Losing weight too sliwly
scattyannie88
Posts: 9 Member
I have been doing WW for 11 month. I am 65, female 5 foot 2 and weigh 146 pounds. I have only lost 7 pounds in all that time. I stick to plan, weigh and measure foods go swimming and do 3 x 45 mins aqua class weekly. Can someone please offer some proper help as to what to do to get the scales moving. Need to lose around another 10 pounds to get to top of healthy bmi. Thank you.
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Replies
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Not sure what you mean by “sticking to plan” but it sounds like you are eating at maintenance (or above and then exercising a bit). I don’t know how weight watchers works but why don’t you try setting up here and getting an actual calorie goal and buying a kitchen scale so you can weigh everything you eat and record it to track more accurately. If you keep within the recommended calories (i.e. less than your maintenance for your stated activity level before any exercise) then you will lose. Your calorie needs are likely to be fairly low given your height. Don’t overestimate how much you burn with planned exercising and can therefore “eat back” (probably around 150 calories per day) and you should be fine.7
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What does 'weigh and mesure foods' mean?
Are you actually counting your calorie intake, or just following WW? I'm not a WW expert, but I know their points don't accurately reflect calories, so you may just be eating too many calories.3 -
Well, if you're not losing then WW's system is no longer enough.
Like Sinisterbarbie said above - use your food scale and log food here as well as WW.
Then in a month when you have good data, lower your daily calories by 250. That will give you a half pound loss per week if you are on point with the logging.
With 10 pounds to lose, expect it to take time. Months. It took me nine months to lose the last 15. I prepared all my own meals, logged all my food to the gram using my digital food scale (not measuring cups or spoons,) exercised daily, and I was hungry a lot of the time.5 -
J mean I am sticking to recommended points on a daily basis and weigh my food so I know my points are correct for the portion size. If I use my fitness pal do I put settings as lightly active or sedentary thank you1
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It says 1200 sedentary 0,5 weekly and 1370 lightly active 0.5 weekly which do you think better1
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scattyannie88 wrote: »It says 1200 sedentary 0,5 weekly and 1370 lightly active 0.5 weekly which do you think better
What is your daily activity other than the 3 aqua classes per week?
If you are fairly busy, running errands, cleaning, etc. every day, lightly active is good. See what happens after a couple of weeks at 1370 and then you can reassess.
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scattyannie88 wrote: »It says 1200 sedentary 0,5 weekly and 1370 lightly active 0.5 weekly which do you think better
Start with Lightly Active.
Just because your WW points are okay, don't assume they're right - but to be fair, you've lost 7 pounds in the past 11 months, and as you get closer to a healthy weight it just gets harder and slower. This is the time to really work on good long-term habits. It's not at all easy for that last 20 pounds, so well done!
Like Rockmama said above, do the, "Lose 1/2 pound per week," and Lightly Active for a month and then reassess. If you are not getting the results you input, then you are still off. The bad news is that you cannot use a large calorie deficit with so little to lose and that means accuracy is of higher importance. It's a narrow margin of error, and easy to erase that small deficit with a few mistakes or forgotten cookies. It's easy to lose when you have a lot to lose, not so much when there is little left to go.
If you use "Lightly Active" that is just to cover your daily regular activity - housework, job, errands, etc. If you are doing additional extra purposeful exercise like an AquaFit class, eat a couple hundred calories more on those days to fuel that additional work. Log exercise on the "Exercise" tab here on this site. That's how the site is set up.
Here's how they calculate:
https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-3 -
Thank you to everyone x
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You’re in a tiny deficit. If you’re figuring in exercise calories into your daily equation, stop and don’t figure exercise calories. That will help by not allowing those calories to go into your daily allowance. That will help some but possibly not enough as those calories won’t be a lot when figured in your weekly TDEE which is total calories burned through your BMR, NEAT. (Daily movements that aren’t exercise), and your exercises. You will probably have to also lower your weekly calories a bit.0
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »You’re in a tiny deficit. If you’re figuring in exercise calories into your daily equation, stop and don’t figure exercise calories. That will help by not allowing those calories to go into your daily allowance. That will help some but possibly not enough as those calories won’t be a lot when figured in your weekly TDEE which is total calories burned through your BMR, NEAT. (Daily movements that aren’t exercise), and your exercises. You will probably have to also lower your weekly calories a bit.
I don't agree with this.
If she's going to use Myfitnesspal and she doesn't have much to lose, why would you tell her not to use this tool as it is designed? You continue to advocate for a system that is NOT how this site works.
Sure, any of us could make up our own way to do things. If I'm using a tool, I want to use it the way it is meant to be used. That gives me the most control over my results.
I wouldn't try to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. ::shrug::
scattyannie, if you don't want to eat more on Exercise days, then change your Activity Level to "Active." That will spread out your exercise calories over the entire week. Each bump "up" in Activity Level gives an additional 250 calories. tomcustombuilder just doesn't explain his reasoning, which would make his viewpoint make more sense, so....whatever.3 -
cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »You’re in a tiny deficit. If you’re figuring in exercise calories into your daily equation, stop and don’t figure exercise calories. That will help by not allowing those calories to go into your daily allowance. That will help some but possibly not enough as those calories won’t be a lot when figured in your weekly TDEE which is total calories burned through your BMR, NEAT. (Daily movements that aren’t exercise), and your exercises. You will probably have to also lower your weekly calories a bit.
I don't agree with this.
If she's going to use Myfitnesspal and she doesn't have much to lose, why would you tell her not to use this tool as it is designed? You continue to advocate for a system that is NOT how this site works.
Sure, any of us could make up our own way to do things. If I'm using a tool, I want to use it the way it is meant to be used. That gives me the most control over my results.
I wouldn't try to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. ::shrug::
scattyannie, if you don't want to eat more on Exercise days, then change your Activity Level to "Active." That will spread out your exercise calories over the entire week. Each bump "up" in Activity Level gives an additional 250 calories. tomcustombuilder just doesn't explain his reasoning, which would make his viewpoint make more sense, so....whatever.
By her eliminating exercise calories from the equation that lowers daily allowances and eliminates a part of the equation that may be inaccurate. The goal of OP I’m sure is to be successful by whatever means possible. People can be successful with the site by figuring all exercise calories, some do 50% and some do none. You have that option so you may as well use whatever works for the person using it.
An additional 250 a day is probably way more extra calories per week than 3 swim sessions burn so that may be counterproductive.
As far as tools, a Swiss Army Knife has many available uses and you use whatever works best at the time.
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »
wouldn’t bumping up activity allow for MORE daily calories? That seems to be going in the wrong direction for someone that needs to decrease calorie consumption. Couple that with figuring exercise calories (which may be being figured too high) and things will be off.cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »You’re in a tiny deficit. If you’re figuring in exercise calories into your daily equation, stop and don’t figure exercise calories. That will help by not allowing those calories to go into your daily allowance. That will help some but possibly not enough as those calories won’t be a lot when figured in your weekly TDEE which is total calories burned through your BMR, NEAT. (Daily movements that aren’t exercise), and your exercises. You will probably have to also lower your weekly calories a bit.
I don't agree with this.
If she's going to use Myfitnesspal and she doesn't have much to lose, why would you tell her not to use this tool as it is designed? You continue to advocate for a system that is NOT how this site works.
Sure, any of us could make up our own way to do things. If I'm using a tool, I want to use it the way it is meant to be used. That gives me the most control over my results.
I wouldn't try to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. ::shrug::
scattyannie, if you don't want to eat more on Exercise days, then change your Activity Level to "Active." That will spread out your exercise calories over the entire week. Each bump "up" in Activity Level gives an additional 250 calories. tomcustombuilder just doesn't explain his reasoning, which would make his viewpoint make more sense, so....whatever.
By her eliminating exercise calories from the equation that lowers daily allowances and eliminates a part of the equation that may be inaccurate. The goal of OP I’m sure is to be successful by whatever means possible. People can be successful with the site by figuring all exercise calories, some do 50% and some do none. You have that option so you may as well use whatever works for the person using it.
Sure. You and I both understand How It Works.
I'm sure she knows that fewer calories are what causes weight loss.
What she does NOT know is how to use this site's setup wizard, and the fact that it uses entirely different calculation start numbers than Weight Watchers or any other TDEE type calculator. She has nine total posts. She's just starting to use this site.
Why try to confuse a newcomer with all kinds of red herrings? Just use the tool as designed, which means you account for your exercise by entering it into the Exercise tab/section and it is accounted separately on the site's calculator and in your FOOD diary/calorie allotment.
If she wants to do it some other way - such as rolling exercise into a TDEE, then deducting for a deficit, fine, but at least understand that what tomcustombuilder is suggesting is not the way this site calculates.
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Weight watchers and points and the calories they reflect are different. Loosely but not perfectly related.
Free foods tend to be great caloric bargains that could/should feature prominently in one's diet (in the sense of foods that they eat everyday), but they're not free! They still have to be logged more often than not carefully.
Yes, I even used to log lettuce on the scale!
Regardless of what you choose, your deficit is going to be tiny.
There are a couple of things that you can benefit from.
the first Is a weight trend application or website. My usual suggestions are happy Scale for iPhone Libra for Android and trendweight or weightgrapher for websites. I'm sure there's more good ones that have come out in the past few years since I last checked on options. Neither of the two websites requires a device or any payment as you can sign up for the necessary accounts for free to enter your data on both of them.
The second is not only patience but to truly start developing the style of eating and moving your planning to continue with at maintenance.
Your height and age combination pretty much define a relatively speaking small budget for calories moving forward, unless you are significantly more active than your average cat!
So developing how you're going to be doing things in the future is necessary in order to be able to maintain your loss.
It is hard to know how active people tend to be
If you snag one of these wrist devices and your averaging in the 3500 step range a day, you're solidly in the sedentary category. Once you start hitting 5000 plus a day I would move to the lightly active and once you're closer to 10,000 to active.
This would be assuming you do not connect the device and that it doesn't synchronize with mfp
The advice above is somewhat taking into account that people expect you to not always log absolutely everything due to common logging errors that people make with no ill intent.
I would be more concerned with a weight watchers mentality of a single weight in a week and frustration over not seeing results.
My second year on MFP I lost just over 11 lbs, and if that had been my only experience and if I wasn't using a weight trend app, I would have probably quit in despair over not seeing results
Of course I wasn't really looking for those results as my primary reason for doing things so I wasn't affected in that way. But it is definitely frustrating to weigh more at the end of the month then you did at the beginning. Yet this can definitely be true while still losing at a rate that ends with you being down 11 lb+ in a year 🤷♂️6 -
Yes, add workouts to MFP as intended.
Yes, ingest those calories back.
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.3 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »Yes, add workouts to MFP as intended.
Yes, ingest those calories back.
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Yeah, I would expect a one-hour AquaFit class to burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-250 calories depending on how vigorously one moved, so that would be what I would enter into the "Exercise" box here on this site.
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I was involved in the BB.com forum for 15 years and there were a decent amount of people coming over from MFP with the same problem, can't lose weight. After diving into it with them they were using food numbers that were incorrect, as most would just choose the entries with the lowest amounts and were way overestimating their workout calories. Once they were told how to dial things in they started seeing progress. One of the main factors was they stopped eating back workout calories and besides being more accurate with their overall deficit numbers it also simplified the process.Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Food for thought and nothing more....
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scattyannie88 wrote: »I have been doing WW for 11 month. I am 65, female 5 foot 2 and weigh 146 pounds. I have only lost 7 pounds in all that time. I stick to plan, weigh and measure foods go swimming and do 3 x 45 mins aqua class weekly. Can someone please offer some proper help as to what to do to get the scales moving. Need to lose around another 10 pounds to get to top of healthy bmi. Thank you.
These are current 2023 ww free foods, but we all know, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
I don't want to marsh anyone's mellow, but this thing is designed in such a way, that you will keep going for the rest of your life. My grandmother did. She never lost a single pound. It was a club, and she had whopping boatloads of fun at those meetings. She tried to conduct herself properly during the week, but after the meeting, that all went out the window.
She was willing to give up all of her weekly progress, with a food lollapalooza celebration, after every meeting.
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »
I was involved in the BB.com forum for 15 years and there were a decent amount of people coming over from MFP with the same problem, can't lose weight. After diving into it with them they were using food numbers that were incorrect, as most would just choose the entries with the lowest amounts and were way overestimating their workout calories. Once they were told how to dial things in they started seeing progress. One of the main factors was they stopped eating back workout calories and besides being more accurate with their overall deficit numbers it also simplified the process.Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Food for thought and nothing more....
You don't think we see those same people here?
Undereating is a problem as well.
Know your audience. You're more than welcome to give your, "Don't eat exercise calories," advice over on BB.com.
Why do you want to create problems here, though? I mean, this lady has only a few pounds to lose and you're telling her that it's A-OK to ignore the recommended calories and eat under that amount.
Then she'll be posting that, "I can't stop binging. Why am I not able to stick to this [too extreme] deficit?"
I just don't see how you're helping. Yes, she has a tiny deficit. Yes, exercise calories do get inflated and food database items can be wrong but why also tell her, "The site sucks, basically. Use MY numbers instead." If she uses it as it is supposed to be used at least she'll have good data to make decisions. Your way will have her all over the place, under-eating then over-eating.
Just log the food, log the exercise, watch the trends and adjust. Once she knows her actual calorie needs (not WW points) then she can do what she wants.
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cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »
I was involved in the BB.com forum for 15 years and there were a decent amount of people coming over from MFP with the same problem, can't lose weight. After diving into it with them they were using food numbers that were incorrect, as most would just choose the entries with the lowest amounts and were way overestimating their workout calories. Once they were told how to dial things in they started seeing progress. One of the main factors was they stopped eating back workout calories and besides being more accurate with their overall deficit numbers it also simplified the process.Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Food for thought and nothing more....
You don't think we see those same people here?
Undereating is a problem as well.
Know your audience. You're more than welcome to give your, "Don't eat exercise calories," advice over on BB.com.
Why do you want to create problems here, though? I mean, this lady has only a few pounds to lose and you're telling her that it's A-OK to ignore the recommended calories and eat under that amount.
Then she'll be posting that, "I can't stop binging. Why am I not able to stick to this [too extreme] deficit?"
I just don't see how you're helping. Yes, she has a tiny deficit. Yes, exercise calories do get inflated and food database items can be wrong but why also tell her, "The site sucks, basically. Use MY numbers instead." If she uses it as it is supposed to be used at least she'll have good data to make decisions. Your way will have her all over the place, under-eating then over-eating.
Just log the food, log the exercise, watch the trends and adjust. Once she knows her actual calorie needs (not WW points) then she can do what she wants.
So the people that log 50% of exercise calories are also wrong?
I think you're over projecting things.0 -
Hiawassee88 wrote: »scattyannie88 wrote: »I have been doing WW for 11 month. I am 65, female 5 foot 2 and weigh 146 pounds. I have only lost 7 pounds in all that time. I stick to plan, weigh and measure foods go swimming and do 3 x 45 mins aqua class weekly. Can someone please offer some proper help as to what to do to get the scales moving. Need to lose around another 10 pounds to get to top of healthy bmi. Thank you.
These are current 2023 ww free foods, but we all know, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
I don't want to marsh anyone's mellow, but this thing is designed in such a way, that you will keep going for the rest of your life. My grandmother did. She never lost a single pound. It was a club, and she had whopping boatloads of fun at those meetings. She tried to conduct herself properly during the week, but after the meeting, that all went out the window.
She was willing to give up all of her weekly progress, with a food lollapalooza celebration, after every meeting.
lolol - I worked at a TGIFridays and every Tuesday at 9PM a big group of overweight ladies came in and all orders lots of food. TGIF was not known as a low-cal dining establishment even on its best day. Turns out they had just left a TOPS meeting. It's some group called Take Off Pounds Sensibly. And yeah, we always said, "Yep, then go put it back on after your weigh in."
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@cmriverside We must always ask ourselves, just how much of your weekly progress are you willing to give up.
I ask myself that, for real. 4 -
cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »
I was involved in the BB.com forum for 15 years and there were a decent amount of people coming over from MFP with the same problem, can't lose weight. After diving into it with them they were using food numbers that were incorrect, as most would just choose the entries with the lowest amounts and were way overestimating their workout calories. Once they were told how to dial things in they started seeing progress. One of the main factors was they stopped eating back workout calories and besides being more accurate with their overall deficit numbers it also simplified the process.Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Food for thought and nothing more....
You don't think we see those same people here?
Undereating is a problem as well.
Know your audience. You're more than welcome to give your, "Don't eat exercise calories," advice over on BB.com.
Why do you want to create problems here, though? I mean, this lady has only a few pounds to lose and you're telling her that it's A-OK to ignore the recommended calories and eat under that amount.
Then she'll be posting that, "I can't stop binging. Why am I not able to stick to this [too extreme] deficit?"
I just don't see how you're helping. Yes, she has a tiny deficit. Yes, exercise calories do get inflated and food database items can be wrong but why also tell her, "The site sucks, basically. Use MY numbers instead." If she uses it as it is supposed to be used at least she'll have good data to make decisions. Your way will have her all over the place, under-eating then over-eating.
Just log the food, log the exercise, watch the trends and adjust. Once she knows her actual calorie needs (not WW points) then she can do what she wants.
The "eat exercise calories" "wait, no, don't eat exercise calories!" "Wait, eat, some, but not all, your exercise calories, while standing in a sumo squat" argument is one that's never going to end on here. Neither way is right or wrong, honestly, because most people, yes, even people on here, are dramatically miscalculating both their food and exercise calories, and always will. So really, it doesn't matter either way. I've never, not once, eaten back exercise calories.2 -
lol, right?sollyn23l2 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »
I was involved in the BB.com forum for 15 years and there were a decent amount of people coming over from MFP with the same problem, can't lose weight. After diving into it with them they were using food numbers that were incorrect, as most would just choose the entries with the lowest amounts and were way overestimating their workout calories. Once they were told how to dial things in they started seeing progress. One of the main factors was they stopped eating back workout calories and besides being more accurate with their overall deficit numbers it also simplified the process.Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Food for thought and nothing more....
You don't think we see those same people here?
Undereating is a problem as well.
Know your audience. You're more than welcome to give your, "Don't eat exercise calories," advice over on BB.com.
Why do you want to create problems here, though? I mean, this lady has only a few pounds to lose and you're telling her that it's A-OK to ignore the recommended calories and eat under that amount.
Then she'll be posting that, "I can't stop binging. Why am I not able to stick to this [too extreme] deficit?"
I just don't see how you're helping. Yes, she has a tiny deficit. Yes, exercise calories do get inflated and food database items can be wrong but why also tell her, "The site sucks, basically. Use MY numbers instead." If she uses it as it is supposed to be used at least she'll have good data to make decisions. Your way will have her all over the place, under-eating then over-eating.
Just log the food, log the exercise, watch the trends and adjust. Once she knows her actual calorie needs (not WW points) then she can do what she wants.
The "eat exercise calories" "wait, no, don't eat exercise calories!" "Wait, eat, some, but not all, your exercise calories, while standing in a sumo squat" argument is one that's never going to end on here. Neither way is right or wrong, honestly, because most people, yes, even people on here, are dramatically miscalculating both their food and exercise calories, and always will. So really, it
doesn't matter either way. I've never, not once, eaten back exercise calories.
The exercise calories addition feature is a nice feature if that is something you want to utilize however it isn’t necessary if you have a formula that works without it.
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sollyn23l2 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »
I was involved in the BB.com forum for 15 years and there were a decent amount of people coming over from MFP with the same problem, can't lose weight. After diving into it with them they were using food numbers that were incorrect, as most would just choose the entries with the lowest amounts and were way overestimating their workout calories. Once they were told how to dial things in they started seeing progress. One of the main factors was they stopped eating back workout calories and besides being more accurate with their overall deficit numbers it also simplified the process.Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Yes, use a conservative estimate for the workout calories. For several reasons, those estimates can be too high. If you want a 250 daily deficit, and you estimate 500 burned in a workout which was actually 250, there goes your planned deficit.
Food for thought and nothing more....
You don't think we see those same people here?
Undereating is a problem as well.
Know your audience. You're more than welcome to give your, "Don't eat exercise calories," advice over on BB.com.
Why do you want to create problems here, though? I mean, this lady has only a few pounds to lose and you're telling her that it's A-OK to ignore the recommended calories and eat under that amount.
Then she'll be posting that, "I can't stop binging. Why am I not able to stick to this [too extreme] deficit?"
I just don't see how you're helping. Yes, she has a tiny deficit. Yes, exercise calories do get inflated and food database items can be wrong but why also tell her, "The site sucks, basically. Use MY numbers instead." If she uses it as it is supposed to be used at least she'll have good data to make decisions. Your way will have her all over the place, under-eating then over-eating.
Just log the food, log the exercise, watch the trends and adjust. Once she knows her actual calorie needs (not WW points) then she can do what she wants.
The "eat exercise calories" "wait, no, don't eat exercise calories!" "Wait, eat, some, but not all, your exercise calories, while standing in a sumo squat" argument is one that's never going to end on here. Neither way is right or wrong, honestly, because most people, yes, even people on here, are dramatically miscalculating both their food and exercise calories, and always will. So really, it doesn't matter either way. I've never, not once, eaten back exercise calories.
Yes, it's an ongoing discussion.
Riverside is right about the way the site is designed.
And I've eaten back every carefully estimated exercise calorie, all through losing from obese to a healthy weight in just under a year, and in 7+ years of maintenance since.
The TDEE method (not eating back exercise calories, averaging them in instead) can work great, especially for a person who has a consistent exercise schedule, or fairly minor exercise with a non-hyper-aggressive loss rate . . . or, actually even just for someone who prefers to have the same calorie goal every day.
For people like me, who have seasonal and weather (or other) variability in exercise schedules to a meaningful degree, or who will have breaks when they can't exercise (surgical recovery, illness, job demands, whatever), or are more hungry on exercise days . . . the MFP base calories + exercise method works great.
The MFP method is also excellent for people who find that a fitness tracker synced to MFP reflects their calorie needs quite well . . . as many people will, because those things estimate based on population averages, and most people are close to average by definition.
I agree that we see stories like Tom describes, lowballing food logging, overestimating exercise too optimistically. We also see stories where people don't consider exercise and just let it increase deficit, who end up at an unsustainable extreme deficit . . . or people who are going along great on a TDEE-based goal then something changes in their activity level and they can't understand why they're gaining on a calorie level that worked well previously.
Add exercise to a non-exercise base (MFP method), or average in exercise (TDEE method): It's a choice. Either method can succeed.
What I think a person ought to want to do is be clear about how their method of choice works, and how to adjust in a "good science fair project" kind of way to dial in desired results over time. Mixing the methods, or confusing how they're supposed to work - not helpful.7 -
Knowing myself, if I didn't eat back any exercise calories then it increases my likely deficit to the point that I become more likely to binge sooner and more severely than when I manage a smaller deficit by eating back a conservatively estimated amount of workout calories.
Plus there are times when I have a deload week, and if I do say 60% of the usual weights volume then calories expended aren't going to be much different, but if I take multiple days off, or if I'm traveling and unable to work out, then maintaining an increased MFP activity level to account for assumed workouts that aren't happening would be bad for me.
I suspect bodybuilders have better self-control while cutting than the average person does.6 -
I've long wondered about the "social club" aspect of various methods. I mean THIS is a social club too, I guess, but I've long wondered about people who seem to me that they would rather talk about their weight loss attempts vs doing something about it.
And I've long wondered about the zero calories foods. I mean my yogurt "pot" is almost 500 Cal. The fruit plate on the infographic is a good 500 Cal. The three fried eggs closer to 250 than anything. Not sure about popcorn but if that plate was full of corn... and wow on the beans, peas, and lentils. I mean out of all of them the closest to "zero" calories would be the veggies and the shellfish, I guess; but, has anyone checked out farmed salmon calories?
Yeah: no. Free foods ARE NOT.8 -
Even when you know how to use the tool perfectly well life can get in the way. And it can do so both to make you gain and to lose in unwanted/unhealthy ways. In my case it was my approach of being pretty harsh with myself in terms of purposely overestimating how much I was eating and underestimating/ignoring how much I was exercising (instead of the opposite) that is causing me a bit of grief now.
I weighed everything to the extent possible (in grams) and never paid attention to exercise calories when losing bc I did not want to be overly optimistic about exercise and underestimate calories consumed. I lost at a steady state of about 1 lb a week even though I was eating a level of calories that would have predicted a higher rate of loss at various points. The low calorie consumption was partially unintentional, I had a particularly rough time in the last couple years caring for elderly relatives and would miss meals and taking care of my own health properly even though I was logging etc. I think the weight loss didn’t go more rapidly (like 2lbs per week instead of 1 when I was under eating) because I was just getting closer and closer to goal. It was not my intention to lose any faster, but one might have expected it. Before you say I was just logging improperly and underestimating calories, read on …
When I intended to stop losing I apparently miscalculated maintenance bc I continued to lose. I think it is partially bc I did not ever pay attention to how much I move ( I claimed to be sedentary bc I work as a professor, but I also take care of 3 elderly people (with help) which surprisingly requires at least as much running around as caring for toddlers - in this case you aren’t chasing — mostly fetching and cleaning and lifting and adjusting . . . Constantly. Plus doing everything you have to do for the rest of your family,)
On the eating front, having lost a lot of weight I was afraid to adjust calories upwards too much because there isn’t a lot of play between losing and maintaining — as a result I kept losing until I am actually underweight now and seriously trying to regain. I am trying to do so by adding muscle (which I need for eldercare and my own health) not just fat (which of course I could easily do - and did for a few quick pounds to get back closer to a healthy BMI).
I still think it is useful to have both elements — food and exercise — calculated and adjustable separately. The more customizable to each person’s needs mfp is the better. And having the option of going out to exercise and eating back some calories might get some people who don’t otherwise exercise to move a bit more. Of course that doesn’t mean any one of us will use the tool perfectly or even correctly, but that is a function of our own desire to trick ourselves (or a measure of how well we know ourselves!) and no tool can fix that
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This is an awesome discussion.2
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »This is an awesome discussion.
But no longer on point to OP's question, at least not in any direct way.0 -
Well that went by the wayside early on.
well that went by the wayside early on. Hopefully OP was able to decipher through it all to shoot for a bigger deficit by whatever means necessary.tomcustombuilder wrote: »This is an awesome discussion.
But no longer on point to OP's question, at least not in any direct way.
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