Gaining weight, help!
Replies
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shirazumdraws wrote: »cmentis182 wrote: »cmentis182 wrote: »I am not really qualified to give any advice but just my experience, I have been working out for about four days. *Note, I used to be an active kid, just turned a couch potato for the last 5 years* I also bought this cheap wrist band, Xiaomi Band 4 which counts steps and have a few ranges of exercise sections that shows how much you burn. So, the first day, I jump roped about 2000+ and it took me somewhere between 24 minutes and I burned 120 calories. The next day, I did 2500+ jump rope and it took me around 27 minutes and I burned 145+ calories. On third day, I jump roped for another 2500+ times and it took me 33 minutes and it was a 220+ burn and today I jump roped 3600+ in 32 minutes and I burned 206 calories.
My point being, I think our body become efficient in doing the same sort of movements and it requires less energy, hence less burn.
Sorry but your point is false and your faith in the calorie counting ability of your band is misplaced.
To make that conclusion from 4 days of exercise doesn't make any kind of sense.
So you are saying that doing the same movements over and over again does not make it less strenuous for ourselves?
What I'm saying is that doing the same movement burns the same calories, strenous is a feeling and calories don't have feelings
Now if a person does exactly the weight bearing exercise and drops weight then yes their calorie burn drops. Not really a factor in 4 days.
That lifting 100lbs weight feels easier as you get stronger is still the same calorie burn - physics of mass moved over distance takes energy.
That running/cycling/rowing feels easier as you get fitter doesn't change the calorie burn in a significant way - it's just feels easier because your capabilities become higher.
That my heartrate dropped 20% doesn't mean I burn 20% less calories - my heart just pumps more efficiently.
Even for sports/exercises that involve improving skill levels and efficiency (swimming or rowing as examples) what actually happens is that you use the skill to go faster / go further.
Let me do the math. For someone starting over, four days of calorie deficit, with added exercise definitely has some mass deduction which might not be so apparent on someone working out for weeks or months. So there goes some calorie. Second point being calorie burn is somewhat correlated to heart rate and that is why we do HIIT workout. So the efficient you are, the less energy you have to use. The less the energy you use, the less your body has to use up to fuel it.
4 days of assumed weight loss leading to a significant difference in weight? Seriously?
As you say - lets do the math - let's say a 200lb person drops 1lb in 4 days - half a percent difference!
Heartrate and calories have a very loose correlation and only for some exercise. Not at all for strength training, can be reasonable for SOME people who happen to have an average exercise HR doing an appropriate exercise (mostly moderate and upwards steady state cardio).
I've seen three experienced cyclists producing the same power/actually burning the same calories but with HR up to 50% different. That's how variable it is.
And HIIT (true HIIT) is a perfect example of how not to use heartrate to estimate calories - it's likely to be massively over-estimated.
Does your car become more efficient and use less fuel because you use it every day to get to work?
Guys, all I wanted to say was that the exercise we do gets easier with time and like I previously mentioned I am not qualified to give advice, its just my experience, that too with a cheap wrist band of over just 4 days. Wasn't making any conclusion of whatsoever. And this calorie estimates are all too weird for me. I have recently started logging and I just realised I eat less than 1200 calories. And MFP says to maintain I need to eat 1440 calories. But then I have gained about 15 pounds over the course of five years. So the wrist band's estimation has not much value to me either. I guess I was just trying to say exercise gets easier. And I assumed that as we exert less force, we use less energy. But anywho, good to know the calorie burn doesn’t significantly change. So many new knowledge from around here only! Thanks!1 -
Diatonic12 wrote: »I meant I changed from a protein-centered breakfast to whole grain centered breakfast. I wait a little bit to digest and then do my workout. Afterwards I have water and some lean turkey cause I’m hungry, and it’s awhile until lunch.
As I said above, I use a metric digital kitchen scale. I’m not sure how much more precise I could be with weighing my food besides using grams? I cook from scratch and weigh everything and check loads of database entries to find what seems most accurate.
In the month I’ve been doing this, I’ve gained 10lbs! What the heck.
There's a disconnect somewhere and that's what we're trying to help you figure out. It would be difficult to gain 10 lbs in a month with the weighing and measuring accuracy you're describing. What kind of drinks do you like besides water. Can you think about some hidden calories somewhere that might be missing from the equation.
I usually have one mug of coffee with 15mls of plain soy milk and a packet of Splenda in the morning, 1 can of Diet Coke at lunch, and 1 cup of decaf tea with soy milk and sweetener. Through the day I also go through 2-3 liters of water.
Is it possible I’m eating too little? MFP gives me 1750 calories, plus between 215-300 exercise calories, and I usually eat around half the exercise calories.0 -
@missuswife Those drinks wouldn't mess with you. The stock answer is water retention but if you're under a lorra lorra stress that can shut weight loss down, too. We are bent on survival and your body may be in stress mode right now. I think many of us are at this particular time. I surmise you're doing the right things but the body has a mind of its own.
Keep tooling along and see what happens in the next two weeks. It does stick in our craw when we can't figure it out. Give it two more weeks.
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cmentis182 wrote: »shirazumdraws wrote: »cmentis182 wrote: »cmentis182 wrote: »I am not really qualified to give any advice but just my experience, I have been working out for about four days. *Note, I used to be an active kid, just turned a couch potato for the last 5 years* I also bought this cheap wrist band, Xiaomi Band 4 which counts steps and have a few ranges of exercise sections that shows how much you burn. So, the first day, I jump roped about 2000+ and it took me somewhere between 24 minutes and I burned 120 calories. The next day, I did 2500+ jump rope and it took me around 27 minutes and I burned 145+ calories. On third day, I jump roped for another 2500+ times and it took me 33 minutes and it was a 220+ burn and today I jump roped 3600+ in 32 minutes and I burned 206 calories.
My point being, I think our body become efficient in doing the same sort of movements and it requires less energy, hence less burn.
Sorry but your point is false and your faith in the calorie counting ability of your band is misplaced.
To make that conclusion from 4 days of exercise doesn't make any kind of sense.
So you are saying that doing the same movements over and over again does not make it less strenuous for ourselves?
What I'm saying is that doing the same movement burns the same calories, strenous is a feeling and calories don't have feelings
Now if a person does exactly the weight bearing exercise and drops weight then yes their calorie burn drops. Not really a factor in 4 days.
That lifting 100lbs weight feels easier as you get stronger is still the same calorie burn - physics of mass moved over distance takes energy.
That running/cycling/rowing feels easier as you get fitter doesn't change the calorie burn in a significant way - it's just feels easier because your capabilities become higher.
That my heartrate dropped 20% doesn't mean I burn 20% less calories - my heart just pumps more efficiently.
Even for sports/exercises that involve improving skill levels and efficiency (swimming or rowing as examples) what actually happens is that you use the skill to go faster / go further.
Let me do the math. For someone starting over, four days of calorie deficit, with added exercise definitely has some mass deduction which might not be so apparent on someone working out for weeks or months. So there goes some calorie. Second point being calorie burn is somewhat correlated to heart rate and that is why we do HIIT workout. So the efficient you are, the less energy you have to use. The less the energy you use, the less your body has to use up to fuel it.
4 days of assumed weight loss leading to a significant difference in weight? Seriously?
As you say - lets do the math - let's say a 200lb person drops 1lb in 4 days - half a percent difference!
Heartrate and calories have a very loose correlation and only for some exercise. Not at all for strength training, can be reasonable for SOME people who happen to have an average exercise HR doing an appropriate exercise (mostly moderate and upwards steady state cardio).
I've seen three experienced cyclists producing the same power/actually burning the same calories but with HR up to 50% different. That's how variable it is.
And HIIT (true HIIT) is a perfect example of how not to use heartrate to estimate calories - it's likely to be massively over-estimated.
Does your car become more efficient and use less fuel because you use it every day to get to work?
Guys, all I wanted to say was that the exercise we do gets easier with time and like I previously mentioned I am not qualified to give advice, its just my experience, that too with a cheap wrist band of over just 4 days. Wasn't making any conclusion of whatsoever. And this calorie estimates are all too weird for me. I have recently started logging and I just realised I eat less than 1200 calories. And MFP says to maintain I need to eat 1440 calories. But then I have gained about 15 pounds over the course of five years. So the wrist band's estimation has not much value to me either. I guess I was just trying to say exercise gets easier. And I assumed that as we exert less force, we use less energy. But anywho, good to know the calorie burn doesn’t significantly change. So many new knowledge from around here only! Thanks!
You (and the OP of this thread) might learn some useful information from reading these things:
https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472
https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations
That first one is old, but still true and informative.
On this thread, the advice from sijomial about exercise, heart rate, and calories is correct. In brief, as we get fitter, our heart and body get better at oxygen utilization, so our heart rate is lower when doing the same exercise. But that exercise is the same amount of work (in pretty much the physics sense of "work", unless influenced by moving around a smaller bodyweight), so requires the same amount of fuel, and calories are that fuel.
As we get fitter, the same exercise (at the same bodyweight) feels easier because we're better adapted to it **, but it burns the same number of calories. The fitness device may claim we burned fewer calories because our heart rate is lower, bu that's among the limitations of those devices: Their estimates can be wrong in that way. (Yes, they only estimate calorie burn; they don't measure it.)
** That adaptation is pretty much the definition of "improving fitness".
OP, I think the advice about using the Pacer app with your Apple watch and MFP could be helpful. Also, I'd repeat that calorie expenditure estimates - even from expensive devices like yours or mine - are still just estimates, and can be wrong. If you gained 10 pounds in a month, you'd need to have eating around 35,000 calories over your maintenance calories, in order for that to be fat - over 1000 calories extra per day - or to have moved that much less in daily life.
It's very unlikely you ate that much extra without noticing. Some people are moving quite a bit less lately in daily life because of "stay at home" orders or other such lifestyle changes, and haven't really clicked that that effects calorie expenditure as much as it does. But if you think it over, you'd know if you started somehow doing 1000+ calories less movement per day, or a combination of moving less and eating more that gets you to that same !000+ extra daily calories. If 1000+ daily calories isn't possible, then the 10 pounds isn't fat. (Assuming, as you say, that you're logging accurately, of course).
Someone may tell you that muscle growth is the explanation, but muscle mass gain is much slower than that (sadly), so that's not the explanation either.
That pretty much leaves some kind of water weight or digestive contents weirdness as the explanation. The "fluctuations" article I linked earlier in this post may be informative, in that respect.
A month is a long time for a water weight effect, but I'd consider waiting it out for another few weeks, if you had been losing at a reasonable rate before this.
Best wishes!4 -
missuswife wrote: »Diatonic12 wrote: »I meant I changed from a protein-centered breakfast to whole grain centered breakfast. I wait a little bit to digest and then do my workout. Afterwards I have water and some lean turkey cause I’m hungry, and it’s awhile until lunch.
As I said above, I use a metric digital kitchen scale. I’m not sure how much more precise I could be with weighing my food besides using grams? I cook from scratch and weigh everything and check loads of database entries to find what seems most accurate.
In the month I’ve been doing this, I’ve gained 10lbs! What the heck.
There's a disconnect somewhere and that's what we're trying to help you figure out. It would be difficult to gain 10 lbs in a month with the weighing and measuring accuracy you're describing. What kind of drinks do you like besides water. Can you think about some hidden calories somewhere that might be missing from the equation.
I usually have one mug of coffee with 15mls of plain soy milk and a packet of Splenda in the morning, 1 can of Diet Coke at lunch, and 1 cup of decaf tea with soy milk and sweetener. Through the day I also go through 2-3 liters of water.
Is it possible I’m eating too little? MFP gives me 1750 calories, plus between 215-300 exercise calories, and I usually eat around half the exercise calories.
Hmm, this does not add up, there must be something very off with your calculations. What is your current weight and your goal weight? A woman would have to be either rather big (very obese or very tall) to expect to lose when eating 2000 calories per day, or extremely active, probably both, so gaining fast with these calories does not surprise me if you are just an average woman with a low overall activity level especially during lockdown. The alternative is weight gain from water, but if you have indeed gained that much in water weight so fast, you need to visit your dr ASAP. Are your ankles, face, wrists etc visibly swollen?
What are your age, height and current weight?0 -
OP, I think the advice about using the Pacer app with your Apple watch and MFP could be helpful. Also, I'd repeat that calorie expenditure estimates - even from expensive devices like yours or mine - are still just estimates, and can be wrong. If you gained 10 pounds in a month, you'd need to have eating around 35,000 calories over your maintenance calories, in order for that to be fat - over 1000 calories extra per day - or to have moved that much less in daily life.
I do not know OPs stats, but if I do this exercise for myself, middle-aged mum, 3 kids, office job, no opportunity to move much during lockdown unless planned, eating 2K calories per day would put me at 500 over my maintenance, and I can easily imagine a gain of 5-6 lbs in a month because of it. Adding a bit of water weight or constipation etc, it sounds totally normal to gain 10 lbs this way in just a few weeks.
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missuswife wrote: »Diatonic12 wrote: »I meant I changed from a protein-centered breakfast to whole grain centered breakfast. I wait a little bit to digest and then do my workout. Afterwards I have water and some lean turkey cause I’m hungry, and it’s awhile until lunch.
As I said above, I use a metric digital kitchen scale. I’m not sure how much more precise I could be with weighing my food besides using grams? I cook from scratch and weigh everything and check loads of database entries to find what seems most accurate.
In the month I’ve been doing this, I’ve gained 10lbs! What the heck.
There's a disconnect somewhere and that's what we're trying to help you figure out. It would be difficult to gain 10 lbs in a month with the weighing and measuring accuracy you're describing. What kind of drinks do you like besides water. Can you think about some hidden calories somewhere that might be missing from the equation.
I usually have one mug of coffee with 15mls of plain soy milk and a packet of Splenda in the morning, 1 can of Diet Coke at lunch, and 1 cup of decaf tea with soy milk and sweetener. Through the day I also go through 2-3 liters of water.
Is it possible I’m eating too little? MFP gives me 1750 calories, plus between 215-300 exercise calories, and I usually eat around half the exercise calories.
Hmm, this does not add up, there must be something very off with your calculations. What is your current weight and your goal weight? A woman would have to be either rather big (very obese or very tall) to expect to lose when eating 2000 calories per day, or extremely active, probably both, so gaining fast with these calories does not surprise me if you are just an average woman with a low overall activity level especially during lockdown. The alternative is weight gain from water, but if you have indeed gained that much in water weight so fast, you need to visit your dr ASAP. Are your ankles, face, wrists etc visibly swollen?
What are your age, height and current weight?
5’6”, 204, goal weight is 165. Lower than 165 on my frame would make me look ill.
Even under lockdown, without the exercise I do around 8000 steps around the house.0 -
The OP's exercise was 30 minutes of walking. If whatever device is giving enough calories to even bother [1] questioning what percentage to eat back, or [2] cause a huge weight gain, then pretty safe to say the device is flat wrong (unless the OP was already very, very over weight).. if memory serves, walking burns a net 30-something calories per mile per lbs weight of the walkee, and you can't walk all that far in 30 minutes.3
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The OP's exercise was 30 minutes of walking. If whatever device is giving enough calories to even bother [1] questioning what percentage to eat back, or [2] cause a huge weight gain, then pretty safe to say the device is flat wrong (unless the OP was already very, very over weight).. if memory serves, walking burns a net 30-something calories per mile per lbs weight of the walkee, and you can't walk all that far in 30 minutes.
It’s not walking like taking a walk. It’s an exercise video where you’re power walking, and doing HIIT like knee lifts, squats, etc. I’d say it’s more like jogging—I get out of breath and sweaty.1 -
OP, I think the advice about using the Pacer app with your Apple watch and MFP could be helpful. Also, I'd repeat that calorie expenditure estimates - even from expensive devices like yours or mine - are still just estimates, and can be wrong. If you gained 10 pounds in a month, you'd need to have eating around 35,000 calories over your maintenance calories, in order for that to be fat - over 1000 calories extra per day - or to have moved that much less in daily life.
I do not know OPs stats, but if I do this exercise for myself, middle-aged mum, 3 kids, office job, no opportunity to move much during lockdown unless planned, eating 2K calories per day would put me at 500 over my maintenance, and I can easily imagine a gain of 5-6 lbs in a month because of it. Adding a bit of water weight or constipation etc, it sounds totally normal to gain 10 lbs this way in just a few weeks.
See that’s the thing—I don’t have an office job. My day is literally 14 hours of childcare and housework. I’m not like, running around the house, but I definitely don’t sit down, 😂. I have TWO five year old boys and a 7 year old girl. I’m working out so I can keep up with them.
It does sound like maybe I should lower my calories a bit. Maybe take it down to 1750 for a few weeks? The Mayo Clinic maintenance calories calculator is saying 1850 to maintain if I’m lightly active, or 2000 if I’m doing 30 minutes of activity per day which I am.1 -
The OP's exercise was 30 minutes of walking. If whatever device is giving enough calories to even bother [1] questioning what percentage to eat back, or [2] cause a huge weight gain, then pretty safe to say the device is flat wrong (unless the OP was already very, very over weight).. if memory serves, walking burns a net 30-something calories per mile per lbs weight of the walkee, and you can't walk all that far in 30 minutes.
In support of what you've said: She'd mentioned that her exercise normally runs around 215-300 calories, of which she eats half back, so I don't think that over-estimating exercise is a great candidate to explain 10 pounds of weight gain in a month, at a calorie level that previously led to slow loss.
I agree that there's a disconnect somewhere, but my money's still on "mostly water weight", based on the totality of facts she's reported. 🤷♀️3 -
OP, I think the advice about using the Pacer app with your Apple watch and MFP could be helpful. Also, I'd repeat that calorie expenditure estimates - even from expensive devices like yours or mine - are still just estimates, and can be wrong. If you gained 10 pounds in a month, you'd need to have eating around 35,000 calories over your maintenance calories, in order for that to be fat - over 1000 calories extra per day - or to have moved that much less in daily life.
I do not know OPs stats, but if I do this exercise for myself, middle-aged mum, 3 kids, office job, no opportunity to move much during lockdown unless planned, eating 2K calories per day would put me at 500 over my maintenance, and I can easily imagine a gain of 5-6 lbs in a month because of it. Adding a bit of water weight or constipation etc, it sounds totally normal to gain 10 lbs this way in just a few weeks.
I'm surprised that you say that. 1500 calories is approximately what my estimate for maintenance is, on the border between sedentary and slightly active, at 5'5", 130 pounds, age 64, without even considering exercise. Even the Mayo calculator your mention would put me at 1600 at "somewhat active".
Of course calculators can be wrong (as they're very wrong for me**), so your carefully-tracked personal experience is a better guide for you than any calculator, but that doesn't jibe with OP losing at this same calorie level, at a not-much-higher body weight, before adding the exercise, and only eating back half of a fairly moderate exercise calorie estimate (215-300 for half an hour of one of those walking-exercise videos, which are more than normal walking).
** I actually maintain in the low 2000s, before exercise, and have for 4+ years now. No other individual's experience is going to provide a better starting estimate than one of the research-based calorie calculators, except purely at random.2 -
OP, I think the advice about using the Pacer app with your Apple watch and MFP could be helpful. Also, I'd repeat that calorie expenditure estimates - even from expensive devices like yours or mine - are still just estimates, and can be wrong. If you gained 10 pounds in a month, you'd need to have eating around 35,000 calories over your maintenance calories, in order for that to be fat - over 1000 calories extra per day - or to have moved that much less in daily life.
I do not know OPs stats, but if I do this exercise for myself, middle-aged mum, 3 kids, office job, no opportunity to move much during lockdown unless planned, eating 2K calories per day would put me at 500 over my maintenance, and I can easily imagine a gain of 5-6 lbs in a month because of it. Adding a bit of water weight or constipation etc, it sounds totally normal to gain 10 lbs this way in just a few weeks.
I'm surprised that you say that. 1500 calories is approximately what my estimate for maintenance is, on the border between sedentary and slightly active, at 5'5", 130 pounds, age 64, without even considering exercise. Even the Mayo calculator your mention would put me at 1600 at "somewhat active".
Of course calculators can be wrong (as they're very wrong for me**), so your carefully-tracked personal experience is a better guide for you than any calculator, but that doesn't jibe with OP losing at this same calorie level, at a not-much-higher body weight, before adding the exercise, and only eating back half of a fairly moderate exercise calorie estimate (215-300 for half an hour of one of those walking-exercise videos, which are more than normal walking).
** I actually maintain in the low 2000s, before exercise, and have for 4+ years now. No other individual's experience is going to provide a better starting estimate than one of the research-based calorie calculators, except purely at random.
I have noticed the last years that when I am facing stress, I snack a lot mindlessly, and there have been a series of bad things happening to me and my family, so I keep coming back to this app every year or two, to loose the extra weight before it becomes a problem. I am very accurate in my logging, scale, almost all homemade meals etc, and unfortunately I am pretty sure about my maintenance, which is barely 1500 (which is why a couple of extra snacks that go unnoticed for a few months become a problem after a while). Theoretically, I am not sedentary, as in beign a couch potato, I have an office job but also children, do things with them, do chores around the house, take the dog for a walk etc. Yet, it is apparently too little to make a difference unless I add extra exercise, and I have done this too many times to doubt the process.
I think there is naturally a range in normal, in perception of activity, in how well our metabolism work, etc, not huge obviously but there is a range, so personal experience in where we lose or maintain is going to give better results than anything else. Maybe OP overestimates a little her activity, underestimates a but what she eats etc. If I were in her situation, I would not bother with fine tuning to perfection logging or exercise counting, would just start cutting down my goal, perhaps by 200-300 calories at first, reevaluate and adjust again after 15-20 days, rather than trying to worry too much about what went wrong. After all, at home, all of us are just estimating, we cannot be perfect , so not worth worrying too much about it. Unless there is visible swelling, I would not ignore that ever.0 -
My garmin watch estimates I burn over 3000 calories a day through living and purposeful exercise. If I ate that I would certainly gain weight. The calorie burn on watches are bad. I would put your details in, select the rate at which you want to loose and go from there. See how you do with that. Losing to fast add in 100 or so calories, to slow then drop them a little more.0
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A device that overestimates what you burn daily can really put a wrench in the works. When I got a Fitbit as a gift, I was happy it gave me extra calories to eat, but it greatly slowed my weight-loss, and then eventually stopped it. Also, could you be double-counting your steps? If you’re set to ‘Active’ in MFP but then walking is your only exercise and you count the steps into MFP though your inaccurate device, this could add on the pounds.0
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I have an Apple Watch & use Pacer since MFP doesn’t integrate well with Apple Watch. Connect Apple Health & Watch to Pacer, and in MFP, select Pacer for steps. Do you track your home workouts in Apple Watch or just let the watch count movements and steps? If you end up using Pacer, and track a workout, you will see a double adjustment. One from Pacer, one from Apple Health. Delete the Apple Health bc it’s a double entry. Your adjustment in MFP will be your total “move calories” in Apple Watch. At that point, you’d want to set your activity level to not very active or your projection will be too high.
My TDEE in Apple Watch matches MFP and I have mine set to not very active.0 -
I have an Apple Watch & use Pacer since MFP doesn’t integrate well with Apple Watch. Connect Apple Health & Watch to Pacer, and in MFP, select Pacer for steps. Do you track your home workouts in Apple Watch or just let the watch count movements and steps? If you end up using Pacer, and track a workout, you will see a double adjustment. One from Pacer, one from Apple Health. Delete the Apple Health bc it’s a double entry. Your adjustment in MFP will be your total “move calories” in Apple Watch. At that point, you’d want to set your activity level to not very active or your projection will be too high.
My TDEE in Apple Watch matches MFP and I have mine set to not very active.
When I do the workout video, I track it as a workout on my watch. It tracks my heart rate etc.
Around the house, I just let the watch count steps. Without the workout, it counts around 8k steps daily. Before the lockdown it was usually 10k/day, as I was getting out walking the kids to school, shopping, etc.1 -
When I used fitbit and walked it was giving me a burn of 12 cal/min which is ridiculous. My true burn for 1 km at 12 min/km is 75 calories. Fitbit was giving me 144 per km.
I would suggest logging your exercises manually with corrected calorie burn if that's possible. It's easy if you know the distance and you are walking
Some MFP calls are high. Example, when I log my golf riding a buggy it seems way too high so if I play 18 holes in 4 hours I only log it as 2 hours0 -
We're getting a large number of people on this thread saying the fitness tracker devices over-estimate.
Yes, they do over-estimate.
They also under-estimate.**
They're also pretty accurate.
It's a statistical estimate: It's going to be close for a lot of people, off (high or low) for a few, way off for a very rare very few. That's the nature of statistical estimates. (Or at least for statistical estimates with fairly small standard deviations, which is the case in this realm.)
** Mine - good brand/model that's reasonably close for others who've commented on other MFP threads - underestimates my calorie needs by 25-30%. Recently, with less step-based activity, my last 7 days' average (according to the device) is 1436. Yet, somehow, I've been losing weight for several months at about half a pound a week (250 calorie daily deficit) eating 1850 calories not including exercise (which I also eat). The loss rate is consistent with 4+ years of careful logging in maintenance weight maintenance, and proportional to what I saw while losing.
SInce OP is using the watch, seeing 215-300 calories per half hour exercise video workout (at a body wieight still above 200), and eating back around half of those calories or less, plus eating at an MFP goal consistent with her current size/and steps for a pound a week weight loss . . . the accuracy of the device per se is very, very unlikely to be the explanation for the 10 pound scale gain in one month that she's been describing in this thread, which, if calorie-based, would need a 500-1000 daily calorie descrepancy to explain it as fat gain.
"Reality-test your device's estimates" is good generic advice, but not really on-point to this specific problem.2 -
missuswife wrote: »I have an Apple Watch & use Pacer since MFP doesn’t integrate well with Apple Watch. Connect Apple Health & Watch to Pacer, and in MFP, select Pacer for steps. Do you track your home workouts in Apple Watch or just let the watch count movements and steps? If you end up using Pacer, and track a workout, you will see a double adjustment. One from Pacer, one from Apple Health. Delete the Apple Health bc it’s a double entry. Your adjustment in MFP will be your total “move calories” in Apple Watch. At that point, you’d want to set your activity level to not very active or your projection will be too high.
My TDEE in Apple Watch matches MFP and I have mine set to not very active.
When I do the workout video, I track it as a workout on my watch. It tracks my heart rate etc.
Around the house, I just let the watch count steps. Without the workout, it counts around 8k steps daily. Before the lockdown it was usually 10k/day, as I was getting out walking the kids to school, shopping, etc.
My oldest son got a watch for his birthday a couple of years ago. Cannot remember the brand, we did not keep it long, but one of the expensive ones. He wore it to school. Even on days without PE, he was easily logging over 5K steps while at school. He knew he did not even do 1K steps. No idea what the watch was tracking, perhaps hand gestures? My son does use his hands a lot. Or a calibration issue? No idea, but it was rather funny. He did not want to keep it anyway and chose to exchange it with a friend, so we never found out, but honestly, I would be sceptical if a watch logged 8 K steps while I was not leaving my home at all.1
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