Calorie defecit not losing weight
rdruken
Posts: 16 Member
Hello! So I lost 17 pounds last winter and though I haven’t stopped trying I haven’t been able to get any further. I am still 20 pounds from my BMI but can NOT get my weight to budge. I’ve tried 5 months of weight watchers, lost 3 pounds the first month then gained them back on a week cruise. Since then I still can’t get it. I’ve attached a picture of my spreadsheet that I have used to crack down a little more this past month, I measure everything so eat.any muscle gain from the he gym shouldn’t be enough to counteract all losses. Any advice? 20 year old female. Any tips help!
The first week was looking good but I think that was mostly water weight with no change these last 2 weeks.
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Replies
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How are you calculating/creating a deficit?
How are you measuring what you're eating?
The most likely case is that you're overestimating calorie burn and underestimating eating.
Usually by accepting inaccurate burn information and by "measuring" instead of weighing.12 -
Open your diary. We may be able to help you troubleshoot your logging.0
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Yeah I'd say you are probably under-estimating your true caloric intake and in the initial months you lost but you are now eating at maintenance and don't realize it.
Here's the thing: if you are not losing and not gaining, then by definition, you are eating at maintenance. So if your logging tells you that you are eating at a 500 calorie/day deficit but you are not losing, then your logging is off. Sorry, no other way to interpret it.
Go back and review your logging. Measure and weigh EVERYTHING! If it goes in your mouth and you haven't weighed or measured it then you really have zero idea what your true "calories in" figures are.16 -
Hi all, I use a food scale to weigh everything and my burn is measured by my apple watch. I include all oils used to cook meats and use measuring spoons for everything like jam to mayo on my sandwiches. Most days my defecit is well over 500 calories so even if somehow i was off by like 300 calories I should still be losing something. I go to the gym for an hour most days and my calorie goal is 1300 calories so I really can't go any lower. How can I open my diary to you?4
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made my diary public0
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Hi all, I use a food scale to weigh everything and my burn is measured by my apple watch. I include all oils used to cook meats and use measuring spoons for everything like jam to mayo on my sandwiches. Most days my defecit is well over 500 calories so even if somehow i was off by like 300 calories I should still be losing something. I go to the gym for an hour most days and my calorie goal is 1300 calories so I really can't go any lower. How can I open my diary to you?
1. You need to be weighing the Mayo and Jam, especially as those sorts of things can add up very quickly. The easy way to weigh stuff like that is to put the jar on your digital gram scale and hit tare, then once you've made your sandwich or other dish/meal, the negative gram reading is how much you used.
2. Without knowing what sorts of activities you're doing, it's impossible to evaluate whether or not the watch is being inaccurate.
So, what sorts of activities are you doing, and what is the watch estimating as your burn.7 -
Hi again! I typically do about 20 min of cardio on the elliptical or running track then basic weight lifting with hand weights and the machines, nothing too extreme. My watch divides burned calories into "resting" and "active", where resting are like BMR calories and any movement gives active calories. My resting calories are typically 1500-1620 and my active calories I aim to get at least 500 per day, some days (like if I went out for supper) I work to increase that to 800 or more active.
To me these resting calories sound accurate (lower than estimates by online calculators) and the active ones are like 400 calories per an hour at the gym which sounds reasonable to me.
In terms of weighing jam and mayo I assumed measuring spoons like teaspoons and tablespoons would be just as accurate leveled out as the packages usually list serving sizes in tablespoons over grams?7 -
I see some things that may be no better than guesses like "Dessert - Lemon Meringue Pie, 0.1125 th of a pie." I agree with @stanmann571 that you want to be weighing your condiments, especially calorie-dense things like mayo. You have a fair amount of generic entries (like "Generic - Stuffing, 0.2 cup") and these are often no better than guesses. Things like "Homemade - Healthy Apple Crisp, 1 slice" were created by other people -- you have no idea what ingredients they used, how big their "slice" was, etc. Things like "Apple crisp - Apple crisp, 0.26666680000000004 slice" -- how are you possibly measuring that (even if the database entry matches the apple crisp you're eating)?
As others have said, there may be an issue with your calories out and how you're estimating it, but I think there is almost certainly an issue with your calories in and how you are estimating them. I think it is likely you are eating more than you think. I think your desserts and your cocktails almost certainly are higher calorie than what you're estimating for them. You have 109 calories for "1 glass" of vodka and cranberry. Just two ounces of vodka alone is about 140 calories, that's not even counting the juice.
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Hi again! I typically do about 20 min of cardio on the elliptical or running track then basic weight lifting with hand weights and the machines, nothing too extreme. My watch divides burned calories into "resting" and "active", where resting are like BMR calories and any movement gives active calories. My resting calories are typically 1500-1620 and my active calories I aim to get at least 500 per day, some days (like if I went out for supper) I work to increase that to 800 or more active.
In terms of weighing jam and mayo I assumed measuring spoons like teaspoons and tablespoons would be just as accurate leveled out as the packages usually list serving sizes in tablespoons over grams?
No, the grams is going to be a much more accurate way to measure.8 -
Hi again! I typically do about 20 min of cardio on the elliptical or running track then basic weight lifting with hand weights and the machines, nothing too extreme. My watch divides burned calories into "resting" and "active", where resting are like BMR calories and any movement gives active calories. My resting calories are typically 1500-1620 and my active calories I aim to get at least 500 per day, some days (like if I went out for supper) I work to increase that to 800 or more active.
In terms of weighing jam and mayo I assumed measuring spoons like teaspoons and tablespoons would be just as accurate leveled out as the packages usually list serving sizes in tablespoons over grams?
Compare and see. You will probably be surprised.
20 minutes of running/elliptical and some light calisthenics isn't going to get you anywhere near the 800-1000 calorie burns you're recording.12 -
I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly37
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I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly
If you look at OP's diary, there is a lot more going on than just the jam and mayo. Typically in cases of logging errors it is never any one particular food -- it's a whole bunch of smaller errors, made consistently, that result in someone eating more than they think.
To suggest someone look into hormonal issues when they are using measuring spoons for their food and still using a bunch of generic/homemade entries is way premature.
I virtually guarantee OP doesn't have an anomaly, she's likely just like a lot of us were when we started -- terrible at estimating food intake and unsure how to log some items. It's really common, I went through the exact same thing myself. Combine that with over-estimating calories burnt through exercise and it will be very difficult to get the results you think you should.24 -
well on the average day my active calories is about 550, but that includes about 400 cal at the gym and I have to walk a fair ways into school so I think a hundred other calories above my BMR is pretty reasonable for the watch to calculate8
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well on the average day my active calories is about 550, but that includes about 400 cal at the gym and I have to walk a fair ways into school so I think a hundred other calories above my BMR is pretty reasonable for the watch to calculate
400 calories for 20 minutes of cardio seems pretty high.17 -
janejellyroll wrote: »well on the average day my active calories is about 550, but that includes about 400 cal at the gym and I have to walk a fair ways into school so I think a hundred other calories above my BMR is pretty reasonable for the watch to calculate
400 calories for 20 minutes of cardio seems pretty high.
I'm 230 lbs and male and I don't get to 400 calories until I get past 30 minutes of running.
50% or better overestimation of burn and 25% underestimation of calories and bingo! Maintenance.7 -
I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly
in what world would a "medical anomaly" be more likely than janejellyroll's advice above??15 -
its not just 20 minutes of cardio at the gym, I typically start with that but I am there for an hour lifting weights and doing sets of jumping jacks to keep my heart rate high, like I run a lap here and there before I go do another set. Weight lifting does burn calories too, so the entire hour at the gym is about 400 average not the cardio alone. Sorry if that wasn't clear6
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Muscleflex79 wrote: »I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly
in what world would a "medical anomaly" be more likely than janejellyroll's advice above??
It's a very common issue, well at least in my country I see people everywhere with similar problems, they usually don't know it until they struggle with diets. It was just a guess, you never know...27 -
its not just 20 minutes of cardio at the gym, I typically start with that but I am there for an hour lifting weights and doing sets of jumping jacks to keep my heart rate high, like I run a lap here and there before I go do another set. Weight lifting does burn calories too, so the entire hour at the gym is about 400 average not the cardio alone. Sorry if that wasn't clear
The running is maybe 150 calories and the light calisthenics is probably another 75 or so at best.
It's a lot closer to 200 than 400.11 -
its not just 20 minutes of cardio at the gym, I typically start with that but I am there for an hour lifting weights and doing sets of jumping jacks to keep my heart rate high, like I run a lap here and there before I go do another set. Weight lifting does burn calories too, so the entire hour at the gym is about 400 average not the cardio alone. Sorry if that wasn't clear
Weight lifting does burn calories, but it doesn't burn as much as you think.10 -
Muscleflex79 wrote: »I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly
in what world would a "medical anomaly" be more likely than janejellyroll's advice above??
It's a very common issue, well at least in my country I see people everywhere with similar problems, they usually don't know it until they struggle with diets. It was just a guess, you never know...
It's actually not a very common issue. If you find it hard to see how routine logging errors could keep someone from success in their weight loss, I don't know if as many people around you have medical anomalies as you think. How do you know that they too aren't just routinely underestimating their intake (which is a very, very common issue among humans)?23 -
The advice from janejellyroll is helpful. See with things like the vodka cran night I was on a pubcrawl with my class and It literally consisted of me sharing that vodka cran with a friend as we ran to the next bar, that kind of night isnt common it was more of a one time thing. The vodka cran was mostly ice, 1.5 ounces of vodka and then some cranberry juice so when i only had the rest after my friend couldn't finish it I figured 104 calories should be a fair over estimation of my share to air on the safe side.
with things like easter pie and apple crisp made at a friends house I can't exactly get an ingredient list where I didn't make it so my weird decimal numbers are how I attempt to estimate the things I have no way to measure. Is there a better way to approach items like this that don't have restaurant calories available or anything? after over a year of tracking i figured my best guess at those Items would be within reason based on similar ones I've had before1 -
janejellyroll wrote: »I see some things that may be no better than guesses like "Dessert - Lemon Meringue Pie, 0.1125 th of a pie." I agree with @stanmann571 that you want to be weighing your condiments, especially calorie-dense things like mayo. You have a fair amount of generic entries (like "Generic - Stuffing, 0.2 cup") and these are often no better than guesses. Things like "Homemade - Healthy Apple Crisp, 1 slice" were created by other people -- you have no idea what ingredients they used, how big their "slice" was, etc. Things like "Apple crisp - Apple crisp, 0.26666680000000004 slice" -- how are you possibly measuring that (even if the database entry matches the apple crisp you're eating)?
Don't know that this is the case with the OP, but just want to point out that entries like that are sometimes the result of weighing your portion but only having a "serving size" entry available. My homemade entries often say 1.2 servings, or something like that, but it's based on the designated gram weight per serving.9 -
janejellyroll wrote: »Muscleflex79 wrote: »I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly
in what world would a "medical anomaly" be more likely than janejellyroll's advice above??
It's a very common issue, well at least in my country I see people everywhere with similar problems, they usually don't know it until they struggle with diets. It was just a guess, you never know...
It's actually not a very common issue. If you find it hard to see how routine logging errors could keep someone from success in their weight loss, I don't know if as many people around you have medical anomalies as you think. How do you know that they too aren't just routinely underestimating their intake (which is a very, very common issue among humans)?
Yeah well they go to an endocrinologist or a gastroenterologist... I never said that mismeasuring would be less common... I'm a biologist, I see how there are so many people who don't know anything about their medical condition until they see a doctor. I don't know why you should fight for your truth this way. You might be right, might not. What you say is the easiest solution, but that may not be the reality.24 -
stanmann571 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »well on the average day my active calories is about 550, but that includes about 400 cal at the gym and I have to walk a fair ways into school so I think a hundred other calories above my BMR is pretty reasonable for the watch to calculate
400 calories for 20 minutes of cardio seems pretty high.
I'm 230 lbs and male and I don't get to 400 calories until I get past 30 minutes of running.
50% or better overestimation of burn and 25% underestimation of calories and bingo! Maintenance.
Yup. I'm on the petite-er side, but I can't even hit 400 calories unless I'm getting close to a 5-mile run. It's definitely not happening in 20 minutes.
And weight training certainly wouldn't burn *that* many to make up the difference between the cardio and the total. Especially not just with hand weights and machines.2 -
janejellyroll wrote: »Muscleflex79 wrote: »I don't think that the jam or the mayo can add up to 500 cals per day, you have to eat a lot more of them... Maybe you have some hormonal issues? Your BMR might be lower due to medical anomaly
in what world would a "medical anomaly" be more likely than janejellyroll's advice above??
It's a very common issue, well at least in my country I see people everywhere with similar problems, they usually don't know it until they struggle with diets. It was just a guess, you never know...
It's actually not a very common issue. If you find it hard to see how routine logging errors could keep someone from success in their weight loss, I don't know if as many people around you have medical anomalies as you think. How do you know that they too aren't just routinely underestimating their intake (which is a very, very common issue among humans)?
Logging is the key.
I'm a super lax logger. I'm also settling on a relatively high maintenance weight. When I start to gain/stall, I tighten my logging back up and easy peasy I'm losing again. Just by tightening my logging up and weighing everything I can lose 2 lbs per week. If I estimate and loosen up, I can go into maintenance or slow my loss to 1 lb per week.
As a 230 lb active to very active, above average strength, fitness, and conditioning man, I can accept those compromises.
If you're less active, less strong or less fit you won't be able to. For that matter if you're 30-50 lbs smaller than me you won't be able to. I run 2-3 miles 2-3 days a week, in conjunction with strength training and another 3-4 miles 3 days a week of walking. Some weeks as much as 8 or 10 total miles in a session with 3-5 of that being intermittent running. 5.5 miles last night netted me about 700 calories.8 -
The advice from janejellyroll is helpful. See with things like the vodka cran night I was on a pubcrawl with my class and It literally consisted of me sharing that vodka cran with a friend as we ran to the next bar, that kind of night isnt common it was more of a one time thing. The vodka cran was mostly ice, 1.5 ounces of vodka and then some cranberry juice so when i only had the rest after my friend couldn't finish it I figured 104 calories should be a fair over estimation of my share to air on the safe side.
with things like easter pie and apple crisp made at a friends house I can't exactly get an ingredient list where I didn't make it so my weird decimal numbers are how I attempt to estimate the things I have no way to measure. Is there a better way to approach items like this that don't have restaurant calories available or anything? after over a year of tracking i figured my best guess at those Items would be within reason based on similar ones I've had before
We're all going to sometimes finish someone's drink or eat something out that we have to estimate. But it looks like you're doing that fairly frequently (at least over the past couple of weeks). When you're estimating a lot, you may see the results in your weight loss.
You don't have to stop doing these things *forever*, but while you're trying to figure things out it may be worth committing to a brief period where you get your logging under control, dedicate yourself to weighing everything, and avoid/minimize generic/database entries created by other people.11 -
janejellyroll wrote: »I see some things that may be no better than guesses like "Dessert - Lemon Meringue Pie, 0.1125 th of a pie." I agree with @stanmann571 that you want to be weighing your condiments, especially calorie-dense things like mayo. You have a fair amount of generic entries (like "Generic - Stuffing, 0.2 cup") and these are often no better than guesses. Things like "Homemade - Healthy Apple Crisp, 1 slice" were created by other people -- you have no idea what ingredients they used, how big their "slice" was, etc. Things like "Apple crisp - Apple crisp, 0.26666680000000004 slice" -- how are you possibly measuring that (even if the database entry matches the apple crisp you're eating)?
Don't know that this is the case with the OP, but just want to point out that entries like that are sometimes the result of weighing your portion but only having a "serving size" entry available. My homemade entries often say 1.2 servings, or something like that, but it's based on the designated gram weight per serving.
These are homemade/generic entries created by other users, not by OP.
I get what you're saying you're doing and that's a perfectly accurate way to log.5 -
janejellyroll wrote: »The advice from janejellyroll is helpful. See with things like the vodka cran night I was on a pubcrawl with my class and It literally consisted of me sharing that vodka cran with a friend as we ran to the next bar, that kind of night isnt common it was more of a one time thing. The vodka cran was mostly ice, 1.5 ounces of vodka and then some cranberry juice so when i only had the rest after my friend couldn't finish it I figured 104 calories should be a fair over estimation of my share to air on the safe side.
with things like easter pie and apple crisp made at a friends house I can't exactly get an ingredient list where I didn't make it so my weird decimal numbers are how I attempt to estimate the things I have no way to measure. Is there a better way to approach items like this that don't have restaurant calories available or anything? after over a year of tracking i figured my best guess at those Items would be within reason based on similar ones I've had before
We're all going to sometimes finish someone's drink or eat something out that we have to estimate. But it looks like you're doing that fairly frequently (at least over the past couple of weeks). When you're estimating a lot, you may see the results in your weight loss.
You don't have to stop doing these things *forever*, but while you're trying to figure things out it may be worth committing to a brief period where you get your logging under control, dedicate yourself to weighing everything, and avoid/minimize generic/database entries created by other people.
And, to add to this, if you're going to eat out, and you can't get the recipe, use something like the Aramark or Sodexo entries for the particular item. Those two companies are the largest catering/food service providers in the United States, and even if it's not 100 percent accurate, the odds are really good that it's going to be the closest thing to the real thing that you can get. And it is far better than some generic entry from some other user when you have absolutely no idea of what went in it, or how it was prepared.13
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