plateau success help?

quiksylver296

drockncrisso wrote: »

I don’t see how logging more carefully will help.
No one seems to have heard-
I was losing weight.
Regardless of how off I was- I tried eating MORE and working out MORE and didn’t lose with OR gain.
How could I have added what I thought was 300 cals a day for TWO weeks and not seen any change on the scale- I didn’t even gain weight.
Then- because nothing was changing- I ate MUCH less than I’d been eating before the addition of 300 cals skipping meals etc but kept working out the same for two weeks
Still no change.
How can I eat 300 or more MORE cals and not change weight- and then eat much much less and still not change?
Regardless of what the calories are- if you eat a lot more- the scale should change.
If you eat a lot less it should change. Right???

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10697068/how-i-stopped-kidding-myself/p1

drockncrisso

I took what a lot of people said to heart and pulled out our digital scale - the fancy one that I can zero out. Because I figured-
Everyone says it’s impossible to eat 1200 and exercise and not lose. So I decided to find where I’m going wrong.
I think I’m creating at LEAST a 250 cal deficit by eating 1200 (since my bmr is 1450) and I work out 3 days a week- burning on average 1600 workout cals a week. Total- 3,350 weekly deficit. But if I’m not losing and I AM working out that much, I must be accidentally eating not only the extra 250 per day, but an additional 230 to undo my exercise. So an extra 500 a day that I’m not aware of.
So let’s weigh and measure everything and see where I’m off.
I put out the food I normall eat, last night, to do a test weigh.
I weighed 10 of my protein bars. All of them were 59 or 60 grams. The package says 59g and I’ve been logging 1+1/8 bar since I assumed they were wrong - I’m over logging my bar by 25 cals.
I weighed piles of 10 cashews and 10 almonds and all the piles were within 1-2 grams of the correct weight for 1/2 serving (since the serving size is “about 20” almonds - or cashews depending on the pack) - so when I’m logging 80 cals for my cashews it could actually be 85.7 cals
I weighed my dry organic oatmeal packs - these things must be packed by machines because they’re all accurate to +/- 2-3 grams error. But when you’re taking about an 150 calorie packet of oatmeal that is 40g - then if it’s 43g that makes it 11 calories more than the package said. The milk I add is measured in a cup, so I can imagine how that can be over.
So far I’m over estimating my breakfast bar by 25 cals, under estimating my snack nuts by approx 5.7 and lunch oatmeal by maybe 11 cals.
My other lunch is salad - I mean ( I’ll be honest, I don’t weigh or measure my spinach and lettuce, it’s 7-15 cals for an entire cup, so I always just log 30 cals for the bowl of greens) with cheese and nuts. Again, the nut serving that I tested is not off more than 1g (7 cals) and so I weighed all the cheese slices in groups of 2 to see if I was off. Again, they’re almost all correct except occasionally being 1g lighter or heavier. Not enough to account for 500 incorrect calories.
The two practically balance each other out.
My measurements on the rice and fish stuff hasn’t changed because it’s a plastic set you use to press the rice into.
I can weigh the 1c of rice in the future, but so far I’m not finding where my huge weight loss defeating miscalculation is.
Maybe I’m accidentally eating 500 extra cals of rice??
I’m gonna keep weighing stuff to figure out where I am off, but so far I’m not finding any glaring errors.
The biggest miscalculation is my overestimate on my breakfast bar that I assume is 295 cals when it’s actually genuinely 59 grams which says 270 cals.
If all of my snacks are off 5-7 cals that still only accounts for about 25 calories extra tops.
Like I said, I’ll keep hunting, I didn’t have time last night to think of what else I could be off on.
And for things I can’t measure I just double it. Like my toddler likes to feed me goldfish crackers. I count them when he does and if he feeds me 3, I log 6. I could go test the cracker weight and see if they’re ever double the weight in grams, but I doubt it, so I’m pretty sure I’m safe to over calculate by doubling the number when I can’t weigh them.
Tonight I’ll be weighing Girl Scout cookies. We will see if they’re uniform or not.
And I know I’m not over eating them. I literally get a pretty little plate for my one cookie and go sit and eat it with a cup of tea. I gotta figure out how much milk 1/3 cup should weigh. Maybe my cups are off?
I drink tea with milk two or three times a day and it’s always 1/3 cup measured- but maybe I should weigh it. Yes, I do drink a ton of water, too, not just tea.

ceiswyn

It’s not just about weighing, though; it’s about using good DB entries. There have been posters who’ve plateaued because although they were weighing everything, they were using a cooked rice entry for dry rice without realising.

If you open your diary, people can spot issues like that. If you don’t, nobody can really help.

idabest777

If all the food that you prepare yourself is as many calories you expected then it must be all the meals you eat out. You've said that you often eat out with coworkers and family, but you've also said that you only go out for lunch once a week so I'm not sure which one it is.

With a small deficit (if it's 250/day) it can very easily be wiped out by eating out once or twice a week. Anytime I eat out at a restaurant it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll be eating around maintenance or over for that day, unless I do like a 10km run or something. When I'm focusing on weight loss I limit going out as much as I can, only once/week for lunch and maybe once on the weekend, but I try to avoid it unless I know about it in advance so I can prepare for it, either with a big cardio session before or eating 100cals less on the days leading up to it.

You said you don't want to miss out on dinners and visiting people, but maybe you can limit it a bit while you focus on losing and then reintroduce them when you want to do maintenance again. Don't eliminate it all together if it's something you enjoy doing but maybe try reducing that for a couple weeks and see if that moves the scale at all.

daniwilford

Maxxitt wrote: »

OP, see if something in this podcast is useful to your situation. https://www.irakinutrition.com/podcast-with-lyle-mcdonald/

^^^
This was very informative, more protein, more diet breaks, more heavy lifting, less aerobic exercise.

musicfan68

One thing I do since I have such a small margin of calorie deficit and I like to eat out once a week - I don't eat anything until we go out that night. my calories with my 250 deficit is 1350. I know when I eat out, it's at least 1400 -1500 calories - I either eat a burger and fries with ketchup, or broasted chicken with potato and butter/sour cream. This wipes out, and then some, the deficit, and puts me over maintenance.