Past solutions not working- what’s next?

Hi, I’m a 47 y/o woman looking to lose 25-30 lbs. I’ve used MFP with moderate success a few times in the last 8-ish years and then I always get off track and the weight comes back.

Now that I’m older, everything I used to do to try and lose weight is no longer working. The scale keeps creeping up. Officially starting over Monday (7/18) and I have a family wedding and my daughter’s graduation in May to keep me motivated. Trying to lose 25-30 lbs.

I just joined a gym and this week will be #4 of HIIT classes MWF for an hour. Now I just need to start tracking my food.

Bloodwork is perfect, so why am I steadily gaining instead of losing or at least maintaining?!

Feel free to add me, looking for others in the same boat to share ideas and stay accountable.

Replies

  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,749 Member
    You are probably eating more than you think you are, so tracking is definitely a good place to start. It can be a real shock to realize how many calories you eat or drink even when eating a healthy diet.

    Your recent weight gain may be water weight due to your recent increase in activity. A hard workout makes you sweat, which makes your body decide to hold on to water for a while so it doesn't get too dehydrated.

    You said your bloodwork was good, so I assume they did thyroid tests? That doesn't usually cause a lot of weight gain, but it can make it harder to lose -- at least it did for me.
  • JenLV228
    JenLV228 Posts: 6 Member
    Yes, they checked thyroid. And maybe so on the water…we shall see once I start tracking this week!
  • Azurite27
    Azurite27 Posts: 554 Member
    Look at some of the pinned posts on how to use MFP effectively. Log everything. Maybe get a food scale to at least see if you're over or underestimating foods. Are you weighing everyday and seeing that number go up? That could be water weight. Are you eating back exercise calories? Exercise calories may be overestimated if not using a device that takes into account your heartrate.
  • JBanx256
    JBanx256 Posts: 1,479 Member
    JenLV228 wrote: »

    Bloodwork is perfect, so why am I steadily gaining instead of losing or at least maintaining?!

    Because you're not in a deficit. If you just started a bunch of new activity, you may be retaining a bit of water from that, but if this is something that is an ongoing issue...you're simply consuming more calories than you're burning.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,629 Member
    Azurite27 wrote: »
    Look at some of the pinned posts on how to use MFP effectively. Log everything. Maybe get a food scale to at least see if you're over or underestimating foods. Are you weighing everyday and seeing that number go up? That could be water weight. Are you eating back exercise calories? Exercise calories may be overestimated if not using a device that takes into account your heartrate.

    Exercise calories may be overestimated even if using a device that takes into account heart rate. Heart rate doesn't correlate exactly with calorie burn. Calorie burn, via cardiovascular methods broadly, correlates reasonably well with oxygen uptake. Heart rate correlates approximately with calorie burn, better in steady state moderate intensities, worse in high/low intensities or interval work. Heart rate is a pretty bad way to estimate exercise with a significant strength component. Individuals differ in oxygen delivery per heart beat, including the same person varying as fitness improves or declines.
    JenLV228 wrote: »
    Hi, I’m a 47 y/o woman looking to lose 25-30 lbs. I’ve used MFP with moderate success a few times in the last 8-ish years and then I always get off track and the weight comes back.

    Now that I’m older, everything I used to do to try and lose weight is no longer working. The scale keeps creeping up. Officially starting over Monday (7/18) and I have a family wedding and my daughter’s graduation in May to keep me motivated. Trying to lose 25-30 lbs.

    I just joined a gym and this week will be #4 of HIIT classes MWF for an hour. Now I just need to start tracking my food.

    Bloodwork is perfect, so why am I steadily gaining instead of losing or at least maintaining?!

    Feel free to add me, looking for others in the same boat to share ideas and stay accountable.

    Weight change (or lack thereof) is all about the balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure. It's pretty easy to eat more when we work out more, not even realize, especially because the caloric value of exercise tends to be smaller than many people assume, and portion creep difficult to recognize if not tracking. (I worked out hard 6 days most weeks for well over a decade, ate mostly healthy foods . . . and stayed class 1 obese.)

    If you're careful about accuracy in the food tracking, I think you'll get some insights, and find ways to make progress. I sure did (and lost over 50 pounds in less than a year at age 59, plus have stayed at a healthy weight since, now 66).

    Another factor, as we age, is that many of us gradually and subtly reduce daily life movement. (We're not chasing toddlers any more, our jobs may involve less physical movement, we hire chores done that we once DIY, hobbies and social activities may become more sedentary, and more.) That has an impact, and it's a thing we can work on changing, too. Ideas from lots of MFP-ers here:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

    If you're patient and persistent, you can do this. Food logging should help.

    Wishing you success!
  • SavageMrsMoose
    SavageMrsMoose Posts: 631 Member
    Hello! I’m in the same place- trying to lose about 30 pounds. My daughter has a graduation next May too! I sent you a friend request! Let’s do this together!

    @AnnPT77 has very good advice. She’s been very successful in her weight loss journey and is an impressive athlete. And she tells it like it is.

    I too exercise regularly and am about 10 pounds over a normal BMI for my height if I just eat and drink whatever I want.

    It is very easy for me to eat more than I realize when exercising intensely because I get HUNGRY. When I try to get to strict with my calories and don’t eat exercise calories- I inevitably fail. It’s not sustainable. And then I just regain the 5 or 6 pounds I manage to lose. I’ve done this A LOT.

    I’m trying to be reasonable about this time - figuring that I might not be the best at estimating food I’m logging and maybe calories from exercise are over estimated, but I try to eat at least half. It’s keeping more on track for the last month. I’ve slipped up a couple times, but it seems to be easier to get back on track.

    My best advice is to do the best you can with logging food and don’t go nuts over the frustrating way that weight loss happens- NOT in a straight line. It’s so easy to get discouraged when the scale doesn’t seem to be a friend. Good luck!
  • Azurite27
    Azurite27 Posts: 554 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Azurite27 wrote: »
    Look at some of the pinned posts on how to use MFP effectively. Log everything. Maybe get a food scale to at least see if you're over or underestimating foods. Are you weighing everyday and seeing that number go up? That could be water weight. Are you eating back exercise calories? Exercise calories may be overestimated if not using a device that takes into account your heartrate.

    Exercise calories may be overestimated even if using a device that takes into account heart rate. Heart rate doesn't correlate exactly with calorie burn. Calorie burn, via cardiovascular methods broadly, correlates reasonably well with oxygen uptake. Heart rate correlates approximately with calorie burn, better in steady state moderate intensities, worse in high/low intensities or interval work. Heart rate is a pretty bad way to estimate exercise with a significant strength component. Individuals differ in oxygen delivery per heart beat, including the same person varying as fitness improves or declines.

    Still more accurate than simple time and current weight as MFP tries to estimate. Always best to pick a certain method and use it consistently and then you can adjust if it is estimating low or high as long term weight changes show.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,629 Member
    Azurite27 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Azurite27 wrote: »
    Look at some of the pinned posts on how to use MFP effectively. Log everything. Maybe get a food scale to at least see if you're over or underestimating foods. Are you weighing everyday and seeing that number go up? That could be water weight. Are you eating back exercise calories? Exercise calories may be overestimated if not using a device that takes into account your heartrate.

    Exercise calories may be overestimated even if using a device that takes into account heart rate. Heart rate doesn't correlate exactly with calorie burn. Calorie burn, via cardiovascular methods broadly, correlates reasonably well with oxygen uptake. Heart rate correlates approximately with calorie burn, better in steady state moderate intensities, worse in high/low intensities or interval work. Heart rate is a pretty bad way to estimate exercise with a significant strength component. Individuals differ in oxygen delivery per heart beat, including the same person varying as fitness improves or declines.

    Still more accurate than simple time and current weight as MFP tries to estimate. Always best to pick a certain method and use it consistently and then you can adjust if it is estimating low or high as long term weight changes show.

    I agree with you about consistent method being more important than precision, in most normal circumstances, definitely, when calorie counting.

    OP's doing HIIT, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the calisthenics-y, strength-circuit-y kind. Heart rate's pretty bad for that. I'd say it's a cr*pshoot whether HR is worse, or MFP's (research-based) METS method is worse, in that scenario. If it were me, and I had both, I'd compare and go with the lower, out of conservatism, but that's just me.

    IMU, some of the better fitness trackers now use METS method in their strength training calorie estimates these days, rather than relying on simply HR. Granted, they probably implement it more cleanly than MFP did.
  • nanastaci2020
    nanastaci2020 Posts: 1,072 Member
    edited July 2022
    You mentioned you've steadily gained - were you logging your calories in during that time? If you were logging AND thought you were at a deficit but gained over weeks/months: then either your logged calories in or your expected calories out are inaccurate. Or both?

    If the weight gain is a short term thing, like over the course of 1-2 weeks: it could easily be due to water retention.

    I am also 47 (48 in October) and back to losing weight again. Lost ~50 in 2014, and now I'm working on losing some of it again. I have done well the past ~6 weeks with getting back into logging & increasing my activity, and feel like I'm making progress. Slowly but surely! I signed up for a half marathon for Mar 4 2023 and I'm starting a couch to 5k. (I'm on week 1.)
  • JenLV228
    JenLV228 Posts: 6 Member
    Thanks everyone. I met with a dietician a few months back which was a bit frustrating because all she wanted to do was sell me Ideal Protein. I’m sure it’s a good program for some but it’s crazy expensive after factoring in regular groceries for a family of four. Plus I don’t want to cook for my family and then I eat something else. She works for our local hospital so it’s not like she was part of some MLM thing, so I was surprised when I went expecting advice and then she started pushing IP.

    Either way, her other piece of advice was NOT to “eat back” the calories burned exercising. She recommended I eat around 1300/day which is about what MFP plugs in for me. My Apple Watch has my HIIT classes burning anywhere from 275-325 calories. There’s not an option to enter that on MFP since it only counts cardio calories, right? So I have been finding something comparable and putting it in so that the calories burned are logged, but NOT eating the calories back. Am I doing something wrong?
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    You haven't answered if you are logging your food accurately... with a food scale and measuring cups for liquids. If you are gaining, you're eating more than you are burning, full stop.
  • JenLV228
    JenLV228 Posts: 6 Member
    Yes, I am measuring. Also wanting to clarify that I have not consistently been logging. I am re-committing starting today with logging. Consistently gaining means that over the last few months, eating as I “normally” do has resulted in gain rather than at least maintaining.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    HIIT is cardio.
    But there's a very high chance what you are doing that is called HIIT isn't HIIT anyway - about 95% of what is advertised as HIIT is more like sub-maximal calisthenics and circuit training.
    (BTW - even pro athletes wouldn't do three sessions of real HIIT every week as that would be an awful way to train!).

    "There’s not an option to enter that on MFP since it only counts cardio calories, right?"
    Wrong - MyFitnessPal doesn't just allocate calorie estimates for pure cardio exercise, you will find entries for both strength training and circuit training in the database. It's just a weird piece of MFP programming where the strength part of the diary is just a journal and only the "cardio" diary has calorie functionality.

    It does sound like consistent food logging is what you need for a few weeks to get some useful data to work with. If you have no confidence in the dietary advice from your product pushing Dietician are you sure you want to take their calorie suggestion?

    Eating a fixed calorie allowance is fine (if that actually suits you) but be aware some of that fixed allowance is from your exercise. Just like it would be if you went from a daily total from your Apple watch, a FitBit or a TDEE calculator.

    BTW - no it's not your age, it's just your calorie balance. Which is good news as that is within your control to influence.
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    JenLV228 wrote: »
    Yes, I am measuring. Also wanting to clarify that I have not consistently been logging. I am re-committing starting today with logging. Consistently gaining means that over the last few months, eating as I “normally” do has resulted in gain rather than at least maintaining.

    There you go. Try that for a few weeks.
  • SavageMrsMoose
    SavageMrsMoose Posts: 631 Member
    You mentioned you've steadily gained - were you logging your calories in during that time? If you were logging AND thought you were at a deficit but gained over weeks/months: then either your logged calories in or your expected calories out are inaccurate. Or both?

    If the weight gain is a short term thing, like over the course of 1-2 weeks: it could easily be due to water retention.

    I am also 47 (48 in October) and back to losing weight again. Lost ~50 in 2014, and now I'm working on losing some of it again. I have done well the past ~6 weeks with getting back into logging & increasing my activity, and feel like I'm making progress. Slowly but surely! I signed up for a half marathon for Mar 4 2023 and I'm starting a couch to 5k. (I'm on week 1.)

    Good luck on your half! I did two fulls this year, but am going to do a half with my daughter in October. Just started my training program today! I recommend Hal Higdon (I think that’s the spelling) you can find a 12 week milage program to follow online for free.

  • SavageMrsMoose
    SavageMrsMoose Posts: 631 Member
    JenLV228 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone. I met with a dietician a few months back which was a bit frustrating because all she wanted to do was sell me Ideal Protein. I’m sure it’s a good program for some but it’s crazy expensive after factoring in regular groceries for a family of four. Plus I don’t want to cook for my family and then I eat something else. She works for our local hospital so it’s not like she was part of some MLM thing, so I was surprised when I went expecting advice and then she started pushing IP.

    Either way, her other piece of advice was NOT to “eat back” the calories burned exercising. She recommended I eat around 1300/day which is about what MFP plugs in for me. My Apple Watch has my HIIT classes burning anywhere from 275-325 calories. There’s not an option to enter that on MFP since it only counts cardio calories, right? So I have been finding something comparable and putting it in so that the calories burned are logged, but NOT eating the calories back. Am I doing something wrong?

    I’m not sure how I linked it, but my Applewatch is linked to my MFP and estimates calories- often mislabeling but approximate. My problem is that if I record on Strava too - which I like to do for other reasons, group challenge, etc. MFP will double count my workouts and I have to manually delete the extras.