Help! Not losing weight (while weighing food , counting calories and exercising).

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  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
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    I don't understand why this thread is 3 pages long?

    OP, it seems like everything was going along fine until you gained 0.2 lbs over the last 2 weeks which includes your TOM. Which means there is no problem to solve and you don't have to change anything. Weight can naturally fluctuate as much as 5 lbs or even more on a day to day basis. You are probably just retaining water, and it will even back out in a few days. If you were having success up till now, don't change what you're doing based on your body reacting wonkily to your TOM. If it ain't broke, don't fix it :)
  • Myjourney2345
    Myjourney2345 Posts: 116 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Dnarules wrote: »
    OP, lots of great info here. It is getting late, and I may have missed it.....I understand where the fitbit adjustment is coming from. What type of exercise are you doing that you wear a heart rate monitor for. Is it step based?

    My exercise is mostly not step based ( not spinning at least which takes up the majority of my exercise time).

    I spin and take bootcamp classes that involve strength training, and HIIT on the rowing machine and treadmill. I average around 3,000 steps for bootcamp and disregard those from my daily step count to avoid double dipping. My average heart rate during exercise is 165 for both bootcamp and spinning (max heart rate is 192) and my sessions last anywhere between 45-75 minutes, 6-7 times a week.
  • Myjourney2345
    Myjourney2345 Posts: 116 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Christine_72 wrote: »
    I'm 5"8 and 147lbs, I'm older than you, 44. My maintenance calories are around 1800 set at sedentary.

    The only exercise I do is walking, minimum 20,000 steps a day. I have my fitbit synced to mfp. Did you say you have 2 separate trackers?? If so, choose one, sync it with mfp and eat back 50-75% of your exercise calories back to start. Reassess in a few weeks.
    Enter your info, choose the option to lose 0.5lbs a week and you should be good to go.

    If you have a HR monitor device, do not worry about entering any exercise manually. Set it, forget it and let it do it's job :smile:

    I have two separate trackers, but I mostly only use PolarM400 to track steps and calories burned from workouts (I use the chest strap when I workout). This week, I am using my Fitbit to track steps and I am manually entering the calories burned from my workouts as my PolarM400 is currently being repaired....
  • Myjourney2345
    Myjourney2345 Posts: 116 Member
    edited May 2016
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    sarahlifts wrote: »
    I log my steps, I never ACTIVELY eat those cals back. I may go over by 50-100 but I never say Oh I can eat more.

    Yes, this is where I went wrong. I will only be eating back 50% of calories burned during my workouts and not from daily activity (i.e steps).
  • Myjourney2345
    Myjourney2345 Posts: 116 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Christine_72 wrote: »
    I'm 5"8 and 147lbs, I'm older than you, 44. My maintenance calories are around 1800 set at sedentary.

    The only exercise I do is walking, minimum 20,000 steps a day. I have my fitbit synced to mfp. Did you say you have 2 separate trackers?? If so, choose one, sync it with mfp and eat back 50-75% of your exercise calories back to start. Reassess in a few weeks.
    Enter your info, choose the option to lose 0.5lbs a week and you should be good to go.

    If you have a HR monitor device, do not worry about entering any exercise manually. Set it, forget it and let it do it's job :smile:

    I don't use both my Fitbit and PolarM400 and add activity related calories from both...just to clarify :)

    Normally when my PolarM400 is working properly my exercise and daily activity caloric input looks like this.

    5jemhi0r7wod.png

  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited May 2016
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    VintageFeline wrote: »
    500 calories for 10'000 steps? That seems awfully high. I did a lot of walking on holiday the past two weeks, I'm 172lbs or there abouts currently and got 400 calories for 20'000 step days. An instense cardio workout for about an hour would give me tops 500 calories (I also wear an HRM, Vivoactive and GymTimer app). I think you are quite possibly eating too much to lose.

    That said, it's only two weeks and you could well just be retaining water.

    This is what I think too. That's what I get at 5'6 and 230 lb, so something seems wrong. Are you doing incline on a treadmill by any chance? Because it sure doesn't seem like you are doing hills since your floors aren't that high. You may need to fiddle with your stride length. 4 miles looks like a lot for not even 8000 steps.

    Edit: also, are you sure you have your gender set correctly on fitbit? When someone got accesses to my account a few months ago I was getting insanely inflated burns because it was switched to male.
  • Myjourney2345
    Myjourney2345 Posts: 116 Member
    edited May 2016
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    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    VintageFeline wrote: »
    500 calories for 10'000 steps? That seems awfully high. I did a lot of walking on holiday the past two weeks, I'm 172lbs or there abouts currently and got 400 calories for 20'000 step days. An instense cardio workout for about an hour would give me tops 500 calories (I also wear an HRM, Vivoactive and GymTimer app). I think you are quite possibly eating too much to lose.

    That said, it's only two weeks and you could well just be retaining water.

    This is what I think too. That's what I get at 5'6 and 230 lb, so something seems wrong. Are you doing incline on a treadmill by any chance? Because it sure doesn't seem like you are doing hills since your floors aren't that high. You may need to fiddle with your stride length. 4 miles looks like a lot for not even 8000 steps.

    Edit: also, are you sure you have your gender set correctly on fitbit? When someone got accesses to my account a few months ago I was getting insanely inflated burns because it was switched to male.

    I double checked my profile settings and my gender, weight and height are correctly setup. Yesterday I walked around 12,000 steps and according to Fitbit I burned 2,259 calories for the whole day without exercise...still seems high though.

    pppap9stq9w7.jpeg

  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Myjourney2345 wrote: »
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    VintageFeline wrote: »
    500 calories for 10'000 steps? That seems awfully high. I did a lot of walking on holiday the past two weeks, I'm 172lbs or there abouts currently and got 400 calories for 20'000 step days. An instense cardio workout for about an hour would give me tops 500 calories (I also wear an HRM, Vivoactive and GymTimer app). I think you are quite possibly eating too much to lose.

    That said, it's only two weeks and you could well just be retaining water.

    This is what I think too. That's what I get at 5'6 and 230 lb, so something seems wrong. Are you doing incline on a treadmill by any chance? Because it sure doesn't seem like you are doing hills since your floors aren't that high. You may need to fiddle with your stride length. 4 miles looks like a lot for not even 8000 steps.

    Edit: also, are you sure you have your gender set correctly on fitbit? When someone got accesses to my account a few months ago I was getting insanely inflated burns because it was switched to male.

    I double checked my profile settings and my gender, weight and height are correctly setup. Yesterday I walked around 12,000 steps and according to Fitbit I burned 2,259 calories for the whole day without exercise...still seems high though.
    pppap9stq9w7.jpeg

    This sounds a bit more reasonable. It appears your heart rate monitoring is pushing your calories way too much. You might have an atypical heart rate with a greater variance than usual. Here is what I would do:

    1. Decrease your stride length (if that's an available feature for charge)
    2. Eat back only 50% of the calories on exercise days and 75% on non-exercise days
    3. Patience


    Edit: one of my days for comparison, I'm nearly 2 inches taller and more than 80 lb heavier than you

    sgsfqjd9gflm.png
  • firef1y72
    firef1y72 Posts: 1,579 Member
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    I'm a shortie at 5'1" and 212lb but these are my stats from yesterday which gave me 1251 calories on top of the 1480 MFP gives me for 1lb/week at sedentary. There is some actual exercise in there, but only around 300 calories and I never log exercise in MFP, I just go by the Fitbit calculations and am losing in line with what Fitbit says I should.
    ii0wp87657e3.png
  • ShrinkinMel
    ShrinkinMel Posts: 982 Member
    edited May 2016
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    Why would you add the 1200 basal it's already ingrained in mfp's calculations. Stop adding anything other than your actual intential workout. Eat what mfp gives for target and the workout calories if you are hungry enough.

    Steps from everyday life regardless, of what you did "before" are on your basal target of you want to count that pick a bit more lightly active and again only track or sync intentional workouts.
  • firef1y72
    firef1y72 Posts: 1,579 Member
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    ShrinkinMel wrote: »
    Why would you add the 1200 basal it's already ingrained in mfp's calculations. Stop adding anything other than your actual intential workout. Eat what mfp gives for target and the workout calories if you are hungry enough.

    Steps from everyday life regardless, of what you did "before" are on your basal target of you want to count that pick a bit more lightly active and again only track or sync intentional workouts.

    Sorry not sure who you're talking too, but this is how most people seem to use Fitbits.

    1: Set activity level on MFP as sedentary
    2: Link Fitbit
    3: Allow negative adjustments
    4: Use the new Fitbit adjusted calorie allowance

    Doing this means that I generally start the day at around -80 calories and then as my step count and activity level goes up I start getting calories added instead of subtracted. I generally get at least 20000 steps in and a credit of around 1000 Calories daily. Yes I could change my activity level on MFP but then there are occasional days when I get fewer steps in and the MFP/Fitbit combo adjusts my calorie allowance for this, just as it does on the days I get 40000+ steps.

    By doing this I've lost 77.5lb over the last 202 days, which works out at around 2.5lb/week which is almost exactly in line with Fitbit's projections. If I didn't use the Fitbit adjustments for calories (I mostly don't eat them all, but do occasionally) I would be seriously under-eating on my more active days and over-eating on my less active. I personally find the Fitbit adjustments far more accurate than MFP numbers for walking etc and it doesn't matter whether the 20000 steps are in short bursts or all at once it still requires energy to move my fat @rse around.

    Look on the Fitbit numbers being a fluid and ever changing active level rather than your set in stone sedentary, lightly active, very active that MFP gives you to choose from.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    Here's mine for comparison. Admittedly I'm struggling to trust these numbers..
    yfu27wz9ibuo.png
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    aa8o1t0rxwr4.png
  • Myjourney2345
    Myjourney2345 Posts: 116 Member
    edited May 2016
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    ShrinkinMel wrote: »
    Why would you add the 1200 basal it's already ingrained in mfp's calculations. Stop adding anything other than your actual intential workout. Eat what mfp gives for target and the workout calories if you are hungry enough.

    Steps from everyday life regardless, of what you did "before" are on your basal target of you want to count that pick a bit more lightly active and again only track or sync intentional workouts.

    I am only adding calories from exercise...I am not adding 1,210 calories....
    My base calorie consumption from MFP is 1,210 (my profile is set on sedentary and I am expected to lose one pound) +350 calories on an average from exercise....I am not factoring any additional activity into that equation and I decided to reduce my calories to 1,500-1,600 calories a day and see what happens.

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