Not loosing weight fast enough.

mtlprs

Im 42 yo, 5'11", 263 lbs. I eat between 1200-1600 calories a day, no junk. I cycle 4-5 times a week ( min 25 kms/ 1hour)heart monitor says I'm burning about 1000 cals per ride. My weight loss is slow as a turtle!!! Sometimes only 0.5lbsa week/ 10 days. Any ideas why???

nighthawk584

hi, do you own a food scale and weigh everything?

LyndaBSS

That's quite a range of calories. What did mfp set for you?

Ditto on are you weighing everything you're consuming?

panda4153

Hello, I know it can be very frustrating not losing a the pace you want or expect. Here are a couple of the things that came to mind for me. Weight loss is all about calories in vs calories out. Are you using the MFP NEAT method, in which you add exercise calories back, or do you use TDEE and calculate you deficit based on that? Both work, I was just curious on this.

First, how are you measuring your calorie intake? Are you using a kitchen scale? If not that is the first step I could encourage you to take. If you are, I would scrutinize the database entries you are selecting s MFP is a great tool, but it is user based, sonif people put in wrong info, you could be inadvertently eating more then you realize.

The other piece could be your calorie out calculation. Pretty much everything we use for this is an estimate at the end of the day. So while your HRM is probably more accurate then other methods it still could be overestimating the amount of calories you are burning. You could try reducing that amount by a small amount say 50-100 calories a day, which means eating 50-100 calories less a day each week until you are losing at the pace you are aiming for.

Lastly what is the pace you are hoping to lose? 0.5lb a week is still a loss and will add up overtime. Think about what will be sustainable for you over time. Sometimes losing slower is best. My goal is 0.5lb a week because it gives me more flexibility with my diet for all those real life things that come up like dinner out, drinks with friends, birthdays, holidays and the occasional office potluck or treats.

Good luck! Keep going, you are making progress even if it’s slow!!

lalalacroix

How many weeks have you been working out and are you eating back all of your exercise calories? I don't know much about cycling burn but 1,000 calories/hour sounds high to me

Don't know if you're male or female but 1,200 calories is very low for your height. I'm much shorter and easily lose at 1,600 calories.

kshama2001

There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

mtlprs

nighthawk584 wrote: »

hi, do you own a food scale and weigh everything?

I usualy weigh my meat. Never my veggies, and for the rest i use mesuring cups. The pre package stuff is easy. I dont eat any junk food at all.My nutritionist gave me 1750 cals, but i put it down to 1600, somedays i hit 1600, but most days im between 1200-1500. I know the heart rate monitor is an aproximate guess, thats why i always shave off about 30% of what it says.

LyndaBSS

You might want to weigh your veggies. They add up quickly.

sijomial

Try using Strava instead of your HRM for cycling calorie estimates - 1,000 calories in an hour takes an exceptional level of fitness. And if you had that level of fitness you would be rather faster than that.

On the input side weigh everything (at least for a period of time). Don't use measuring cups as they measure volume not weight and the calories are in relation to weight.

JBanx256

Given that wearable fitness trackers etc have been proven to be "off" by a substantial amount (and the higher your heart rate is, the less accurate they become). I can't find the article offhand but, going from memory, it seems like even the "better" (more expensive, etc) models were off by as much as 40%. Once again, don't quote me on that, but regardless, take any "calorie burn" estimate with a (LARGE) grain of salt. Like...rock salt.

You're not weighing ALL your foods - you need to weigh, as accurately as humanly possible, every. single. thing. that passes your lips. There are a plethora of studies showing how people underreport their food intake:
In this one, registered dietitians even underreported by >200 cal per day
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12396160
In another, individuals underreported their intake by up to 2k cals per day! - and that was after being instructed on proper weighing/measuring procedures etc
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7594141

apullum

mtlprs wrote: »

nighthawk584 wrote: »

hi, do you own a food scale and weigh everything?

I usualy weigh my meat. Never my veggies, and for the rest i use mesuring cups. The pre package stuff is easy. I dont eat any junk food at all.My nutritionist gave me 1750 cals, but i put it down to 1600, somedays i hit 1600, but most days im between 1200-1500. I know the heart rate monitor is an aproximate guess, thats why i always shave off about 30% of what it says.

Weigh ALL your food. Forget you own any measuring cups.

Put your stats into MFP and consistently eat the number of calories it gives you, OR consistently follow the plan your nutritionist gave you. Pick a reasonable calorie goal and stick with it.

corinasue1143

Your nutritionist said 1750 calories a day, but you know 1200 to 1500 is better. You use a heart monitor, but you know better than to use the data it gives you. Since you have a scale and usually weigh your meat, you must have been told to use a food scale, but you don’t weigh your vegetables, cause you know better.

??????

GaleHawkins

mtlprs wrote: »

Im 42 yo, 5'11", 263 lbs. I eat between 1200-1600 calories a day, no junk. I cycle 4-5 times a week ( min 25 kms/ 1hour)heart monitor says I'm burning about 1000 cals per ride. My weight loss is slow as a turtle!!! Sometimes only 0.5lbsa week/ 10 days. Any ideas why???

In my case I did not lose the first pound until day 45. I went on to lose 50 pounds over the first year. I have maintained that 50 pound loss for over 4 years now. It all varies from person to person and macro choices it seems from reading about other cases over the past 5 years on MFP.

cmriverside

Yeah, I'm with @corinasue1143 - quit trying to game the system, it won't work.

Use a food scale, use the 1750 (not sure if that includes exercise or not - so get clarification from your nutrition consultant.)


Then stick to it for two months, logging everything you eat every day.

AnnPT77

mtlprs wrote: »

nighthawk584 wrote: »

hi, do you own a food scale and weigh everything?

I usualy weigh my meat. Never my veggies, and for the rest i use mesuring cups. The pre package stuff is easy. I dont eat any junk food at all.My nutritionist gave me 1750 cals, but i put it down to 1600, somedays i hit 1600, but most days im between 1200-1500. I know the heart rate monitor is an aproximate guess, thats why i always shave off about 30% of what it says.

Weigh it all. It will be more accurate than cups/spoons . . . and quicker/easier, if you learn how to do it efficiently.

And you can learn that in this thread (despite the joke-y clickbait-y title):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10498882/weighing-food-takes-too-long-and-is-obsessive#latest

Is the cycling relatively new (as in not been doing it for months)? How's your fitness level? Depending on your specific fitness tracker/heart rate monitor, it may be even more likely to overestimate exercise calories if you're relatively unfit**, and doubly so if you happen to be a person whose heart rate differs significantly from the age-estimated maximums (it's common for those formulas to be quite inaccurate, and they're built into most devices unless you over-ride the HRmax value with a personal, tested rate). If the device is a generic one (doesn't know which specific exercise you're doing), it may also overestimate because cycling is in my understanding less influenced by bodyweight than some other exercises (such as walking/running), and most devices have you input your bodyweight as part of the setup (this likelihood of overestimation would be even more true if some of your cycling is indoor/stationary bike, with a device that doesn't know what exercise you're doing).

** That's not intended as any kind of diss: You're working on your fitness, which is great; and we all start somewhere. Go, you!

texasredreb

Weight every single solid food that you put into your mouth! Measure or weight every single liquid. If you take supplements and/or medications weight the log them too. I found out that many supplements, medications, vitamins, etc have calories.

It is very likely--almost guaranteed-- that you are eating WAY more calories than you believe you are eating. Tighten things up, and stick with it.

craigfisher1062

You could have other contributing factors. There is insulin resistance, high ferretin levels, thyroid issues, carbohydrate intolerance - weight loss would be difficult with any of these factors and theres lots more. Calories in and out model is not real (only a guide) - its heavily influenced by metabolic changes. The body is constantly changing the metabolic systems dependent on the food it is getting and the environment it is in. If it is starving it shuts down, if it is fed over 150g carbs it goes into storage mode, if there is high levels of glucose or iron in the blood the metabolic pathways get compromised. If your not losing weight you need to get some tests done with a knowlgeable doctor.

AnnPT77

craigfisher1062 wrote: »

You could have other contributing factors. There is insulin resistance, high ferretin levels, thyroid issues, carbohydrate intolerance - weight loss would be difficult with any of these factors and theres lots more. Calories in and out model is not real (only a guide) - its heavily influenced by metabolic changes. The body is constantly changing the metabolic systems dependent on the food it is getting and the environment it is in. If it is starving it shuts down, if it is fed over 150g carbs it goes into storage mode, if there is high levels of glucose or iron in the blood the metabolic pathways get compromised. If your not losing weight you need to get some tests done with a knowlgeable doctor.

This is mostly false.

If starving bodies shut down (short of death), no one would ever starve to death. Sadly, many people do so daily, worldwide. Somehow, this mysterious "eating so little one can't lose weight" only happens to fortunate first-world overweight people?

Many of us lose weight fine eating 150g of more of carbs. (I'm a 5'5" li'l ol' lady, and I lost weight eating around 150g carbs every day, maintain eating 200g+. Heck, I went over the MFP default sugar goal every single day, and lost weight anyway . . . quite rapidly for a while there, in fact.)

Calories are the major determinant of body weight; while other factors (TEF, energy level, etc.) have an effect, they are quite minor, especially in the short run.

It's true that nutritional deficiencies can interfere with energy level or health, and that some people are insulin resistant or diabetic.

JBanx256

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I'm a 5'5" li'l ol' lady, and I lost weight eating around 150g carbs every day, maintain eating 200g+.

100% agree with @AnnPT77 here. She is wise. Others...not so much.

My maintenance is > 200g carbs per day and once in awhile I'll run it up to 300g in a day...yet golly gosh gee whiz, the very definition of "maintenance" says I'm not gaining weight, yano?

And yeah, let's not even get started on "starvation mode." guess nobody bothered to tell POW's or the Jews in concentration camps or the fellas in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment about that cool pseudo-science tidbit, huh?