Need some insight

flowers223

Hi all. I'm struggling a bit and wondering if anyone has had a similar situation or has any insight for me. I appreciate any advice!

I've been counting calories for the past two weeks. Here me out - I understand this takes time and I need to be patient. But I'm curious to see if I'm doing things right. I checked multiple calculators and formulas to figure out how many calories I should eat to lose weight. For the past two weeks, I have consistently stayed at or just under my calories. I've also been lifting weights 3x week. Nothing crazy, just getting into the habit, and breaking a little sweat. After weighing myself today, I was only down .2 lbs. If my calories are nearly perfect, doesn't science say I should have lost 1lb-2lbs for the past two weeks? What could be accounting for this? I plan on keeping doing what I'm doing, but I dont want this all to be a waste and end up weighing the same in two months.

Thanks guys!!

ahoy_m8

Hi there. Good job on a really solid start. A couple things could be going on:

1) You will not see the mathematically exact amount of fat loss on the scale every week. There are lots of other hydration factors in play in addition to the total amount of fat you are carrying. Check this out: https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/
2) If you weigh yourself every day, you will get more insight on your normal fluctuations. A weight trending app helps you see progress in spite of the fluctuations.
3) Different calculators make different assumptions about your intentional exercise and your deficit. MFP has it's own assumptions. If you are logging in MFP, use the MFP setup (not a TDEE calculator, for example). There are set-up mistakes that are pretty common (e.g. double counting your intentional exercise by including it in your activity setting and logging it separately).
4) There are also logging errors that are pretty common. At the end of the day, the MFP database is user sourced and there are tons of inaccurate entries.

Try browsing some of these posts that explain set up, accurate logging and much more: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300319/most-helpful-posts-health-and-weight-loss-must-reads#latest

Best of luck and good on you for hanging in there!

Machka9

"I've also been lifting weights 3x week. Nothing crazy, just getting into the habit, and breaking a little sweat."

It's also possible you're retaining a bit of water ... especially if this is new to you.

flowers223

Thanks for the info. I'm just in a little disbelief because I'm eating so much better and so much less and moving a whole lot. So I couldn't believe the scale. I did wonder if it was possible that lifting weights was building muscle or retaining water.

88olds

First, are you using a food scale to crunch the numbers? We don’t really know where we’re at without one. Measuring cups just aren’t as accurate. You can use the cups for liquids but a scale is better for anything else.

Second, water retention may be an issue. Little or no loss on the heals of a new exercise program is probably the most common complaint on this board. The short answer is newly stressed muscles retain water. It will even out.

Third, watch out for your brain. It will likely try to wreck you. Fact is calorie counting has a significant learning curve. And try as we might to make calorie counting exact, it is not. Read this board regularly and you’ll see even more than water weight, people are distressed by the limits of the calculators and calorie counting gadgets. The calculators get their numbers based on statistics and averages. But no one is exactly average. We don’t really know how many calories we are burning unless we are hooked up in a lab. Plus, in the real world calorie counting is going to encounter gray areas. So in the end we can start with the number the calculators give us, but we only really have our personal trial and error to find what works for us personally. And trial and error can take a long time. Just how it is. Keep trying. If your plan isn’t working, try to fix it. Weight loss is mostly about problem solving and persistence. Good luck.

flowers223

Thanks for the info. I am weighing my food in grams, that was actually a helpful tip because years ago I was measuring by pieces or cups, and when I started grams I saw a significant difference!

threewins

How many times have you stepped on the scale? Because if it's 1 or 2 times, I'd say it's likely to be either scale error, water retention from exercise/salt, or a combination of all 3. On the other hand, if it's 14 times I'd say you're eating too much. As to why you would be not losing weight when you should be, there are a number of reasons, measurement error might be one, incorrect food energy values another.

I'd suggest that you weigh yourself daily (if possible) until it becomes obvious that you are losing weight. If it's not possible to weigh yourself daily, I'd suggest that you eat at a level based on hunger rather than a certain calorie value and see if that makes a difference.

You don't need to weigh yourself daily forever. Once you have found out your total daily energy used you can cut back on weighings although I'd suggest a monthly weigh to prevent some kind of miscalibration which you don't find out about until months later.

nay0m3

I will share that when I first started lifting weights, I got fluffier and gained a bit of weight. My body was not used to this stimulus so it was freaking out, no matter how healthy I ate. This adjusted after a few months, and it was very tough on me mentally but I read SO much about how this is normal and the weight WILL start coming off. Read this article please and connect with me for support! https://strongfigure.com/women-youll-get-bigger-get-smaller/

AnnPT77

nay0meh wrote: »

I will share that when I first started lifting weights, I got fluffier and gained a bit of weight. My body was not used to this stimulus so it was freaking out, no matter how healthy I ate. This adjusted after a few months, and it was very tough on me mentally but I read SO much about how this is normal and the weight WILL start coming off. Read this article please and connect with me for support! https://strongfigure.com/women-youll-get-bigger-get-smaller/

Hmm. I think her conclusion in the article is right, but she's not accurately explaining the mechanisms, IMO. I think she's overstating early muscle gain vs. the effect of water retention, and sort of overstating how much extra calorie burn from a pound of muscle vs. a pound a fat.

Yeah, it's like twice as much calorie burn, maybe even three times as much . . . but researchers mostly seem to think it's around 6 calories per pound per day for muscle at rest, 2 calories per pound per day for fat at rest (yes, fat's metabolically active, too). Estimates vary, could be as much as 10 calories on the muscle side, among other estimates; could be 3 for fat.

Not big numbers, especially given how long it takes to add a pound of muscle. (Pound a month would be good, for a woman, under ideal conditions . . . and ideal conditions include calorie surplus, i.e. weight gain, don't include a calorie deficit for fat loss. Some muscle gain will be possible in a deficit for some women, just slower than a pound a month. It's a long term investment.

Strength training is totally worth doing, though, to (at minimum) preserve existing muscle better, and strength gain (which is useful) can be much faster than mass gain. (That's from neuromuscular adaptation (NMA), better recruiting and using existing muscle fibers, which tends to precede mass gain.) On top of that, the "pump" from water retention can create a more defined appearance more quickly, if there's not too much overlying fat for that to show. All good stuff!

Besides that, I'd be willing to bet that more muscular people find it easier and more fun to do active things, both daily life and exercise, compared to people of higher body fat at the same weight . . . and being more active in daily life can add surprisingly many calories to TDEE.