No progress in July

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meharmahshahid
meharmahshahid Posts: 107 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I started a caloric deficit in the very start of June, and stuck with 1200 calories, sometimes a bit less if a fasted. In that month, I lost 8 lb, going from 66.7 kg to around 62.9. I had high hopes for July, but the end of this month is nearing and I have near to nothing. I ended at 62.9 kg and today I am at 62.3, which is a pound loss. It honestly breaks my heart as I had been religiously counting every calorie and working out, only to see this result. If it is gonna be like this the next month, and the next, then what is the point? 😪

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  • Dogmom1978
    Dogmom1978 Posts: 1,580 Member
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    Well, what is your goal weight? For example, if you only have 10 extra lbs (sorry too tired to convert to kg) then your weight loss SHOULD be slow. If you have a lot of weight to lose, then it will probably be faster at least in the beginning. Last month (if it was your first month losing) you probably lost water weight also.

    So, some questions:

    How much more weight do you have to lose?
    Are you using a food scale to help calculate portions?
    What is your activity level set at in MFP? You said that you are working out religiously.

    Do you log your exercise or set it to “active” in mfp and let the app calculate? Personally, I see best results when I set it to sedentary and then log my exercise activities just like my food.
  • meharmahshahid
    meharmahshahid Posts: 107 Member
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    Strudders67 wrote: »
    As said to almost every post you made previously, your expectations are too high. You have very little to lose so you need your goal set to 0.5lb a week and you need to expect it to be slow going. Take a deep breath. If you've lost 1lb so far in July (I don't consider 19 days in a 31 day month to be 'near the end'), you're pretty much on track.

    BUT, with a small deficit your logging needs to be 100% accurate. Try logging everything you eat. (I really hope you're not logging everything, because you've ended some of the last few days having supposedly only eaten about 800 cals which is way way way under the recommended 1200 NET calories a day, and you haven't logged any exercise either which would make your net cals even lower). However, you're also not weighing everything. Thing add up. I guess you may be cooking for multiple people, but otherwise how are you using 2.2 eggs for an omelette? At the moment, from your diary, I'd say you don't really know what you're eating or what you're burning.

    Log everything - food and drink intake plus exercise - and be consistently eating a net of 1200 cals a day for 6 weeks. Then see what rate you are losing at.

    I overestimate some things such as eggs, as some of the eggs I eat are medium, while some are large, so i log in between. I try not to log in exercise as people say that we should not eat back calories. I do use a scale in many things, and will try to be more consistent. THANKS <3
  • Dogmom1978
    Dogmom1978 Posts: 1,580 Member
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    I agree with the advice from strudders67.

    I only eat back SOME of my exercise calories, BUT, I am set to eat 1500 a day and without exercise, I often go over. You should never only eat 700 calories a day! If you are, you need to change your diet immediately as that is not healthy! We all want to lose weight as quickly as possible, but to avoid gaining it back, we have to do so in a safe and SUSTAINABLE manner.
  • Courtscan2
    Courtscan2 Posts: 498 Member
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    Half a kg in 2.5 weeks seems like progress to me. Especially as you have so little to lose. Well done. What you are doing is working - stay the course and be patient.
  • Terrania24
    Terrania24 Posts: 11 Member
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    One source of problems with calorie counting that I never see mentioned is the enormous discrepancy of calories in the MFP database. Everyone always talks about precisely weighing food -- which is important -- but nobody mentions that the database is all crowdsourced and random. Here are some green check-marked entries for chicken:

    organic chicken, 4 oz 120 calories

    whole chicken, 4 oz, 240 calories

    grilled chicken, 4 oz, 100 calories

    So obviously, there's a problem here when you're looking at your carefully weighed 4 oz of chicken.
  • Redordeadhead
    Redordeadhead Posts: 1,188 Member
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    Strudders67 wrote: »
    There are separate entries in the database for large and medium eggs that you could choose. You also can't assume that just because a package says the contents weigh x that that's what the contents actually weigh. Usually they don't. For some things the few grams difference may not mean many calories; for others it has a big impact.

    I've never seen any experienced person on here say you shouldn't eat back your exercise calories. In fact, MFP is designed such that you're supposed to eat your exercise calories. The calories set for you by MPF, based on what you entered in your Guided Setup, includes a deficit; if you are exercising on top of that, you're creating an even bigger deficit and it may not be safe for your health, particularly if you're at the low end of the calorie scale. There are suggestions to eat a reasonable percentage (50-75%) of exercise cals, but that's then based on the suggestion that the person will do this consistently for 6 weeks, see if they are losing at the safe, required rate and adjust their exercise cals accordingly if not. The fact that your diary shows you eating around 700 cals a day on a number of occasions, if you're exercising on top of that, you are seriously under-eating.

    Please re-read all the advice you were given a few weeks ago and look after your health.

    Fully agree, this is very good advice OP.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,973 Member
    edited July 2020
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    Terrania24 wrote: »
    One source of problems with calorie counting that I never see mentioned is the enormous discrepancy of calories in the MFP database. Everyone always talks about precisely weighing food -- which is important -- but nobody mentions that the database is all crowdsourced and random. Here are some green check-marked entries for chicken:

    organic chicken, 4 oz 120 calories

    whole chicken, 4 oz, 240 calories

    grilled chicken, 4 oz, 100 calories

    So obviously, there's a problem here when you're looking at your carefully weighed 4 oz of chicken.

    None of those entries are ones MFP pulled from the USDA database, which are the best ones to use to avoid erroneous crowd-sourced entries.

    I post this all the time:

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and admin-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. To find admin entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

    The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I uncheck everything but SR Legacy - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

    For cooked chicken breast: "chicken, breast, cooked, roasted" gave me https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/?query=chicken, breast, cooked and from that you can see the syntax for the MFP entry to use is "Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat only, cooked, roasted"

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was user entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)

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