Struggling to loose weight 😔

Rachie902014

Worked out my calorie deficit and my macros with a TDEE calculator. Train about 5 times a week and try hit my steps of 10000 a day. My cals are at 1600 for past 4 weeks. Haven't lost a 1lb gone up on scales. I do have underactive thyroid any1 have any advice please.

victorialeigh629

Have you been taking measurements or pictures? Sometimes the scale is a liar.

KrissFlavored

Scale goes up all the time.

New workout = water retention for muscle repair
Higher carbs/sodium days = water retention
Time of the month = water retention

Instead of using TDEE why not use NEAT and follow mfp's calorie goal and add your exercise calories seperate? Maybe you are over estimating your tdee and eating too much? Maybe you have logging errors in your food diary? Are you weighing your food on a food scale?

What are your current stats? Age? Weight? Height?

Rachie902014

I will give NEAT a try. I dont do the adding the excersice calories I just go by my set calories every day to be in a calorie deficit. I weigh all my foods on weighing scales also.
I'm 30
176 lbs
5 foot 7
I'm defo doing something wrong I must be 😔

KrissFlavored

TDEE is meant to be your entire day including exercise. If you're not using your exercise, how do you know what your tdee actually is?

When using NEAT is it expected that whatever you log as exercise, you should try to eat atleast 50% of them back in food or more if your workouts bring you below 1200 calories

You say you aim for 10,000 steps a day so maybe set your activity level to active and a reasonable weight loss goal of 1lbs per week. Anything that is exercise is logged separately after that. Eat back those calories and do not dip below 1200.

Remember that if mfp gives you a goal of hypothetically 1800 let's say and you work out and burned 700 calories that's going to put you at 1100 calories and you need to eat at least 350+ of those back to fuel your body and then fuel your workouts... I suggest eating more because you want to have energy for the rest of your day outside of your workouts and just providing your body the energy it needs to keep your organs functioning properly.

Remember that NEAT already has the weight loss deficit built in, you do not need to create it yourself. And then be patient and give it some more time, weight loss isnt linear sometimes and that can be frustrating

AnnPT77

Kriss gives very good advice and support.

I'm going to try to add just a bit more analytic math-y-ness.

If you used a TDEE calculator to work things out, presumably you used settings that included your walking and training, to get an estimated Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), in calories. Presumably you (or the calculator) then subtracted some calories from that number, to get a calorie goal, which you then entered into MFP.

For example (just making up numbers), perhaps the TDEE calculator thinks your average estimated TDEE (including all the exercise) is 2000, and it subtracted 20% (400) to give you a goal of 1600.

That's not the standard way of using MFP, but it should work. The catch is that, in effect, you've averaged your planned activity and exercise into your calorie goal. Doing so is fine, as long as you've evaluated your activity level and exercise accurately, and you actually perform the planned/intended exercise. That should work.

However, it doesn't seem to be working for you, right?

The MFP method, as Kriss said, is different. MFP asks you to set up your profile with an activity level that just includes your daily routine (job, home chores, that sort of thing), but not your intentional exercise. MFP estimates your NEAT (non-exercise activty thermogenesis), which is the estimated number of calories you'd burn daily without doing any exercise. It then takes what you enter as your weight loss rate target (a pound of loss per week, say), and subtracts calories from your NEAT estimate to allow for weight loss. When you exercise, you log the exercise, and eat back a reasonable estimate of those calories at the time the exercise happens (or you can save some for later, but let's keep this simple ). That keeps your "calorie deficit" - the number of calories subtracted to allow for weight loss - at the same number, exercise or no exercise, if the estimates are fairly accurate.

So, maybe MFP would estimate that your NEAT is 1900, and if you said you wanted to lose a pound a week, it would subtract 500 (because a pound of fat is roughly 3500 calories, divide by 7 to get a daily deficit). It would therefore give you a goal of 1400. Then, let's say you do 200 calories of exercise every single day and log it, which would put you at the same 1600 goal.

Basically NEAT + Exercise = TDEE.

Sometimes one method or the other works out better for a particular person. For example, I like the NEAT method, because my exercise is quite variable (and weather dependent, in some seasons), so not very predictable.

Either method should give similar results, though there might be some variation between different sources just because they use different research-based estimating formulas, have different number of possible activity levels, etc.

Unless you're quite petite, I would expect that eating 1600 calories daily, with your exercise/activity, should result in weight loss.

However, you're not seeing the results you expect. Water retention, as Kriss said, could be an explanation. This is a good explanation about that:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

Another possibility is that there's a food logging issue of some sort. This is not a criticism: Logging food accurately is a skill, and it takes a little time and practice to refine that skill. If you'd be willing to temporarily set your food diary to public (within MFP), some of the experienced folks could take a look, and see if anything jumps out as a possible source of variation.

Your underactive thyroid should have very negligible impact (i.e., basically none), if your thyroid condition is properly medicated. (I'm severely hypothyroid, medicated properly, and lost weight pretty much like anyone else does, for example.) If you're under-medicated in some way (it can be complicated!), there is a possibility that you might have to eat slightly fewer calories than a non-hypothyroid person to get the same weight loss result, but that "calorie penalty" should be no more than about 5%. This is an excellent thread about hypothyroidism and weight loss, which I highly recommend (written by a scientist in the field, who is himself hypothyroid, and who lost weight using MFP):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10767046/hypothyroidism-and-weight-management/

Best wishes!

age_is_just_a_number

People often overestimate the calories burned from exercise and the underestimate the calories consumed during the day.
What I find works for me:
1) track every bite — and I mean everything.
2) reduce the daily calorie target — regardless of the calculation you’ve used subtract 200 to 300 calories per day. What this did for me was add a margin for error and weakness. Based on various calculators my daily intake was 1500. When I tracked to 1500 I didn’t lose. When I track to 1200, I lose. When tracking to 1200, if I go over then I’m still under 1500. But when I tack to 1500 then, if I go over I’m at 1800.

Remember, you don’t lose or gain weight in one day. You lose weight from overall caloric deficit on average over a period of weeks and months. It is not a quick fix, it is a lifestyle.

Take care

Rachie902014

I can not thank you all enough for you advice. Would anyone be willing to help me work out the calories I should be eating with my information so I can start today on a positive instead of feeling so disheartened. I am
Height 5 foot 7
176 lbs
30 years old
When it says how active I'm unsure I train for no less than an hour 5 days a week but then the other days I rest enjoy very active. I calculator my calories in the internet then add them into MFT because everytime I enter into here its says 1200. I know that's too little calories for me while I train like I do. I do 40% carbs 35% protein 25% fats at minute also

sijomial

It's picking an agressive rate of weight loss that is forcing you down to the minimum of 1200.
Pick a slower rate of loss and less calories will be taken from your estimated weight maintenance level.

But first decide if you are continue with the TDEE method (same goal every day) or MFP variable goal inline with exercise.

If you do the MFP method you need to completely separate your exercise from your activity setting.
"When it says how active I'm unsure I train for no less than an hour 5 days a week" - on MyFitnessPal it is completely irrelevant to your activity setting how much or how little you do purposeful exercise.

Redordeadhead

As posted on another thread today:

Your activity level in MFP does not include intentional exercise (gym classes or specific workouts), but is based on how active you are in your normal day to day activities. How many steps do you get on non gym days?

You should log specific exercise separately and eat back at least some of the extra calories you get for that.

And as said above, don't pick the highest rate of loss per week unless that's really suitable for your current weight and the amount you have to lose.

bmeadows380

At 176 lbs, you should definitely NOT be picking an aggressive loss rate. The absolutely safe maximum is 1% of your body weight, which would no more than 1.75 lbs/wk, and just because that's the maximum does not at all mean its a good or healthy choice.

By your stats, you are only 16 lbs overweight, so you really should be going for no more than 0.5 lbs/wk (see graph below). Now at that rate, which is only a 250 calorie deficit, your logging has to be spot on as accurate as you can get it because you don't have a lot of room for error. And also note that with that loss rate, water weight and just day to day fluctuations are going to have a huge impact on that scale value. I highly highly suggest reading that physiconomics link that Ann has in her post!

I'd also suggest using a trend app and an anchor day once a month to compare with for actual weight loss - pick 1 day in your cycle and compare that day to the same day in the next month rather than day to day or even week to week. (the article also explains that).




Remember that eating at a deficit is stressful on the body, and the less you have to lose, the more stressful it is and the less stores your body has to pull from.

One thing to remember, too, is how many of those daily 10,000 steps are you getting from your purposeful training? Or rather, how many of those steps are just your day to day lifestyle steps? How many steps do you get in on days where you don't train? That's the value you need to be using to determine what activity level to start with. If over half of those steps are coming from the purposeful exercise, then your regular day to day setting should be sedentary or lightly active; if you are getting 10,000 steps in addition to your purposeful training, then your setting should be lightly active to active.

So are your steps before exercise less than 5,000? your activity level is sedentary to lightly active.
Are you steps before exercise 10,000 or more? Your activity level is lightly active at least and more likely to be active. Use those values plus the 1/2 lb loss/wk rate in the guided setup to get your calorie goal.

That will give you your base calories for the day. Then you are expected to add back any extra calories earned from purposeful exercise. If you set your day to day before exercise activity setting too high then count back your calories on top, you will end up double-dipping, and you don't want that, especially at the rate that is safest for you.

Using the stats you provided and assuming a lightly active life style along with the 0.5 lb loss rate per week, MFP's guided setup gives you 1,920 calories for the day before extra purposeful exercise. If you are sedentary other than your purposeful exercise, the setting for 0.5 lb per week loss is 1,690 calories.

The calories earned from the actual purposeful exercise depends on how you are getting the value. If you are using a fitness tracker synced with MFP, it should be adjusting your daily calorie goal automatically. If you are adding them in manually using the MFP database (like I do), then some suggest starting at 50% and adjusting from there as necessary as for some people, the MFP values are inflated (they seem to work well at 100% for others).