Help with the numbers :)

RosieS_1980

Hi,

I posted in another area of the forum but only got a couple of replies so I apologise for the double post but I'm a little concerned about the figures I'm getting and would like a little reassurance and/or guidance.

I am losing weight, somewhat sporadically but all the same still losing!

I've been reading many posts on here about total cals and net cals and what is recommended as being healthy etc.

I'm lucky enough to work for myself so at the moment I'm able to do quite a lot of exercise. I have my Fitbit charge hr 2 synched with this app, I weigh all my food on a digital scale and use measuring spoons for oils etc and I only eat fresh, homemade foods I'm really enjoying all the cooking!

Anyway these are my stats and the approx cal burn figures I'm getting for the activities I do each day. So mfp is giving me 900-1200 cals a day for what I've logged on Fitbit depending on how much I do, and if the dog gets an extra walk! ...

I'm 36, 5.4 and 154 lbs

I know it's hard to get exact figures. My fit bit and chest strap give do give roughly the same readings, the difference is negligible, they're around 30-50 cals different.

400-500 cals burned for a 90 - 120 min walk with my dog everyday (this is more of a hike over fields and up hills / woodland etc, not walking around the neighbourhood)

200 ish burned for half an hour on the elliptical

170 ish for half an hour circuits with weights

Does that sound roughly about right? Like I said, I know it's hard to be 100% just wanted to get some confirmation or otherwise

Also I just found the weekly total and net cals. As you can see I eat over the 1200 cals pretty much everyday and I have been eating back a portion of exercise cals but my net figures look quite low still?

I guess it's the net and total cals I'm struggling to understand. I don't want to do harm by not eating enough but I'm never hungry... and still allowing for 'treats' which for me is spoon on peanut butter on a few oatcakes!

And yesterday looks high because my friend was here and we had a few cocktails! Funnily enough I've not missed drinking at all and feel tired and a bit meh today!

I also appreciate I'm not really asking a straightforward question I'm just a bit confused with it all

Tacklewasher

To me it looks like you are not eating enough. Or at least not enough calories. But what has your weight been doing? It's quite possible your logging is inaccurate if the weight is not coming off.

This thread had some ideas on getting more calories.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10517940/advice-please-not-eating-enough-calories

RosieS_1980

I'm losing weight. And I'm eating roughly 400 more cals a day than mfp has set for me. Just looks like my net calories are low but I'm not sure what they mean really. If I eat more than 1600 ish a day I will gain weight. But I've read it's not good to have the net cals looking too low?

RosieS_1980

I am logging properly too, I have a digital scale and make everything from scratch. When I've created recipes I've weighed out every single thing. I even pour my milk into a measuring jug before I add it to my tea!

lemonychild

Net calories are your daily cals you should aim to eat in your case yours is 1200. That means if you exercise you've burned away at those cals hence you should eat them back. 1200 cals to eat - 300 cals . That means you barely netting 900 cals. Therefore you should eat the 1500 cals and take away the 300 you exercised netting at 1200

RosieS_1980

So when it's saying I have around 800 cals left, even though I've already eaten around 1600 I need to eat the 800? It just seems like an awful lot of food to eat in one day

lemonychild

can u open your diary so i can see whats happening

heybales

rosierover90 wrote: »

So when it's saying I have around 800 cals left, even though I've already eaten around 1600 I need to eat the 800? It just seems like an awful lot of food to eat in one day

It's a life principle many struggle with, evidenced by weight gain mostly.

You eat correctly for the amount of activity you do.
You do more you eat more.
You do less you eat less.

In a diet you eat a reasonable amount less than you burn. But principle still stands.

You are doing a LOT - if you don't want to eat enough - then don't do so much.

Hopefully the math you've pointed out has helped you to see that weight loss isn't from the exercise - it's from eating less than you burn.

If the exercise helps you burn so much, that eating less is still a satisfying amount and you can adhere to it - then great. You likely won't have the problems some have of missing out and frequent binges, or daily missing their goal, or always hungry, or body slowing them down to conserve calories and feeling tired all the time, ect.

You seem to be logging decent calorie burns based on HRM for correct types of workouts.
Your strength training shouldn't be done by HRM though - that's wrong use of formula it uses - log that one from the database - it's much smaller calorie burn but correctly that low.

And get ready for this - if you have little to lose, you should really be attempting to have a slower rate of loss so you don't stress your body out - bad side effect on that.
Which means you'd actually be eating more.

RosieS_1980

My weight training is high intensity circuits using 2-4kg dumbells, plyo circuits and jump training with cardio intervals and also core/ab work so not strictly just weights so I think the 170 burned for a half hour session is a reasonable figure?

I want to lose another 20-30lbs, I'm losing at about 1lb a week but it's not that linear, some weeks there is no loss, others 2lbs or just the 1... as long as it goes down I'm not too bothered

Thanks again for the replies. I will maybe eat more than half the the calories from working out this week and see what difference it makes. Eating more isn't a bad thing!

I eat a lot of Veg with lean mean such as chicken breast or fillet steak, oats for breakfast made with almond milk topped with raspberries... so it can take a lot to get the calories up to 1600 plus! That's when I have a spoon of peanut butter!

PAV8888

Either work out slightly less or eat more. You ARE undereating based on your activity description. You will partially adapt and become efficient and able to do all this for less calories than your trackers think. Is this level of exercise something you can keep doing forever? What happens when you can't?

All your burns sound reasonable except maybe for your strength training on the face of it, but your description sound a heck of a lot more aerobic than strength training.

Is your resting heart rate high? If not, it looks like you're leaving ~500Cal on the table every day and you are effectively aiming for an ~2lb a week loss with ~1000 Cal a day deficits. Which is suitable for a 300lb 6ft male, but not necessarily for you.

If you click on your Fitbit web page, on your picture, you will see a 30day intake vs burn graph. The intake sometimes has importing issues from MFP and I ignore it. The burn is directly from Fitbit and you can see your daily burn and 30 day average.

The truth is that you're going way too fast and should be slowing down and setting yourself up for maintenance.

Ask yourself this: are you in a hurry to get to maintenance so that you can change things and make them less difficult for you?

If that's the case...What happens when you make the changes?

Lastly connect Fitbit.com to trendweight.com and get s better picture of your weight loss trend.

By the looks of it a 1lb deficit would be more appropriate.

Search for calorie dense foods if you're having trouble meeting your nutritional needs based on your activity.

Cheers!

RosieS_1980

PAV8888 wrote: »

Either work out slightly less or eat more. You ARE undereating based on your activity description. You will partially adapt and become efficient and able to do all this for less calories than your trackers think. Is this level of exercise something you can keep doing forever? What happens when you can't?

All your burns sound reasonable except maybe for your strength training on the face of it, but your description sound a heck of a lot more aerobic than strength training.

Is your resting heart rate high? If not, it looks like you're leaving ~500Cal on the table every day and you are effectively aiming for an ~2lb a week loss with ~1000 Cal a day deficits. Which is suitable for a 300lb 6ft male, but not necessarily for you.

If you click on your Fitbit web page, on your picture, you will see a 30day intake vs burn graph. The intake sometimes has importing issues from MFP and I ignore it. The burn is directly from Fitbit and you can see your daily burn and 30 day average.

The truth is that you're going way too fast and should be slowing down and setting yourself up for maintenance.

Ask yourself this: are you in a hurry to get to maintenance so that you can change things and make them less difficult for you?

If that's the case...What happens when you make the changes?

Lastly connect Fitbit.com to trendweight.com and get s better picture of your weight loss trend.

By the looks of it a 1lb deficit would be more appropriate.

Search for calorie dense foods if you're having trouble meeting your nutritional needs based on your activity.

Cheers!

Thanks I didn't know that about Fitbit I will always be able to do this much, I will always have to walk my dog for a couple of hours a day (or she won't sleep!) and I have time to do the extra 60 mins. I work from home, for myself so I get to pick my hours I very much doubt that I will ever be so busy that I can't give myself time each day and working out is something I really enjoy it helps clear my head

My rhr is 64...

Thanks for all your help

heybales

Agree that the resistance training is moving towards cardio, intense, but still cardio - so the HRM estimated calorie burn is just fine.

20-30 lb to healthy weight is still good for 1 lb weekly.
10 lb left is better for 1/2 lb weekly when reached.

Always better to purposely do that then your body force it on you. That usually means daily activity level and workouts aren't where they could be.

If you do start eating more - you will gain water weight, for sure with those workouts. Spread throughout all the muscles you use so intensely.
So measurements shouldn't increase.

But good news, that is an increase of LBM (yep, even stored water with carbs in muscle) - and that will increase your BMR too.
If it increases your activity level just slightly, you'll likely find the rate of loss is the same after some reset time.

caloriemuse

Hi,

I cannot help but read with interest this idea of eat more lose more. What's not to like about that! All fun aside this is serious business as it's people's health we are talking about. I've done some reasonably good searching of the internet, although admittedly anything to do with dieting is a needle in a haystack. I've yet to see/find any solid science on this idea, even a well articulated in-depth theory seems elusive. There seem to be some knowledgeable people here so I'll ask the question; What's the science here, you know metabolically what's going on here, how does one tell if 'that' is what is happening to them? I'm thinking how does this phenomenon get explained, all the way from not feeling hungry enough to eat enough (and yet being over weight!) to how it is that all of a sudden it would appear that a calorie not eaten 'is NOT' a calorie lost. Those and any number of other things are pretty difficult to reconcile.

Thoughts appreciated.

PAV8888

markloessi wrote: »

Hi,
I cannot help but read with interest this idea of eat more lose more. What's not to like about that! All fun aside this is serious business as it's people's health we are talking about. I've done some reasonably good searching of the internet, although admittedly anything to do with dieting is a needle in a haystack. I've yet to see/find any solid science on this idea, even a well articulated in-depth theory seems elusive. There seem to be some knowledgeable people here so I'll ask the question; What's the science here, you know metabolically what's going on here, how does one tell if 'that' is what is happening to them? I'm thinking how does this phenomenon get explained, all the way from not feeling hungry enough to eat enough (and yet being over weight!) to how it is that all of a sudden it would appear that a calorie not eaten 'is NOT' a calorie lost. Those and any number of other things are pretty difficult to reconcile.
Thoughts appreciated.

@heybales has a great deal of knowledge about the Eat More to Lose group and I am sure he can, perhaps explain more of what is happening to SOME people.

My quick take on some of your points goes as follows:

During a very low net calorie diet at some point of time your "I am starving" response goes away as it is counterproductive. You do continue to lose fat stores and you continue to lose lean mass (though at a slower rate than during the first few days of starvation) <-- I used to have references, right now all I am quickly finding is anorexia recovery blog posts that sort of confirm the issue (that after prolonged starvation hunger cues are suppressed).

In terms of what happens when you under-eat and particularly under-eat for your activity?

What happens is called adaptive thermogenesis. Basically your metabolic processes gear you towards preserving energy (you feel like sitting on the couch, your core temperature is a tad lower than average, you don't fidget or jump up full of energy and verve. Your workouts are more listless than they would otherwise be. And/or you have a nap when you come home from your workout because you're quite tired (as opposed to being full of energy and going for a walk to the coffee shop). Watching TV is good; but, going for a walk seems like a chore. All this acts synergistically towards pushing you to a lower that expected number of Calories Out.

Can it be overcome? Probably by lowering calories. however at some point of time people can adapt to a significant degree especially if they've been eating "1200" for years at a time or yo-yo dieted multiple times in the past. So the "lowering" pushes one to extremely low amounts of food, and people sort of have to make a decision.

One option is to go crazy low in terms of what they eat. The other is to try and reset their maintenance to a higher caloric average. And once they do that, then attempt to continue/start weight loss with a normal deficit.

I know of at least one obese, highly exercising, eating almost nothing, MFP user who was not able to lose in spite of exercising and being obese. She was going to the gym for 2+ hours. And coming home and basically passing out for the rest of the day. Eventually ended up in hospital because she passed out while cycling.

She has now managed to eat a considerable amount more than before and has build a significant amount of muscle while slowly recomping. And is now either in the process of, or contemplating, doing additional cardio and a small cut to lose fat. But she is now doing all this from a position of eating >2000Cal a day as opposed to sub 800 where she used to be.

There are several threads that discuss thermogenesis. One that is linked to in the stickies is: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p1

heybales

markloessi wrote: »

Hi,

I cannot help but read with interest this idea of eat more lose more. What's not to like about that! All fun aside this is serious business as it's people's health we are talking about. I've done some reasonably good searching of the internet, although admittedly anything to do with dieting is a needle in a haystack. I've yet to see/find any solid science on this idea, even a well articulated in-depth theory seems elusive. There seem to be some knowledgeable people here so I'll ask the question; What's the science here, you know metabolically what's going on here, how does one tell if 'that' is what is happening to them? I'm thinking how does this phenomenon get explained, all the way from not feeling hungry enough to eat enough (and yet being over weight!) to how it is that all of a sudden it would appear that a calorie not eaten 'is NOT' a calorie lost. Those and any number of other things are pretty difficult to reconcile.

Thoughts appreciated.

Not sure it was said eat more lose _more_.

Sometimes that is what happens. Usually it's just eat more, keep losing.

Read enough posts of people that came out of a diet just because, life, desire to eat more, had enough, whatever.
And energy levels went up - they became more active, workouts got better, repairs during recovery took more energy.

All those are things that increase your TDEE.

One of the first responses to under-eating more than body is happy with is body slowing you down, just daily activity, fidgeting level stuff it's been found.

Go too low - now some basic level functions slow down or stop - effects seen are being colder, hair growth slows or stops (or falls out), nails grow slower or brittle, bad skin.
Many have reported merely increasing calories reversing those things. That's the body spending more energy now - because you ate more. Could some be because of missing nutrients coming back up to decent levels? Sure. And calories is the same thing.

What does that look like in a study?

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/heybales/view/reduced-metabolism-tdee-beyond-expected-from-weight-loss-616251

There are others. I actually found a folder from high school ('86) couple weeks ago with cut out articles from magazines - one of them talking about a study of the exact same effects - but without the concise breakdown or the precise understanding of the why behind it - merely the effect. This is not new stuff.

People have attached a bunch of myths to a named effect that doesn't sound great - and thrown out the baby in the bathwater of the whole thing.

Big mistake.

Latest study is the Biggest Loser group followed during the program and for some time afterward. They still haven't recovered like in the study I reference above. Then again, theirs was an observational study - no one was really trying to help them get out of it - so their own bad training from the program has probably kept them with problems - my theory as to why anyway.