, no weight loss! I have been at this plateau for about a month. I have switched up my workouts and been especially mindful of my eating.

    Any advice?

    This is why I hate fitbits . You should only be tracking calories from actual exercise, IE lifting weights, running, jogging, cycling ... you know stuff that makes you sweat.

    Don't eat back calories from walking around all day, and they don't count towards a loss or negative calories as whatever you currently do your body has already adjusted to.

    Sweating is your body's way of cooling off. I can work up a sweat sitting around on a summer day in Iowa. Doesn't mean I'm burning more calories, just means my body is trying to lower its temperature.

    We can switch workouts if you like and you kind find out how much of a "non-exercise" walking is.

    EDIT: nouning my verbage are hard
  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,484 Member
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    OP do you know what your calories will be at your goal weight maintenance?
    If it is within ~200calories of the 1200 that you are consuming now that could account for the stall in your weight loss.

    It took close to 6 months for me to lose the last 5-6 lbs because my deficit and maintenance numbers were so close. I ended up dropping 50cals a day from my 200cal exercise feed back just to make the scale move- very, very slowly.

    If you are very frustrated, try switching to maintenance now, and let those last pounds drop off when they will.

    Cheers, h.
  • robininfl
    robininfl Posts: 1,137 Member
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    ReaderGirl3 wrote: »
    gataman3000 wrote: »
    Sorry to get everyone all riled up, its just reading these boards the general theme is calories in calories out only when that's just simply not true. When people say they want to lose weight, most people actually want to lose weight and body fat. I don't think anyone will be happy losing 40 or 50 pounds and still having that 40 inch waist. And I get it that it really is calories in calories out but this is for a lifestyle change not for just a number on the scale to move and that's what cico will do, make a number move. But when you actually focus on what you eat is when your body changes and you start to look how you want to look. One person said generic protein shakes, those generic protein shakes are the building blocks of muscle which contain amino acids and are a complete protein unlike that Twinkie diet everyone loves to cite. If me telling someone to have a protein shake and chicken breast over a Twinkie is making me the bad guy, so be it, but I'm sure one person will read it and it will change their diet and their life.

    I only focused on eating less calories during my weight loss phase and I still continued to eat the same foods as before, just less of them. I also did NO exercise at all. None. Zip. Nada. Here's the kicker-not only did my weight drop (and yes my waistline decreased from wearing size 14 jeans to size 4s, hardly 40 inches, snort), Every Single Health Marker Improved. My glucose number went from being in the prediabetes range to being in the 80s. My cholesterol numbers improved. Blood pressure improved. And the list goes on.

    I eat fast food several times a week, I eat all sorts of 'processed' foods, and then I also eat things like like veggies and whole grains. I still don't exercise regularly, besides some seasonal walking. I'm also now 3 years into maintenance, still rocking excellent blood work panels and great health with no issues at all/no medications etc.

    I focus on eating a varied diet, being mindful of my calorie intake and portion sizes, and really that's it.

    ....and this is where you now inform me that I'm a special snowflake and my results are abnormal and I'm a freak of nature (if only I had a dollar every time...) :p

    Because being thin and idle is healthier than being fat and idle, yes.

    Being thin and active is healthier than being thin and idle though.

  • gataman3000
    gataman3000 Posts: 55 Member
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    auddii wrote: »
    gataman3000 wrote: »
    Simple question, are all of you saying that if 2 people who start at the same weight want to lose 30 pounds at 1800 calories a day, one has a balanced diet of protein, carbs and fats but the others has twinkies and snickers that at the end they will look exactly the same?

    Oh good, you didn't actually read what people were posting. No one said that.

    Yea yea yea you know it all as always
  • blues4miles
    blues4miles Posts: 1,481 Member
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    robininfl wrote: »
    ReaderGirl3 wrote: »
    gataman3000 wrote: »
    Sorry to get everyone all riled up, its just reading these boards the general theme is calories in calories out only when that's just simply not true. When people say they want to lose weight, most people actually want to lose weight and body fat. I don't think anyone will be happy losing 40 or 50 pounds and still having that 40 inch waist. And I get it that it really is calories in calories out but this is for a lifestyle change not for just a number on the scale to move and that's what cico will do, make a number move. But when you actually focus on what you eat is when your body changes and you start to look how you want to look. One person said generic protein shakes, those generic protein shakes are the building blocks of muscle which contain amino acids and are a complete protein unlike that Twinkie diet everyone loves to cite. If me telling someone to have a protein shake and chicken breast over a Twinkie is making me the bad guy, so be it, but I'm sure one person will read it and it will change their diet and their life.

    I only focused on eating less calories during my weight loss phase and I still continued to eat the same foods as before, just less of them. I also did NO exercise at all. None. Zip. Nada. Here's the kicker-not only did my weight drop (and yes my waistline decreased from wearing size 14 jeans to size 4s, hardly 40 inches, snort), Every Single Health Marker Improved. My glucose number went from being in the prediabetes range to being in the 80s. My cholesterol numbers improved. Blood pressure improved. And the list goes on.

    I eat fast food several times a week, I eat all sorts of 'processed' foods, and then I also eat things like like veggies and whole grains. I still don't exercise regularly, besides some seasonal walking. I'm also now 3 years into maintenance, still rocking excellent blood work panels and great health with no issues at all/no medications etc.

    I focus on eating a varied diet, being mindful of my calorie intake and portion sizes, and really that's it.

    ....and this is where you now inform me that I'm a special snowflake and my results are abnormal and I'm a freak of nature (if only I had a dollar every time...) :p

    Because being thin and idle is healthier than being fat and idle, yes.

    Being thin and active is healthier than being thin and idle though.

    So true. People are confused by some old study that forgot to remove smokers from thin people and showed basically overweight non-smokers are healthier than thin smokers. Once you remove smoking from the equation, being at a healthy weight always shows better health markers. This is true anecdotally for myself as well, blood pressure and cholesterol are always healthier for me at healthy weights, regardless of how crappy I am eating at the time.
  • jennmariepantoja
    jennmariepantoja Posts: 145 Member
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    My weight loss stalled when I was only eating 1200 per day. I now eat a little over 1700 and have started losing again. Activity stayed the same...
  • lizzy_satellite
    lizzy_satellite Posts: 112 Member
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    Tedebearduff wrote: »
    This is why I hate fitbits . You should only be tracking calories from actual exercise, IE lifting weights, running, jogging, cycling ... you know stuff that makes you sweat.
    Don't eat back calories from walking around all day, and they don't count towards a loss or negative calories as whatever you currently do your body has already adjusted to.

    I was dubious about my fitbit to start with, so I decided to do an experiment, and for a few weeks tried to eat a few hundred calories less per day than it reported that I had burned. I carried on losing weight pretty much exactly in line with the figures I got from it. My preference now is to track and log everything on MFP and keep tabs on what my fitbit is reporting. It's worked pretty well for 40lbs now (and the vast majority of my exercise is walking).
  • charlieandcarol
    charlieandcarol Posts: 302 Member
    edited April 2016
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    Interesting all the hating on activity trackers. Does anyone buy one really expecting that a piece of technology you wear on your wrist is going to precisely and accurately measure your daily activities and then use an averaging algorithm to precisely and accurately calculate your daily calorie burn? It seems like there are some people that works for but not everyone, which I think is reasonable since it is operating on averages.

    I have one and I love it. I love it because it gave me an indication of how much I wasn't moving around during the day and that motivated me to do more incidental activity. I look at the trends and big picture. Was I close to 10 000 steps or more like 5000 steps, not whether it was 4950 or 5100 after I went for a ride in my car. Common sense would suggest as others have pointed out that you take those things into account and do manual exercise entries for non-step based activities such as cycling or whatever. I have no idea if the TDEE it generates is accurate for me or not. I just chose a calorie in goal and then adjust as it is or is not working and let the CO look after itself.

    Getting back to the OP, I would guess that in most instances inaccuracies in food logging are likely to be a far bigger cause of the problem than the calories generated by the activity tracker unless there is truly something wrong with the tracker or its settings.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,390 Member
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    Colorscheme wrote: »
    ryry62685 wrote: »
    Colorscheme wrote: »
    ryry62685 wrote: »
    GuitarJerry wrote: »
    Because fit bits are inaccurate. That's why. Total pieces of crap. I gained weight using mine. They don't work.

    Why I also found the fit bit to be inaccurate for me as well, that doesn't mean its inaccurate for everybody. The biggest problem with fitbit is there is no way to adjust the algorithm to your actual results so if it works for you great, if not then it can't be relied on for caloric intake.

    Just because you guys gained weight doesn't mean it's fitbit. I didn't lose any weight with mine because I apparently wasn't logging as accurately as I thought I was.

    While I would agree with you it doesn't 100% mean that its the reason, it is for me.

    I did an experiment after not losing weight for about 5 weeks using fitbit. I wore my fitbit but did not have it synched with MFP. I used MFP to manually log my excercise calories and ate my net amount. I started to consistently lose weight at about a lb a week. When I compared that amount to what fitbit said I should eat for a lb a week, it was consistently 500-1000 calories more a day.

    When looking at daily activity the problem was in the activity burn rates. They were insane. A 15 minute 3.0 mph walk burned 165 calories. Using MET charts its more like 80 calories. The more active I was the more skewed the numbers were. It made no sense, considering the step counts and distance traveled were spot on.

    To come back to the 15 minute walk fitbit gave me 165 calories for, the distance matched my gps almost identically. But if I actually went into fitbit and logged the same distance that my fitbit said i went, it would give me like 75 calories. Makes no sense to me.

    Before its asked yes my stats were checked and double checked.

    I honestly have nothing against fit bit and it seems to be accurate for many people here, just not for me and thats okay.

    Was it a HRM model? non HR model? Generally, it's a 100 cal burn for every mile you walk/run.

    Far too high! And the energy expenditure for running vs walking is completely different as you use more muscles and propel yourself up in the air during running. 100 cal burn while running for a rather heavy man might work out. For me it's more like 78, and walking is more like 37. Thta's net calories, thus with your BMI taken out of the equation as that's already part of MFP food calculation.
  • Maxematics
    Maxematics Posts: 2,287 Member
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    yirara wrote: »
    Colorscheme wrote: »
    ryry62685 wrote: »
    Colorscheme wrote: »
    ryry62685 wrote: »
    GuitarJerry wrote: »
    Because fit bits are inaccurate. That's why. Total pieces of crap. I gained weight using mine. They don't work.

    Why I also found the fit bit to be inaccurate for me as well, that doesn't mean its inaccurate for everybody. The biggest problem with fitbit is there is no way to adjust the algorithm to your actual results so if it works for you great, if not then it can't be relied on for caloric intake.

    Just because you guys gained weight doesn't mean it's fitbit. I didn't lose any weight with mine because I apparently wasn't logging as accurately as I thought I was.

    While I would agree with you it doesn't 100% mean that its the reason, it is for me.

    I did an experiment after not losing weight for about 5 weeks using fitbit. I wore my fitbit but did not have it synched with MFP. I used MFP to manually log my excercise calories and ate my net amount. I started to consistently lose weight at about a lb a week. When I compared that amount to what fitbit said I should eat for a lb a week, it was consistently 500-1000 calories more a day.

    When looking at daily activity the problem was in the activity burn rates. They were insane. A 15 minute 3.0 mph walk burned 165 calories. Using MET charts its more like 80 calories. The more active I was the more skewed the numbers were. It made no sense, considering the step counts and distance traveled were spot on.

    To come back to the 15 minute walk fitbit gave me 165 calories for, the distance matched my gps almost identically. But if I actually went into fitbit and logged the same distance that my fitbit said i went, it would give me like 75 calories. Makes no sense to me.

    Before its asked yes my stats were checked and double checked.

    I honestly have nothing against fit bit and it seems to be accurate for many people here, just not for me and thats okay.

    Was it a HRM model? non HR model? Generally, it's a 100 cal burn for every mile you walk/run.

    Far too high! And the energy expenditure for running vs walking is completely different as you use more muscles and propel yourself up in the air during running. 100 cal burn while running for a rather heavy man might work out. For me it's more like 78, and walking is more like 37. Thta's net calories, thus with your BMI taken out of the equation as that's already part of MFP food calculation.

    37 calories per mile for walking? That seems really low to me. It really does depend on the person and how fast they walk/their stats. I'm 5'3" and 112 pounds, but a five mile walk normally gets me between 300 and 500 calories with my Charge HR. I usually walk 4 miles per hour too, sometimes a tad bit faster. I know it's not inaccurate for me either, as I've had zero stalls/gains when eating back my calories.
  • Colorscheme
    Colorscheme Posts: 1,179 Member
    edited April 2016
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    yirara wrote: »
    Colorscheme wrote: »
    ryry62685 wrote: »
    Colorscheme wrote: »
    ryry62685 wrote: »
    GuitarJerry wrote: »
    Because fit bits are inaccurate. That's why. Total pieces of crap. I gained weight using mine. They don't work.

    Why I also found the fit bit to be inaccurate for me as well, that doesn't mean its inaccurate for everybody. The biggest problem with fitbit is there is no way to adjust the algorithm to your actual results so if it works for you great, if not then it can't be relied on for caloric intake.

    Just because you guys gained weight doesn't mean it's fitbit. I didn't lose any weight with mine because I apparently wasn't logging as accurately as I thought I was.

    While I would agree with you it doesn't 100% mean that its the reason, it is for me.

    I did an experiment after not losing weight for about 5 weeks using fitbit. I wore my fitbit but did not have it synched with MFP. I used MFP to manually log my excercise calories and ate my net amount. I started to consistently lose weight at about a lb a week. When I compared that amount to what fitbit said I should eat for a lb a week, it was consistently 500-1000 calories more a day.

    When looking at daily activity the problem was in the activity burn rates. They were insane. A 15 minute 3.0 mph walk burned 165 calories. Using MET charts its more like 80 calories. The more active I was the more skewed the numbers were. It made no sense, considering the step counts and distance traveled were spot on.

    To come back to the 15 minute walk fitbit gave me 165 calories for, the distance matched my gps almost identically. But if I actually went into fitbit and logged the same distance that my fitbit said i went, it would give me like 75 calories. Makes no sense to me.

    Before its asked yes my stats were checked and double checked.

    I honestly have nothing against fit bit and it seems to be accurate for many people here, just not for me and thats okay.

    Was it a HRM model? non HR model? Generally, it's a 100 cal burn for every mile you walk/run.

    Far too high! And the energy expenditure for running vs walking is completely different as you use more muscles and propel yourself up in the air during running. 100 cal burn while running for a rather heavy man might work out. For me it's more like 78, and walking is more like 37. Thta's net calories, thus with your BMI taken out of the equation as that's already part of MFP food calculation.

    Uh, no. I walk/jog and get about a hundred cals per mile. I walk 5-7 miles a day [10-12k steps] and I get 500-600 cals from that after I sync my Fitbit and MFP. I'm 5'7" and 158 lbs.
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
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    jacksonpt wrote: »
    People. Stop trying to be so damn accurate. It's just not possible.

    And stop trying to apply absolutes to something that is infinitely variable. Just stop. Jesus.

    Estimate however the hell you want to estimate, both intake and expenditure. Then compare your actual results to your expected results. If they are reasonably close, great, keep at it. If not, make a small tweak or 2 to how you estimate and repeat the process.

    Dude, stop applying logic to an MFP thread. Srsly.
    just-stop.gif
  • donjtomasco
    donjtomasco Posts: 789 Member
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    I love this place!!!!! :)
  • Crisseyda
    Crisseyda Posts: 532 Member
    edited May 2016
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    synacious wrote: »
    gataman3000 wrote: »
    Simple question, are all of you saying that if 2 people who start at the same weight want to lose 30 pounds at 1800 calories a day, one has a balanced diet of protein, carbs and fats but the others has twinkies and snickers that at the end they will look exactly the same?

    That's like asking if someone who burns the same amount of calories in a day doing weightlifting will look like someone who burns the same amount of calories in a day doing yoga. Body composition and weight loss are two separate things. Nobody has ever said that macros do not affect body composition. In fact, it is said time and time again on these boards to eat enough protein to be able to preserve muscle mass when losing weight.

    However, when it comes to weight loss, if one ate their calorie allowance in Twinkies and the other in chicken breasts and brown rice where the only goal was to lose 20 pounds, both subjects should lose 20 pounds over the same duration of time. For such an experiment though, you'd have to clone someone and make sure each entity has the same TDEE and run an experiment in a completely controlled environment, where no other natural factors of the human body would be able to take place.

    Wow, people really believe this? Do you seriously believe your body can do the same thing with Twinkies that it can with chicken? You do realize that food supplies more than just energy. At the bare minimum, there are essential proteins and essential fatty acids used for building tissues, making enzymes, creating neurotransmitters. There is the thermogenic effect of different foods, the insulin and blood glucose response, the satiety effect--and all of these would have an effect on subsequent activity levels. There are the effects of nutrient deficiencies on metabolism and the function of organs... since when did food turn into nothing but calories? This is way too simplistic and unscientific.

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