Losing too fast?

HRKinchen

While I'm thrilled to see lower numbers on my scale, I wonder if I'm losing weight too quickly?

Starting weight: 184.8 on 12/26/16
First week update: 179.4 on 1/1/17
Current weight: 177.6 on 1/2/17

Things to consider:
Gender: Female
Height: 5'3"
Goal Weight: 125 (BMI 21-22)
Daily Calorie Goal (MFP): 1,200. I've been staying very close to this.
Exercise: Formerly sedentary; started C25K yesterday.

I just want to make sure I'm doing this safely.

TigerLily100

You loose quite a bit of water weight initially and your digestive system has less food in it, so it's normal and common to see a larger drop in the first couple of weeks.
This will taper off now as your body starts to loose actual fat only, you'll probably loose 1 1/2 to 2lb a week going forwards if you stick to your plan.
You're very similar to myself in start weight and height.

HRKinchen

Thank you, @TigerLily100!

meritage4

Enjoy it. It will slow down. Make sure you eat at least your 1200 calories. No being under!

HRKinchen

@meritage4, I've been under a few times, usually by only a few calories but twice by about 40 calories. Is that a big no-no? Is a few calories over better than 25-40 under?

TigerLily100

HRKinchen wrote: »

@meritage4, I've been under a few times, usually by only a few calories but twice by about 40 calories. Is that a big no-no? Is a few calories over better than 25-40 under?

Balance it through the week. Sometimes I am a little under but the following day I am a little over. Your body doesn't work on a clock. Just try to make sure you are consistently getting 1200kcal a day on average, but I do try to keep it as close as I can to the 1200 a day.

HRKinchen

@TigerLily100, ok cool. That's what I've been aiming to do. Thanks!

middlehaitch

Just a quick reminder to eat back your exercise calories.

MFP is set up with your deficit in your base calories and expects you to eat exercise calories.

That being said, MFP and most calculators are estimates, eat back 50 or 75% consistently for a few weeks then adjust depending on results. If you are losing more increase, less decrease your exercise percentage feed back.

Those calories may not seem important now, but if you can't exercise, change your routine, or any other variable you need some way to adjust your calories to maintain a loss and at 1200 you have no baseline to adjust as you are at the safe minimum base intake.

Be aware that as you lose you will need fewer calories to maintain a lighter weight. Again because you are on 1200 calls, your weight loss will naturally decrease to .5 lbs a week or less once you are within 5-10 lbs of your goal.

Cheers, h.

PS being slightly under or over your calories in a day doesn't matter, look at your weekly intake and try to be 100 cals or so either side.

nishbarkatcollection786

Great

HRKinchen

middlehaitch wrote: »

Just a quick reminder to eat back your exercise calories.

MFP is set up with your deficit in your base calories and expects you to eat exercise calories.

I've been a little nervous about that because MFP and Garmin Connect (for my Vivofit) seem to calculate those exercise calories differently, despite being synced and showing the same number of steps.

Also, I'm not sure I'm logging my C25K accurately. Garmin Connect recognizes the steps I took and calculates a caloric value for them, but when I then add an Activity in GC to represent the workout (the fact that I'm not walking those steps but jogging or running them), am I effectively double-counting?

I also need to figure out how to accurately record speed during the routine because when I left it blank yesterday in Garmin Connect, the activity synced here in MFP with a plugged-in speed of 5mph -- which I most definitely was NOT averaging. Lol. Maybe I should measure the length of my drive and record how many trips I make up and down during the workout to get an average speed for those 30 minutes?

When I was relatively sedentary, these issues were mostly hypothetical, but as I exercise more, I definitely need to know how to calculate my exercise calories accurately.

All help is much appreciated!

middlehaitch

@HRKinchen, glad to see you are working on eating the calories you have burnt.

Unfortunately I am no help whatsoever with any type of step counter as I don't use one.

Hopefully someone will come along and explain the intricacies to you.

Cheers, h.

snickerscharlie

HRKinchen wrote: »

middlehaitch wrote: »

Just a quick reminder to eat back your exercise calories.

MFP is set up with your deficit in your base calories and expects you to eat exercise calories.

I've been a little nervous about that because MFP and Garmin Connect (for my Vivofit) seem to calculate those exercise calories differently, despite being synced and showing the same number of steps.

Also, I'm not sure I'm logging my C25K accurately. Garmin Connect recognizes the steps I took and calculates a caloric value for them, but when I then add an Activity in GC to represent the workout (the fact that I'm not walking those steps but jogging or running them), am I effectively double-counting?

I also need to figure out how to accurately record speed during the routine because when I left it blank yesterday in Garmin Connect, the activity synced here in MFP with a plugged-in speed of 5mph -- which I most definitely was NOT averaging. Lol. Maybe I should measure the length of my drive and record how many trips I make up and down during the workout to get an average speed for those 30 minutes?

When I was relatively sedentary, these issues were mostly hypothetical, but as I exercise more, I definitely need to know how to calculate my exercise calories accurately.

All help is much appreciated!

Most people generally eat back between 50% and 75% of exercise calories earned. This gives you some wiggle room for inaccuracies in either your food logging or your exercise burns. You'll know after about a month whether you need to adjust this up or down depending on your actual weight loss.

Tacklewasher

Not familiar with the Vivofit, but do you turn on an activity before walking/running? I had a Vivosmart HR and if I turned on the activity (say walking) it counted calories both from the activity and from the steps, so effectively double counting them. It's a known software issue with the VSHR. I replaced it with a Vivoactive and the problem doesn't exist.

If you are using the activity (and, again I don't know if the Vivofit has them), then I'd try one day turning it on and one day not turning it on. The net results should be the same (assuming similar activity level) either way. I know with the VSHR, they would be 300-400 different.

HRKinchen

Tacklewasher wrote: »

Not familiar with the Vivofit, but do you turn on an activity before walking/running? I had a Vivosmart HR and if I turned on the activity (say walking) it counted calories both from the activity and from the steps, so effectively double counting them. It's a known software issue with the VSHR. I replaced it with a Vivoactive and the problem doesn't exist.

If you are using the activity (and, again I don't know if the Vivofit has them), then I'd try one day turning it on and one day not turning it on. The net results should be the same (assuming similar activity level) either way. I know with the VSHR, they would be 300-400 different.

Without connecting to a HR monitor - which I don't have - I'm not sure how to automatically log an activity with my Vivofit and/or Garmin Connect. I entered it manually into GC yesterday after the run, without the benefit of knowing how much distance I had covered or my average speed. I just left those blank. Still, the activity got assigned a caloric value of 326, and when GC synced with MFP, my MFP diary entry said it was based on a 5mph average speed. Maybe because I selected "street running" when I entered the activity type in GC? My choices were either that or "speed walking."

My next run is tomorrow morning. I'll turn on location services in the C25K app and see what kind of speed/distance calcs I get. I can plug them into GC manually if need be. I was just hoping there would be a way for the apps to sync and do the entry automatically but can't seem to make the connection between them.

starryphoenix

This is normal for starting. I lost 10 my starting week. It is just water weight.