Am I doing something wrong?

Nicoles0305

I’ve lost about 50lbs since August last year using MFP. I track daily, watch my carbs per doctor advice, do cardio 2-3x a week for about 55 minutes, and do some light strength training 2-3x a week. Up until January, I was losing fairly consistently, but ever since, I’ve just been bouncing between 187-191. My goal is 150-160. I’ve taken a week of a “diet break.” I’ve played around with adjusting my calories- I had been doing an average of 1400-1500 calories daily, and am now doing about 1600-1700 most days. I’ve spoken to my doctor who said I need to eat more, hence the increase. I’ve been eating more since then, which has been about three weeks now.

I’m at a loss though. I’ve been bouncing for almost two months now, no matter what I do. What would you suggest?

californiagirl1969

Congrats on your current success.

Sounds like my weight and weight loss and my reason for bouncing around is I've gotten tired of the process, I've loss from 243 lbs to 186 lbs since the beginning of last year and I bounce up to 190 ish lbs and stress and a lot of life problems starting to get to me. Hence more Un accounted for calories.

I'm getting back on track though no way I want to carry around that much weight again it made life harder and it made me diabetic and my goal is 165 lbs.

We can do it, do what you did to get to where you are, tighten up your calorie counting, switch up.your food and recipes if bored with it, stay hydrated with water , tea,, coffee calorie free drinks and if you have a special treat have a small serving and account for.it. change exercises if the ones your doing are tedious and keep.coming here for support, you got this. 🙃🤗

Nicoles0305

@californiagirl1969 omg it’s so frustrating isn’t it?! I had seen 186 too, for a day in January, but not again since.

I’m pretty consistent in eating lots of salads and healthy foods. I’m thinking maybe next week I’ll do high protein lunches- meats, cheeses, etc. and see if it encourages any kind of downward movement.

Cheesy567

Stay the course. You know what works for you to lose weight.

There’s a great post out there somewhere in the MFP forums titled something to the tune of “On diet breaks and Refeeds” that you might want to look up and read. One week is good, but your body is taking its own unscheduled maintenance break, and you might want to do an intentional refeed and see how high you can push your calorie intake, gradually, while still maintaining. Especially if you’ve started exercising or weight training during your weight loss. Your needs might have changed. You didn’t outline what your maintenance break entailed— I’m not referring to a break where you go hog wild and eat everything you’ve been missing out on and have a week of 5000 calorie days… it’s more like you eat 100-200 calories a day more each week until you’re no longer maintaining. Just a smidge. Then hang out there for a couple weeks, then resume your deficit. That post I refer to talks about it all in much better detail and reasoning.

You might list out the habits that have brought you this far. Think about goal habits with your diet that might help you with the next step. Do you weigh all of your food? Every bite and lick? Do you log each and every day? Where can you cut back— can you take half a portion or cheese, half a portion of fat, half a portion of nut butters, half a portion of dressings? What can you add in? Are you eating veggies at each meal? Where can you double that? If you’ve already hit the low hanging fruit diet-wise, you might need to hit the mid-hanging fruit, you know?

I’ve lost about 95 pounds over the past couple years, after years of yo-yo-ing the same 40 pounds. I’ve found that I need a maintenance break every fall into winter, then can start to lose in the spring. Sometimes my body has its own plans and takes its own break, too. I just stay the course. Maintenance is its own skill and a useful one, learning to maintain isn’t a bad thing, embrace is as a win and move on with it.

You’ve got this. A bump in the road isn’t the end of the road, it’s a chance to pause and learn.

AnnPT77

Unfortunately, three weeks is not long enough to evaluate a new regimen. If adult and female, it's one to two menstrual cycles, so you can compare body weight at the same relevant point in each. (Hormonal water fluctuations can be very distorting otherwise.) For others who don't have hormonal cycles, 4-6 weeks at least.

You've increased your calories somewhat. That tends to cause a water weight jump in itself, even if still below maintenance calories (probably a bit more carbohydrates and sodium, even if still a sensible amount of either), plus there's more food on average en route to becoming waste. So, scale goes up, even if body fat doesn't increase. That masks any fat loss on the scale, so it'll take a while to see the result. That water retention increase needs time to sort itself out, rebalance.

After that, one of two things can be triggered by a small calorie increase: The most likely (statistically) is that you'll lose weight more slowly than previously. If your energy level has been depressed, or cortisol/stress water weight has been an issue, there's a chance (even though in a population-statistics sense it's a less likely thing) that your energy level will slightly perk up, your body will feel less stressed, and you'll see your fat loss on the scale more clearly, in a more satisfying way, going forward.

Which of those is happening won't be obvious immediately. At least 4-6 weeks, whole menstrual cycles if that applies to you. You're not there yet.

In your other thread (early February), you mentioned having water retention in your calves. Has that resolved? If not, that can also be a factor in what you see on the scale, further confusing matters.

I hope this change will be a good one for you, but I doubt that you're seeing the full effects in just 3 weeks, unfortunately.

P.S. People will tell you things about needing to switch up exercise to "confuse your body" (myth), to switch up your macros (not likely to be a big deal unless something is distinctly sub-par nutritionally), etc. I'm a skeptic of those specifics, obviously, but the main point I'd make is the one above: If you switch strategies very frequently, it will never be clear which things had which effects, because it takes several weeks to see an accurate result from a new routine. Unfortunately!

Best wishes, sincerely!

Nicoles0305

Thanks @AnnPT77 for being such a great voice of reason. I’ll keep going with my current plan and just wait it out a bit longer.

In regards to the water retention, it seems to have resolved, and doc didn’t seem terribly concerned considering otherwise I’m perfectly healthy. Told me I could use compression stockings if I wanted to, but I haven’t yet.

MomLarisa

One thing I rarely hear mentioned is that the lower your weight, the fewer calories your body needs to maintain and the more efficient it gets in using those calories. This is one of the reasons people plateau. Try going through your set up again entering your current weight to see if you should still be at the same calorie consumption. I'm a 6 foot tall woman and my calorie goals for the day are only 1400 but my BMI is already at 21. So in the healthy range. I will never be able to eat 1800 or 2000 calories a day and maintain, I'd gain like crazy. This is whay so many fall off the wagon. They reduce calories, their body gets more efficient and then they either have to reduce more or they gain again. It's rough for sure. hang in there

Nicoles0305

MomLarisa wrote: »

One thing I rarely hear mentioned is that the lower your weight, the fewer calories your body needs to maintain and the more efficient it gets in using those calories. This is one of the reasons people plateau. Try going through your set up again entering your current weight to see if you should still be at the same calorie consumption. I'm a 6 foot tall woman and my calorie goals for the day are only 1400 but my BMI is already at 21. So in the healthy range. I will never be able to eat 1800 or 2000 calories a day and maintain, I'd gain like crazy. This is whay so many fall off the wagon. They reduce calories, their body gets more efficient and then they either have to reduce more or they gain again. It's rough for sure. hang in there

I’ve played with lowering too, but it didn’t help. And too long spent at <1400 really messes with my mental state. My doctor told me I’m likely under eating for my activity level. She told me I should actually probably be around 1800 calories to lose. I work out 3 times a week for 55 minutes, typically a ride on the Peloton. I know the common advice here is to set activity level as sedentary, then eat back a portion of exercise calories. I tried setting it to sedentary, and to get any sort of loss according to MFP’s calculations, it put me at no more than 1400 a day, and if I wanted to lose more than 1/2 lbs a week, it’s more like 1200.

I was 1300-1450 calories for a while before the holidays. I was still doing so at the beginning of January, up until I started just bouncing around. I upped my calories based on my doctor’s advice. But I am still a little unclear about how to enter my activity level into MFP. I do the 3 days a week of 55 minutes, but other than that, I’m not super active. I do personal shopping for work, which puts me out shopping for about 3-4 hours a morning 2-3 times a week. I’ve been doing about 10,000 steps a day. So what activity level is that? I currently have it set as lightly active.

AnnPT77

Nicoles0305 wrote: »

MomLarisa wrote: »

One thing I rarely hear mentioned is that the lower your weight, the fewer calories your body needs to maintain and the more efficient it gets in using those calories. This is one of the reasons people plateau. Try going through your set up again entering your current weight to see if you should still be at the same calorie consumption. I'm a 6 foot tall woman and my calorie goals for the day are only 1400 but my BMI is already at 21. So in the healthy range. I will never be able to eat 1800 or 2000 calories a day and maintain, I'd gain like crazy. This is whay so many fall off the wagon. They reduce calories, their body gets more efficient and then they either have to reduce more or they gain again. It's rough for sure. hang in there

I’ve played with lowering too, but it didn’t help. And too long spent at <1400 really messes with my mental state. My doctor told me I’m likely under eating for my activity level. She told me I should actually probably be around 1800 calories to lose. I work out 3 times a week for 55 minutes, typically a ride on the Peloton. I know the common advice here is to set activity level as sedentary, then eat back a portion of exercise calories. I tried setting it to sedentary, and to get any sort of loss according to MFP’s calculations, it put me at no more than 1400 a day, and if I wanted to lose more than 1/2 lbs a week, it’s more like 1200.

I was 1300-1450 calories for a while before the holidays. I was still doing so at the beginning of January, up until I started just bouncing around. I upped my calories based on my doctor’s advice. But I am still a little unclear about how to enter my activity level into MFP. I do the 3 days a week of 55 minutes, but other than that, I’m not super active. I do personal shopping for work, which puts me out shopping for about 3-4 hours a morning 2-3 times a week. I’ve been doing about 10,000 steps a day. So what activity level is that? I currently have it set as lightly active.

To the first bolded: I'm not sure that's standard advice? MFP's instructions say to set your activity level based on your life before intentional exercise, like your job, home life, etc. Quite a few people here would recommend the same. That means a bricklayer's apprentice carrying hods of bricks all day is probably highly active (even if she watches TV in the evening); vs. a call center worker who's at a desk all day and lives in a studio apartment with few chores, who'd be sedentary (even if she trains for trains for triathlons in the evening, working out for multiple hours per day).

Then MFP's idea is that a person log their exercise (as accurately and carefully as manageable), and eat back all those calories. Since some people worry about exercise calories being over-estimated, it's fairly common advice here to start by eating back some consistent percentage of them until one accumulates enough personal results data at one calorie level to have a sane statistical basis for adjusting.

Not everyone does that, of course; people have different preferences. (I've always estimated exercise calories carefully, using the best method I could find for each exercise type, then eaten back all of them.)

The point is: You wouldn't consider your workouts when you set your activity level, if you plan to log and eat back exercise calories. Including workouts in activity level, plus logging them separately for caloris, is double counting exercise calories. (If a person wants to average in planned exercise, not log exercise separately, that's fine, but they should get their initial estimate from an outside TDEE calculator that's designed to work that way. I think this is one of the better ones on the web: https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/. It shows the results from several research-based estimating formulas, and has more activity levels (with better descriptions) than most.)

Just for full clarity: Setting activity level to any level at all (accurate or not), then synching a fitness tracker (including enabling negative adjustments in MFP), but not logging exercise manually in MFP, is not double-counting exercise. For a lot of people, that specific scenario is a good plan. In that scenario, setting activity lower than reality tends to result in large positive calorie adjustments, but setting activity higher than reality tends to result in negative calorie adjustments.

To the 2nd bolded:

I'm not very expert on steps-based daily life activity levels (I get laughably few steps that aren't intentional exercise). Also, it can vary a little individually from strict steps counts (like some jobs have "active but not walking lots" characteristics, maybe lifting and moving with their upper body but only a few steps). My understanding is that for most people, 10,000 non-exercise steps would merit the "active" setting. There are other people here who have better data on how non-exercise steps correlate with MFP activity level settings (as a generic estimate) than I do, though.

Regardless, I think the best advice is to run your own experiment:
* Pick whether to use a TDEE calculator (so eat the same number of calories every day, since exercise is averaged in over the week), or use the MFP method (set activity level based on non-exercise life, log and eat back exercise or some percent of it).
* Choose an achievable calorie goal that keeps energy level up, but that's expected to result in reasonable weight loss.
* Stick with that routine for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual periods as mentioned previously, if that applies).
* Use arithmetic to figure out whether that calorie intake results in the expected weight loss, or not. If not, adjust based on the arithmetic.

All any of these so-called calculators (really estimators) are doing is spitting out the average calorie needs for people similar to you on a few superficial characteristics. Most people are close to average, so those estimates will be close for most people. A few people aren't so average, so the "calculator" estimate will be off by a noticeable bit, which can be high or low. A very rare few people are quite surprisingly far off from average, so the estimates are far off for them.

Your own data is a far better guide than any "calculator", once you collect that data carefully. The issue isn't whether calculators are accurate, so much as it's whether you're average or not very much so.

Based on 6+ years of logging, I'm one of the "rare far off from average" people, which became obvious within the first couple of months after I joined MFP. It's still true now. (No, it's not that I have to eat fewer calories than estimated. It's that I get to eat literally hundreds more than estimated for average women in my demographic. MFP's estimate is 25-30% low, on the order of 500 calories. I have some minor ideas about what could contribute to that, but I don't really know for sure why. It's a rare thing, but it can happen.)

I understand that you're thinking you're in the minority case where under-eating is causing you to lose more slowly than expected. That's possible, IMO. That scenario would make things a little more complicated, especially since you've been losing for a while. I feel like it's clearer when people are disciplined about following a regimen when they first start to lose, can figure out whether they're average (or above/below) in calorie needs, before the situation is muddied by possible adaptive changes from long or extreme dieting. But that's just my opinion. 😆

In one sense, weight management by calorie counting is all just a fun science fair experiment for grown-ups.

Nicoles0305

Ok, so if I’m understanding the calculator right, I should be eating an average of 1667 calories daily to get a 1lb/week loss. It tells me BMR is 1559 and TDEE is 2417 based on my best estimate of activity level. If I want 2lb/week, that takes me all the way down to under 1200 daily.

Upon investigating my regime before, I’ve noticed a pattern- I lost best when I ate around 1450 a day, without eating much of my exercise calories back. BUT ALSO, I think I may have found the cause for my stall! My peloton syncs with MFP, and I noticed that one week, my rides were getting me a calorie burn of around 400, then the next week, same length of time and same intensity, the numbers are looking a whole lot different! I’m not sure what happened there. I can only guess it has to do with the HRM I had tried using that week before my calorie burn numbers started going up inexplicably. I mean, I had been riding 45 minutes, 14-16 mph, and burning 400ish calories. Now I do 55 minutes, at a 20mph pace and burn 1000+?! I mean, I know I’m pushing myself a little harder, but enough in 10 minutes and 4mph to more than double my calorie burn? Doesn’t seem right to me. I’m going to try to get that HRM to work right tonight and see what happens. Maybe that’s the culprit. Idk. If I can’t get it to function correctly, I’ll be getting a new one this weekend. I’m determined to get to the bottom of this.

AnnPT77

Nicoles0305 wrote: »

Ok, so if I’m understanding the calculator right, I should be eating an average of 1667 calories daily to get a 1lb/week loss. It tells me BMR is 1559 and TDEE is 2417 based on my best estimate of activity level. If I want 2lb/week, that takes me all the way down to under 1200 daily.

Upon investigating my regime before, I’ve noticed a pattern- I lost best when I ate around 1450 a day, without eating much of my exercise calories back. BUT ALSO, I think I may have found the cause for my stall! My peloton syncs with MFP, and I noticed that one week, my rides were getting me a calorie burn of around 400, then the next week, same length of time and same intensity, the numbers are looking a whole lot different! I’m not sure what happened there. I can only guess it has to do with the HRM I had tried using that week before my calorie burn numbers started going up inexplicably. I mean, I had been riding 45 minutes, 14-16 mph, and burning 400ish calories. Now I do 55 minutes, at a 20mph pace and burn 1000+?! I mean, I know I’m pushing myself a little harder, but enough in 10 minutes and 4mph to more than double my calorie burn? Doesn’t seem right to me. I’m going to try to get that HRM to work right tonight and see what happens. Maybe that’s the culprit. Idk. If I can’t get it to function correctly, I’ll be getting a new one this weekend. I’m determined to get to the bottom of this.

There ya go: Science fair approach!

If you aren't well over 200 pounds, don't go for 2 pounds a week, would be my advice . . . particularly if you have athletic performance or body composition goals alongside. A goal of 0.5-1% (tops) of current weight, as weight loss per week is a decent idea, from a health-promotion standpoint . . . and it might be smart to go even slower within 10-25 pounds of goal weight, depending on some other details. Pound a week sounds pretty reasonable, still.

A thousand calories in less than an hour is . . . well, improbable, IMO. Not impossible. Incremental increases in intensity can sometimes yield disproportionate increases in calorie burn (measured in fairly accurate ways, such as a power meter - heart rate monitor is chancy, even). But that big a difference, 400 or so to 1000+? Ehhh, dunno.

To burn 1000 calories an hour on a Concept 2 rowing machine (which is well metered), someone my size would need to go at a pace that I can't achieve at all even for 2 minutes let alone an hour, and that would be approximately the same pace as the world record pace for lightweight women (which I am) in a prime age group, 19-29 (which I'm not).

Now, rowing is a very different sport from cycling, I'm just throwing it out there as a comparison because I'm more familiar with rowing than cycling . . . and cycling is a good calorie burner . . . but 1000 calories in an hour is a lot.

At about your current weight (assuming your weight graph above is pounds), based on a heart rate monitor (questionable source), I figured I was getting something in the high 300s to low 400s of calories in a 50-minute spin class working pretty hard, FWIW. (It was a thing I'd been doing for years at that weight, in a context of other CV exercise beyond just that, so I was capable of working fairly hard at that point, and did my best to make that happen.) You may be able to work harder than that, not saying otherwise, just offering comparative data. If your bike gives you a watts estimate, that might be useful for estimating calories, but I wouldn't necessarily trust a mph-based estimate.

I think you're doing some good thinking about this here . . . maybe some other stationary cyclist with good power metering can give some subjective feedback on the likelihood of that 1000 calories/hour idea.

Nicoles0305

I googled watts to calorie burn calculators. Yeah… according to them, the Pelo is giving me some insane numbers. I couldn’t get my HRM to work right tonight, so I’m going to get a new one. Till then, I think I’ll manually adjust the calories for my workouts to the numbers the watts to calorie calculators are giving me.

AnnPT77

Nicoles0305 wrote: »

I googled watts to calorie burn calculators. Yeah… according to them, the Pelo is giving me some insane numbers. I couldn’t get my HRM to work right tonight, so I’m going to get a new one. Till then, I think I’ll manually adjust the calories for my workouts to the numbers the watts to calorie calculators are giving me.

If you have an accurate watts number, that's probably a better estimate than a HRM will provide.

Bridgie3

I want to thank you for this thread, because I was having a massive sad, having lost only 2kg in 3 weeks of about 1000 - 1400 calories a day intake. I was wondering what the point was.

But I am diabetic, and this diet is controlling my blood sugar, so I'm kind of stuck; also whereas when I have a tanty and eat everything I can avoid logging on MFP - but the glucometer in my arm keeps on sucking that information out into the little mothership and giving me graphs so I don't really escape my behaviour.

After reading this thread I feel more centred. just keep on trucking. keep on going. Trust the physics. first law of thermodynamics (or is it 2nd law) one of them.

Anyway thanks. And I'm right there behind you, staring 90kg in the eye, going over, then under, then over, then under, for two weeks so far. right now I'm 89.9. I can't even weigh in; I weighed less than that a week ago.

Nicoles0305

Back for an update!

I cut back on my calorie intake over the weekend, back to the 1450ish I had been doing previously. When I exercised, I didn’t use the numbers MFP gave me when deciding how much to “eat back.” Two days into the changes and I’m down a pound! Happy scale shows a nice downward direction now, and a new low moving average.

I did get a Fitbit last night, but I’m still figuring it all out. It seems awful sensitive to arm motions when I’m using my hands for rolling out dough balls like I did this morning. That task alone gave me 6000 “steps.” 😂 But I will figure this gadget out and how to make it work for me.

And then there’s the fact that someone called me skinny today. DAY MADE.