Gaining weight, help!
Replies
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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.
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 -
I'd like to add that I had a similar experience in March and April and finally found that walking was not enough of a calorie burn (For my lifestyle) Logging 10-12,000 steps was awesome but doing 30 min HIIT classes made me sweat and took less time and are MUCH easier to fit into my day than 2 hour long hikes. Of course, I still love to hike and even more when you can go with a friend but I've chalked it up to maintenance calorie burn and if I want to loose lbs, I need to sweat and get heart rate up. For me, HIIT classes on Youtube work.
I know you are a Mom - me too. Good luck, I know how frustrating it is!!0 -
andimickey wrote: »I'd like to add that I had a similar experience in March and April and finally found that walking was not enough of a calorie burn (For my lifestyle) Logging 10-12,000 steps was awesome but doing 30 min HIIT classes made me sweat and took less time and are MUCH easier to fit into my day than 2 hour long hikes. Of course, I still love to hike and even more when you can go with a friend but I've chalked it up to maintenance calorie burn and if I want to loose lbs, I need to sweat and get heart rate up. For me, HIIT classes on Youtube work.
I know you are a Mom - me too. Good luck, I know how frustrating it is!!
I appreciate the feedback but I think you misread my post. I’m not walking. I’m doing Leslie Sansone “walk” videos that incorporate power walking with HIIT. They range from 15 minutes to 45 minutes in length. I do the 30 minute ones and I am definitely sweating and out of breath. They’re on YouTube if you wanna check them out.1 -
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.
I do take my watch off when I’m knitting or it counts my hand gestures as steps for sure, but before you make assumptions about my daily steps, I’d love to lend you out my two active five year old boys for a couple days 😂
Three story house, three kids all playing in different rooms calling “mommy mommy”, plus I actually remodeled my kitchen last year to make it LESS efficient, I swear to Beyoncé I am not making this up. During the remodel, my steps dipped to around 4k/day because I wasn’t accessing the basement play room or using the kitchen to prep and cook. We did everything in our tiny living room. My new kitchen is long and I avoided the sink/counter/fridge triangle design to make myself move more. Once the remodel was complete, my steps went back up!1 -
missuswife wrote: »andimickey wrote: »I'd like to add that I had a similar experience in March and April and finally found that walking was not enough of a calorie burn (For my lifestyle) Logging 10-12,000 steps was awesome but doing 30 min HIIT classes made me sweat and took less time and are MUCH easier to fit into my day than 2 hour long hikes. Of course, I still love to hike and even more when you can go with a friend but I've chalked it up to maintenance calorie burn and if I want to loose lbs, I need to sweat and get heart rate up. For me, HIIT classes on Youtube work.
I know you are a Mom - me too. Good luck, I know how frustrating it is!!
I appreciate the feedback but I think you misread my post. I’m not walking. I’m doing Leslie Sansone “walk” videos that incorporate power walking with HIIT. They range from 15 minutes to 45 minutes in length. I do the 30 minute ones and I am definitely sweating and out of breath. They’re on YouTube if you wanna check them out.
General note: do not judge calories burned by how you feel. I can swim for hours without feeling exhausted, usually I am just bored of the repetition when I give up. I have not run for years, and if I jog around the block to catch the bus, I feel completely exhausted. Obviously one hour of swimming burns more than running a block's distance
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Hey I wanted to come back and update you all on my progress. Today I weighed in and I lost a pound from last week! I also see more definition in my calves and my clothes feel a bit looser in the belly area.
I’ve been eating half the exercise calories and at least 2 liters/day of water. I actually upped my carbs a little, too. I’m still not sure what’s going on but I’ll take the loss!1 -
Bask in it, @missuswife. You've worked hard. Keep us posted on the changes you're making.0
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