Troubleshoot me?

alexmose

Along with what everyone else said, I would start resistance training. @sardelsa @sijomial @cupcakesandproteinshakes @nighthawk584 and a myriad of others can tell you that lifting has changed our physiques and the bodyfat goes down at a decent rate.

Lietchi

aubreeshelley wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

What does 'not much has happened yet' mean. No weight loss at all? Slow weight loss?

With a calorie goal of 1300, I'm guessing you have chosen a fairly agressive weight loss rate. Combined with not eating back your exercise calories, you are close to what I would consider the minimum intake for a woman (with your stats).
I am nearly the same age as you, same height and a similar starting weight, and I lost weight eating quite a few calories more than you. More slowly than most people want to lose weight, I will admit (50lbs in 14 months), but the upside was that I wasn't feeling deprived.
I'm also wondering what activity level you chose on MFP? If you chose sedentary but you are actually more active (you don't mention if you have a job, but being a mother of 5 is probably a job on its own), you are creating an even bigger deficit.
An agressive calorie deficit can cause water retention, which will mask fat loss on the scale.

As for your exercise: you don't specify the intensity or duration of the exercise, but if this is an increase compared to when you weren't trying to lose weight, this could also be causing water retention.

As for your food: your diary isn't public actually. But weighing is really important, without it you can't be sure of your calorie intake.

How much of my weight could be water retention?

I like knowing that you lost weight eating more calories than me- but shouldn’t the calories in/calories our principle mean that I should be losing the less I eat? (I know within reason- I did Optavia where they have you eat 900 cal/day and I lost weight, but felt like I had the flu the whole time).

Sure, eating less should mean more fat loss (although there are phenomena that can mitigate that: feeling tired by eating too little can cause a person to be less active, for example; slight downshift in metabolism). But it isn't unknown for people to see more movement on the scale in a smaller deficit (a larger deficit stressing the body more and possibly causing water retention - could be a handful of lbs).

But I agree with lynn_glenmont's post that the first step should be to weigh your foods, check you are using correct database entries and verify that you are indeed consuming the number of calories you thought you were.

nanastaci2020

Eating less should result in losing more, yes. BUT there are other factors at play as well.

You want to lose body fat, I assume. If you eat at a very low calorie level, you increase the chance that your body will feed itself by depleting your muscle as well as your fat. You don't want to lose muscle. Then there is the issue that you want to get proper nutrition, to keep hair/skin/nails healthy. Oh, and your heart. It can be damaged from a VLCD.

In addition, there are other likely outcomes of eating very low calories. One is that it is not sustainable. Can you see yourself eating super low for 3 months? 6 months? If not, then doesn't it make sense to find a moderate ground that you CAN do longer term? Eating very low is likely to last no more than a few days or perhaps a few weeks. A common cycle is to get frustrated (at always being hungry, having little energy, being cranky, etc.) which can lead to a binge or simply cause a person to give up & revert to old habits. Then 6-12 months later, another try but this time the health & weight level are both worse off.

And then there is that lack of energy. Eating very little and still trying to live your life, handle your obligations and exercise? Something suffers. If your body is not satiated, then energy levels dip and less gets done.

AnnPT77

Besides less getting done if energy level dips on low calories, the doing less means we're burning fewer calories. Subtle fatigue-related decisions like making the simpler evening meal, putting off some major housecleaning, walking less at the grocery store, maybe reduced exercise intensity . . . those things add up. On top of that, our bodies can slow down in near-invisible ways, like slowed hair growth (even hair loss), and other effects that show up later, maybe weeks/months later.

It's not just "eat less, lose faster". That's true within a certain range, but calorie intake affects calorie output. It's dynamic, not static. Eat so little that you get fatigued and your body slows down optional processes, weight loss slows.

There's no "starvation mode" state where you won't lose weight no matter how little you eat, but it is possible to eat so little that you lose more slowly than you expect at that calorie level, because of the slowing. There's sort of a sweet spot or range, where weight loss happens, but energy level and vitality stay strong.

aubreeshelley

Thanks everyone for the tips. I will be trying figuring out how to weigh the more complicated things like leftovers. Stuff like my lunch where it’s rice, a vegetable, sometimes beans and a plant based no oil sauce are easier to track.

nanastaci2020

aubreeshelley wrote: »

Thanks everyone for the tips. I will be trying figuring out how to weigh the more complicated things like leftovers. Stuff like my lunch where it’s rice, a vegetable, sometimes beans and a plant based no oil sauce are easier to track.

When I'm cooking food, I make a 'recipe' in the MFP recipe builder. I enter all the ingredients by weight. I weigh the final cooked food and set the recipe # of servings to the weight in grams. Such as baked pasta I made on Sunday was 3305 grams, so 3305 servings. I then can weigh my food when I'm having leftovers. Today I had 340 grams of the baked pasta for lunch, so logged 340 calories.

yirara

aubreeshelley wrote: »

Dogmom1978 wrote: »

A food scale is less than $20 at Walmart. Invest in one and weigh and measure your portions.

Also, you set yourself as lightly active. That is before any additional exercise you are logging correct? If the lightly active INCLUDES your exercise, you wouldn’t also add the exercise into your diary.

Yes, lightly active is the rest of my life besides the above mentioned exercise.


I have a scale- but there must be something wrong with it or I’m using it wrong. I just tested it again. I put a bowl on it, then hit the TARE button, then just for testing purposes put a package on that has its net weight listed as 206 g. When I placed the bowl with the package in it back on the scale it says it is 412 g.

Is your mobile phone close to your scale? I find that my phone really influences the scale measurements - big time!
If you do then try to put the phone far away from the scale, maybe on a different counter top as well. I find that my phone might influence the scale from 1m away, but it might be more.

MidlifeCrisisFitness

Exercise comes in two forms. Cardio and muscle training.

Muscle training can be for size or strength. If you add resistance training to increase your Lean Body Mass. Your muscles will burn fat faster while you are at rest than you can by eating less. You don't need to look bulky to have muscles. Look into Pilates, body weight training and progressive light dumbell exercises. Add them to your cardio routines.

NovusDies

KHMcG wrote: »

Exercise comes in two forms. Cardio and muscle training.

Muscle training can be for size or strength. If you add resistance training to increase your Lean Body Mass. Your muscles will burn fat faster while you are at rest than you can by eating less. You don't need to look bulky to have muscles. Look into Pilates, body weight training and progressive light dumbell exercises. Add them to your cardio routines.

Nope. That has been debunked.

Muscles require a small amount of energy at rest. I believe the estimate is 6 to 7 calories per pound per day.

domeofstars

I once went through a similar situation and I couldn't work out why I wasn't losing weight. It was because I was under estimating what I was eating. As soon as I started to weigh and measure everything I ate and drank, the weight came off. Also, I have noticed that sometimes the calorie values of foods are not accurate here on MFP because its been user-added so i double check on another site sometimes as well.

aubreeshelley

domeofstars wrote: »

I once went through a similar situation and I couldn't work out why I wasn't losing weight. It was because I was under estimating what I was eating. As soon as I started to weigh and measure everything I ate and drank, the weight came off. Also, I have noticed that sometimes the calorie values of foods are not accurate here on MFP because its been user-added so i double check on another site sometimes as well.

I sure hope that is the case for me. I feel like shooting for 1300 should still work even slowly (like .5 lbs a month) if I’m a few hundred over.

AlexiaC47

I don't think you are doing nearly enough exercise.

You eat every day. You should strive to work out every day-- at least a long walk if you can't do much that day. I would add more resistance and more cardio. at near 40, your body may be sowing down from how you used to lose.

If you increase your work-outs and still aren't losing, have your thyroid re-checked