Charts Graphs and Pies

herblovinmom

Can someone help me understand how to read and utilize these nutrient charts that show the total and net weekly goals?? I only have this one week full for analyzing. The others I didn’t log completely but it would help if I knew what I was looking at and how to apply that to my goals and use it as a tool. I have attached photos hopefully they are viewable. I have a feeling I’m not in a deficit as I’m just staying within a pound or 2 of my new lowest weight. My weight loss is set to be slow (.5 lb per wk) but it’s been non existent the last couple months. I’m working on logging more consistently through the weekends so I can get more accurate MFP data. But again not sure how to use some of the tools… if anyone can advise. Thanks.

cwolfman13

Those graphs are just showing you what your daily calorie intake is and when you are taking those calories in as a % throughout a given day.

The difficulty with a .5 Lb per wk goal is that there is basically ZERO wiggle room for error as it is only a 250 calorie per day deficit from maintenance. Calorie counting is not an exact science and is inherently error prone even when people are being as meticulous as they can be. Food labels and restaurant nutritional information can be off by as much as 10-20% either way (more or less) though I'd say food labels tend to be far more accurate than restaurant nutritional information. But there's still inherent error since no particular piece of food is going to be exactly X calories per gram or whatever...no two chicken breasts are likely to be 100% identical in their composition and therefore calories for example.

Then you just have the human error element and with sites like these that have crowd sourced databases, those human errors are often exacerbated with incorrect and/or incomplete nutritional entries. Then there is how you go about determining the amount of food you're logging...is it weighed, measured, eyeballed, etc. For example, when I first started I would grill some chicken and log my chicken breast as 4 oz because the label listed 4 oz as a serving and I didn't know any better. Turns out the average chicken breast is about 8-10 ounces so I was logging only 1/2 of what I was actually eating.

On top of that, .5 Lbs per week can easily be masked by normal fluctuations in weight...in 2 months, if everything is perfect that would be around 4 Lbs...but I can easily fluctuate 3-4 Lbs daily in water weight and/or digestive contents. Moral of that story is that at .5 Lbs per week it can take quite a bit of time to actually see any kind of trend because any fat loss can be easily masked by other things that show up on the scale.

AnnPT77

What Wolfman said, and underscoring that because you said:

herblovinmom wrote: »

Can someone help me understand how to read and utilize these nutrient charts that show the total and net weekly goals?? I only have this one week full for analyzing. The others I didn’t log completely but it would help if I knew what I was looking at and how to apply that to my goals and use it as a tool. I have attached photos hopefully they are viewable. I have a feeling I’m not in a deficit as I’m just staying within a pound or 2 of my new lowest weight. My weight loss is set to be slow (.5 lb per wk) but it’s been non existent the last couple months. I’m working on logging more consistently through the weekends so I can get more accurate MFP data. But again not sure how to use some of the tools… if anyone can advise. Thanks.

To actually make a half pound a week deficit (or slower) work well when calorie counting - speaking as someone who's done it, over an extended period - one prerequisite is very consistent, reliable logging. It needn't be perfect, but you'd want to log every single thing, and do it in a consistent way.

A second thing that will be very, very helpful is to have a base calorie goal that is derived from your own personal logging experience over several months (at minimum 4-6 weeks, or 2-3 menstrual cycles if that applies).. A calorie needs estimate from MFP, a fitness tracker, or some other so-called "calorie calculator" may not be a reliable guide. All of those things spit out what's basically a statistical average value for a population of people with similar demographics.

Each of us is not a population, we're an individual, and individuals actual calorie needs vary from the population average, just as our heights vary from the population average height. When it comes to calorie needs, the range of variation is not huge, but it's still the case that while most people will be close to average, a few will be noticeably far off (high or low), and a very rare few will be surprisingly far off average. When you're shooting for a 250-calorie daily deficit, that can really matter.

I'm one of the weirdos. Both MFP and my good brand/model fitness tracker are off by 25-30% in estimating my daily calorie needs. That's in the realm of 500 or so calories! If I tried to manage my weight using just the MFP/tracker estimates, it would be an exercise in chaos. If I use my own historical logging data to estimate my calorie needs, calorie counting works fine, and I lose as expected (averaged over multi-week periods, of course). That's true even at a small calorie deficit.

Are you non-average? I have no idea. But if you're not logging consistently (like not logging carefully on weekends), and don't even have a full week of logging you can rely on, you don't really have a good path to figure that out, unfortunately.

Note: I'm not saying you can's lose weight without meticulous counting. I'm not even saying you can't lose weight slowly without it. But I don't think you can lose consistently or predictably on a small deficit, relying on calorie counting as your central weight-loss method, without fairly meticulous counting. Trying to do it is like trying to navigate with a busted GPS or compass.

herblovinmom

@AnnPT77
How do I figure out what my individual calorie needs are?? I do have lots of inconsistent logging data over the many years. My Apple Watch tells me supposedly how much I burn while resting and adds active energy to that. I’ve managed to lose and keep off almost 60 lbs. MFP gives me too little calories when my goal loss is higher and I end up feeling hungry. Now I’m no stranger to feeling hungry as I’ve lost weight I’ve gotten used to feeling hungry but this was a more ravenous hunger when I added in consistent exercise. If my calorie goal is to low I’ll go over and what good is that goal if I keep going over. I’m also used to my body having “plateaus” and then a small whoosh of multiple lbs after many many months. When I was viewing the graphs it appeared I didn’t have a deficit and that concerned me for my long term goals still havnt been met. I’m not done working towards my healthy weight so I need to figure out how to make a bigger deficit and also how to track that deficit. I do believe I’ll be doing this for life even when in maintenance so I need to do a better job at it.. I’m almost there. So close yet so far away. Thank you for your insight and opinions.

herblovinmom

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Moral of that story is that at .5 Lbs per week it can take quite a bit of time to actually see any kind of trend because any fat loss can be easily masked by other things that show up on the scale.

How long do you think it would be having normal 1-2 pound fluctuations from cycle to cycle to see the trend to make sure it’s downward?? I don’t want to spend 6 months in maintenance trying to see if I’m in a deficit. But I also don’t want my calorie goals so low I’m starving and angry. I added in consistent exercise and got more hungry. I’d like to get better at creating and tracking a deficit. I’m in this for the long haul but I’m supposed to still be losing. I have at least 20 more lbs to go to get to normal healthy weight. So far my losing and keeping off rate has been 12-15 pounds a yr. That’s like a snails pace. One day at a time right. Thank you for your insight.

AnnPT77

herblovinmom wrote: »

@AnnPT77
How do I figure out what my individual calorie needs are?? I do have lots of inconsistent logging data over the many years. My Apple Watch tells me supposedly how much I burn while resting and adds active energy to that. I’ve managed to lose and keep off almost 60 lbs. MFP gives me too little calories when my goal loss is higher and I end up feeling hungry. Now I’m no stranger to feeling hungry as I’ve lost weight I’ve gotten used to feeling hungry but this was a more ravenous hunger when I added in consistent exercise. If my calorie goal is to low I’ll go over and what good is that goal if I keep going over. I’m also used to my body having “plateaus” and then a small whoosh of multiple lbs after many many months. When I was viewing the graphs it appeared I didn’t have a deficit and that concerned me for my long term goals still havnt been met. I’m not done working towards my healthy weight so I need to figure out how to make a bigger deficit and also how to track that deficit. I do believe I’ll be doing this for life even when in maintenance so I need to do a better job at it.. I’m almost there. So close yet so far away. Thank you for your insight and opinions.

What I'd suggest is picking a calorie level that you think may provide a reasonable loss rate for you, logging consistently every day, and sticking with that same routine for at least one full menstrual cycle so you can compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles. That's assuming you aren't in menopause yet; if you are, go for 4-6 weeks.

With a very small deficit like half a pound a week (250 calories a day), you might have to go longer, maybe twice that long. I know that's not what you want to hear. But you need enough data to get reasonable statistics.

It could be an option to go to estimated maintenance calories for the time period, though - that will still get you the data you need as a basis for adjustments. Maintenance practice is a good thing in itself, and it can be good (in terms of hunger/satiety hormones) to take a maintenance break occasionally while dieting.

From a data standpoint, ideally weigh daily (AM, after bathroom, before food drink), and put the weight into a weight trending app. (Libra for Android, Happy Scale for Apple/iOS, Trendweight with a free Fitbit account (don't need a device), Weightgrapher, others.) However, if daily weighing is too stressful for you, pick a frequency that you can live with comfortably. More data points result in better trend estimates. Weighing lots of times daily probably doesn't help, though, because the conditions aren't very consistent. The weight trending apps aren't magical crystal balls, just statistical tools that try to suss out a fat-loss trend in amongst routine water weight/digestive contents fluctuations. But even the trending apps can guess wrong for a while sometimes, so don't let it freak you out. They also won't give a decent trend line until you have a few dozen data points in there, probably.

If you want to sync a fitness tracker, do that, enable negative adjustments, and eat the goal recommended. If you're afraid to eat the goal recommended, make some consistent adjustment (X percent or Y calories daily) rather than being random about it, I'd suggest. You can do more random, but the arithmetic gets harder.

Once you start on this regimen, don't keep tweaking calorie levels, unless you think it's actively injuring your health in some way. Stick with it, try to come close on each day or as averaged over a few days. If you keep re-adjusting the calorie goal, it's harder to see what's really going on, because the effects of calorie level changes don't show up clearly immediately, but rather show up in averages over multiple weeks.

At the end of the time period, take a look at how much you've lost, as an average per week, over the whole time period. That will tell you if you're close to the averages that MFP or the fitness tracker or calorie calculator gave you. You're average if you lost, maintained or gained at the average rate expected - whichever goal and rate you targeted. If you lost slower than your target, adjust calories downward (250 calories a day is about half a pound a week). If you lost faster than you targeted, or felt hungrier than you'd like but lost more than strictly essential to satisfy you, then adjust calories upward.

If you weren't able to almost always stick close to your calorie goal daily (or on average over about a week) for the whole time, all is not lost, but like I said, the arithmetic is harder. You can add up all the calories you logged as eaten over the whole time period, and divide by the number of days in the time period. That will give you your average daily intake over the whole time. You would then use that number to compare with your average weight change over the time period, and adjust up or down to fine-tune your goal. (It's just less tedious if you ate pretty consistently on average so you don't have to do all that detail-level adding up.)

If you used a tracker sync-ed to MFP, just adjusting your MFP calories won't do the whole job. You'll want to figure out how much the tracker-adjusted total needs to be changed. (If you set your base calories lower because you think MFP and the tracker have over-estimated your calorie needs, the tracker and MFP may just give you a bigger adjustment to take you to the same total as during the experiment period.)

Obviously, if you didn't log consistently, skipped quite a lot, then you're pretty much SOL on figuring out your personalized calorie needs. That's why I put so much stress on being consistent in your logging habits. Don't fall into skipping logging when you eat more than you'd planned. If you log it - the good, the bad, the ugly - you can still figure things out with the more tedious "add up all the days" method. If you don't log some of the days, you don't have that option. If you eat out or at a friends house, just make your best estimate for that food. That's unlikely to mess up the math, as long as it's not an everyday thing.

Feeling hungry vs. full is somewhat about calories, but it can also be about food choices or timing. There isn't one magical schedule or way of eating that works for everyone, IMO - I think it's quite individual. That, you can experiment with (within the same calorie/logging habits). Notice days you feel more hungry, vs. less hungry: What was different? It could be what specific foods you ate, the relative amounts of protein/fat/carbs in those foods, the timing of when you ate them (number of meals/snacks or relative size of each). Experiment with those things, see if it changes how full or hungry you feel.

Some people find protein foods especially filling. You could experiment for a few days with getting more protein, see if it helps you feel more full. Some people find fats especially filling. You could experiment for a few days trying that. Some people feel better with more carbs, some people feel better with less. Some people find high-volume foods more filling, such as lots of veggies/fruits. Some people find lower-processed foods more filling than highly-processed foods, so you can consider that. Generally, do some detective-style thinking to figure out what's most filling for you.

Just as an example, not because I think my pattern will be your pattern (I doubt it would): I found that I needed to get ample protein at breakfast, then continue getting protein at each meal/snack during the day so it added up to a fairly high total. At some time during the day, I needed high volume. Usually that was huge veggie portions at dinner. I found that if I started getting hungry when a meal wasn't coming up soon, I did better if I had a small snack (usually protein-y) to nip it in the bud, vs. trying to white-knuckle it through to the next meal. If I tried to tough it out, I'd be more likely to overeat at the meal. If I ate more fruit, I didn't crave calorie-dense sweets (candy, baked goods) as much.

There's more to my personal experiments/findings, but you get the idea: Try things, notice how you feel, and tweak your routine eating patterns toward the things that you find help you feel more full. Those were just examples of what I found I needed in my routine. Other people here do best with eating patterns dramatically different from mine. What matters is what works for YOU.

As you noted, sometimes exercise can trigger appetite. It may even be that some types of exercise do that more than others. Sometimes timing a snack around the exercise helps moderate that appetite spike. One common thing would be some carbs before and carbs/protein after . . . but that can be individual, too. Often, more intense exercise spikes appetite more than moderate exercise.

Sleep can affect appetite, too, and so can stress. If you can improve sleep quality/quantity, see if that helps. Ditto for reducing all-source life stress to the extent you can, or finding stress management technique that moderate it. (The mechanism that can happen there is stress causing subtle fatigue, so spiking appetite because food is energy, right?)

Well, I think I've rattled on way too long already, but I wasn't sure how to answer without doing that. But it's possible (likely!) that I've left out something or been unclear somewhere. If so, and if you generally understand what I'm getting at and it sounds doable/promising, please ask questions, and I'll try to clarify.

Best wishes!

AnnPT77

herblovinmom wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Moral of that story is that at .5 Lbs per week it can take quite a bit of time to actually see any kind of trend because any fat loss can be easily masked by other things that show up on the scale.

How long do you think it would be having normal 1-2 pound fluctuations from cycle to cycle to see the trend to make sure it’s downward?? I don’t want to spend 6 months in maintenance trying to see if I’m in a deficit. But I also don’t want my calorie goals so low I’m starving and angry. I added in consistent exercise and got more hungry. I’d like to get better at creating and tracking a deficit. I’m in this for the long haul but I’m supposed to still be losing. I have at least 20 more lbs to go to get to normal healthy weight. So far my losing and keeping off rate has been 12-15 pounds a yr. That’s like a snails pace. One day at a time right. Thank you for your insight.

For me - and I'm in menopause - usually even a loss of half a pound a week will show up in the trending app's trend line within around a month, if my eating is pretty consistent. I'm in maintenance now, so my eating tends to be less consistent - I work more to averages over time, vs. daily consistency, though other people do differently. My trending app gets confused by that. But with reasonably consistent eating, usually a month, or shorter.

There was one period where it was more like 6 weeks, because I'd re-started strength training after a long break, and I always add a couple of pounds of water weight when I re-start progressive lifting, and it hangs on until I stop lifting regularly. That confused the tracking app, but I was expecting it, so didn't worry about it. I usually warn people that slow loss can take weeks to show clearly, though, because of that experience. I think a similar thing could happen in some other scenarios, like if someone has bad seasonal respiratory allergies and gets all stuffed up for a month or two . . . that could be a similar water retention increase that hangs on more than briefly. Other unusual things could maybe do the same.

I think the cycle-related fluctuations will sort out fairly well if you do your average loss rate estimates using the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles, such as the day flow starts or ends. You'd be trying to use benchmark points that would be likely to have about the same hormone-related water retention level. At worst, it might be the same point in 3 cycles, i.e., two months rather than one?

Others may have a better feel for that than I do, though, since I've been menopausal for over 20 years now, and I wasn't even trying to lose weight back then, just staying fat. 😬

kshama2001

herblovinmom wrote: »

Can someone help me understand how to read and utilize these nutrient charts that show the total and net weekly goals?? I only have this one week full for analyzing. The others I didn’t log completely but it would help if I knew what I was looking at and how to apply that to my goals and use it as a tool. I have attached photos hopefully they are viewable. I have a feeling I’m not in a deficit as I’m just staying within a pound or 2 of my new lowest weight. My weight loss is set to be slow (.5 lb per wk) but it’s been non existent the last couple months. I’m working on logging more consistently through the weekends so I can get more accurate MFP data. But again not sure how to use some of the tools… if anyone can advise. Thanks.

I think the bolded is the issue and once you have mastered logging consistently through the weekends you will get the results you want

If you've lost 0 weight in the past few months you are in fact eating at maintenance level calories. This once happened to me when I went from Lightly Active to Sedentary and did not change my activity level, which gave me a little more than 200 extra calories per day. Continuing to eat them meant I was actually not in a deficit.

If you are erring 250 calories per day, 875 calories each weekend day, or 500 calories each weekend day plus 150 calories per day during the week, you will not create a deficit.

herblovinmom

@AnnPT77
I took your advice and got the happy scale app and synced the last 4 yrs of apple health data and what do you know.. it says I’m on track with my goals. Thanks for the recommendation.

cwolfman13

herblovinmom wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Moral of that story is that at .5 Lbs per week it can take quite a bit of time to actually see any kind of trend because any fat loss can be easily masked by other things that show up on the scale.

How long do you think it would be having normal 1-2 pound fluctuations from cycle to cycle to see the trend to make sure it’s downward?? I don’t want to spend 6 months in maintenance trying to see if I’m in a deficit. But I also don’t want my calorie goals so low I’m starving and angry. I added in consistent exercise and got more hungry. I’d like to get better at creating and tracking a deficit. I’m in this for the long haul but I’m supposed to still be losing. I have at least 20 more lbs to go to get to normal healthy weight. So far my losing and keeping off rate has been 12-15 pounds a yr. That’s like a snails pace. One day at a time right. Thank you for your insight.

Hard for me to say because I only know me and my body. I've tried .5 Lbs per week and it took me 6 weeks to kinda think maybe I was seeing a trend. Like I said, I can be up or down anywhere from 3-5 Lbs day to day or no fluctuation at all.

I think your biggest things is consistent logging and being as accurate as possible. A 250 calorie per day deficit is very hard to maintain if your aren't logging everything, everyday. 250 calories is the difference of a very small snack or not...or a small error here or there.

You asked how to determine YOUR calorie needs...if you're losing 12-15 Lbs per year that would indicate that your real world calorie deficit is closer to .25 Lbs per week rather than .5 Lbs per week. That is your real world data which you can use. But again, I think this is a logging issue, particularly if your weekends are "feral" so to speak. Even if you had a consistent 250 calorie deficit during the week, that could easily be wiped out in a weekend as it's only a cumulative 1,250 calories over 5 days...an additional 600 calories on a Saturday and Sunday would wipe that out...an additional 600 calories on just one weekend day would cut your deficit by half. To do what you want to do you have to log and be consistent.

herblovinmom

@cwolfman13
Lol Feral, that was a good one. Had me belly rolling. I definitely don’t change my eating habits on the weekends I think I just get logging fatigue and I tend to be a bit busier and don’t make the time to log but I can see were the inconsistency in logging would make it difficult to read the data even if I knew how to read the data 😉 I’m not much for math beyond the basics but I can see how the deficit can be wiped out with one birthday celebration in reality because the deficit is so small. So if I don’t want to feel like I’m starving then I’ll have to create a bigger deficit by adding exercise. My calorie budget used to be much high but as I lost weight my calorie goals went down too and yes that weight loss has been with mostly just diet alone. I havnt been consistent with exercise except the last 4 months or so and i just want to make sure I still have a small deficit but also am fueling enough for on purpose movement. I want to keep losing weight until I reach my goal but also it’s time to add to my healthy habits regimen..