Haven’t dropped a pound in 2 weeks?
Ashlove5
Posts: 152 Member
I am in a calorie deficit to lose 2 pounds a week and I been on my deficit for 2 months now and I lost like 6 pounds or so which is very slow paced for me. I also have been working out a lot especially lifting a lot of weights and i don’t know if this is because i am building muscle as well that my weight is not dropping fast. Should I stick to cardio only for now and see if my weight drops faster? I do feel thinner but my scale isn’t showing me losing a lot of weight which is making me stressed because I am in a calorie deficit and i am working so hard and the scale is barely showing any results.
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Replies
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You are being impatient. Carry on. You aren’t building new muscle in a large deficit. (Others here will know more about this than me… I have read some interesting comments about new lifters putting on some in a small deficit). 3 lb per month means you are doing it right, even if you would prefer it go faster.
How much do you need to lose? Menstrual cycle can also impact our weight as women - different weeks will impact our water retention. I weigh more the week before my period and perhaps also at ovulation.2 -
You aren't in a calorie deficit to lose 2 pounds per week, is the simple answer.
You're probably over-stating your non-workout activity level (sedentary, etc.), and/or entering inflated exercise calories, and/or not tracking your food and drinks accurately.
How much do you need to lose? If you suspect recomp is happening, take measurements of your waist, etc.3 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »You aren't in a calorie deficit to lose 2 pounds per week, is the simple answer.
You're probably over-stating your non-workout activity level (sedentary, etc.), and/or entering inflated exercise calories, and/or not tracking your food and drinks accurately.
How much do you need to lose? If you suspect recomp is happening, take measurements of your waist, etc.
I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
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You are being impatient. Carry on. You aren’t building new muscle in a large deficit. (Others here will know more about this than me… I have read some interesting comments about new lifters putting on some in a small deficit). 3 lb per month means you are doing it right, even if you would prefer it go faster.
How much do you need to lose? Menstrual cycle can also impact our weight as women - different weeks will impact our water retention. I weigh more the week before my period and perhaps also at ovulation.
Over 50 pounds and I don’t want to pace it this slow. At least losing like 6 pounds a month is ideal.0 -
A 2lb a week target is a deficit of 1,000 calories a day so right off you don’t have that kind of deficit. If your waist measurement hasn’t gone down more than an inch or so you just arent running much of a deficit. If it were a recomp, your waist would have gone down more.
It’s only been a couple of months so give it time but get your head around the possibility of having to drop weekly calories if things don’t change soon.
If you decide to add a lot of cardio understand that it has the potential of raising appetite and lowering NEAT so be careful with that.
What is your height and weight, as these stats are important to get a better sense of how you should be approaching things.2 -
In MFP "sedentary" refers to non-workout activity, which you can add yourself. According to Google, under 5K steps is considered sedentary. If you set your activity level higher and added workout calories on top (which again, can be easily inflated), it could easily produce a difference of hundreds of calories from your actual TDEE.I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
You have two months of history. If your calorie input has been accurate, if you have tracked everything incl drinks, sauces, coffee creamers, etc., and accounted for portion sizes, and tracked all treats, etc., then you can estimate your actual TDEE. A loss of 6 pounds in 2 months is about 21000 calories, about 350 deficit per day. If your calorie inputs are correct, your actual TDEE is that + 350.
How confident are you that all your food and drink inputs are as accurate as possible?1 -
You are being impatient. Carry on. You aren’t building new muscle in a large deficit. (Others here will know more about this than me… I have read some interesting comments about new lifters putting on some in a small deficit). 3 lb per month means you are doing it right, even if you would prefer it go faster.
How much do you need to lose? Menstrual cycle can also impact our weight as women - different weeks will impact our water retention. I weigh more the week before my period and perhaps also at ovulation.
Over 50 pounds and I don’t want to pace it this slow. At least losing like 6 pounds a month is ideal.
"I don't want"
Is it tough love time yet? 😁3 -
You are being impatient. Carry on. You aren’t building new muscle in a large deficit. (Others here will know more about this than me… I have read some interesting comments about new lifters putting on some in a small deficit). 3 lb per month means you are doing it right, even if you would prefer it go faster.
How much do you need to lose? Menstrual cycle can also impact our weight as women - different weeks will impact our water retention. I weigh more the week before my period and perhaps also at ovulation.
Over 50 pounds and I don’t want to pace it this slow. At least losing like 6 pounds a month is ideal.
"I don't want"
Is it tough love time yet? 😁
Idk is it? 👺0 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »
In MFP "sedentary" refers to non-workout activity, which you can add yourself. According to Google, under 5K steps is considered sedentary. If you set your activity level higher and added workout calories on top (which again, can be easily inflated), it could easily produce a difference of hundreds of calories from your actual TDEE.I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
You have two months of history. If your calorie input has been accurate, if you have tracked everything incl drinks, sauces, coffee creamers, etc., and accounted for portion sizes, and tracked all treats, etc., then you can estimate your actual TDEE. A loss of 6 pounds in 2 months is about 21000 calories, about 350 deficit per day. If your calorie inputs are correct, your actual TDEE is that + 350.
How confident are you that all your food and drink inputs are as accurate as possible?
Okay let me specify this, i have 1 day a week where i don’t eat in deficit more like a cheat day and i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day. I don’t think i am tracking my calories 100% correct, i could be 100 - 400 calories off but even if that’s the case my scale would still more even a half pound down. Also there are times i eat food which i don’t know the calories of and i make a rough estimate, like this neighborhood salad spot where they don’t provide macros i have to assume, or the neighborhood taco spot.
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Retroguy2000 wrote: »
In MFP "sedentary" refers to non-workout activity, which you can add yourself. According to Google, under 5K steps is considered sedentary. If you set your activity level higher and added workout calories on top (which again, can be easily inflated), it could easily produce a difference of hundreds of calories from your actual TDEE.I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
You have two months of history. If your calorie input has been accurate, if you have tracked everything incl drinks, sauces, coffee creamers, etc., and accounted for portion sizes, and tracked all treats, etc., then you can estimate your actual TDEE. A loss of 6 pounds in 2 months is about 21000 calories, about 350 deficit per day. If your calorie inputs are correct, your actual TDEE is that + 350.
How confident are you that all your food and drink inputs are as accurate as possible?
Okay let me specify this, i have 1 day a week where i don’t eat in deficit more like a cheat day and i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day. I don’t think i am tracking my calories 100% correct, i could be 100 - 400 calories off but even if that’s the case my scale would still more even a half pound down. Also there are times i eat food which i don’t know the calories of and i make a rough estimate, like this neighborhood salad spot where they don’t provide macros i have to assume, or the neighborhood taco spot.
This is your problem. Doing these things is just fine and may make weight loss tolerable. However it will, and has, slowed down your loss.4 -
Right, but again, your actual deficit isn't 1500 per day. It's actually about 350.Okay let me specify this, i have 1 day a week where i don’t eat in deficit more like a cheat day and i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day. I don’t think i am tracking my calories 100% correct, i could be 100 - 400 calories off but even if that’s the case my scale would still more even a half pound down. Also there are times i eat food which i don’t know the calories of and i make a rough estimate, like this neighborhood salad spot where they don’t provide macros i have to assume, or the neighborhood taco spot.
Let me give some examples.
The cals in a salad may nearly double once you add the tub of sauce they provide, if you use all that.
The tacos are probably higher calorie than you think. I agree such things are hard to estimate. But, the more often you have those things, the more the tracking errors compound.
Your cheat day isn't a deficit you say. Fine, but it is it 200 over, or 2000 over?
With workouts, say you do an hour on some machine and it says you burned 700. First of all, that's probably inflated anyway, but also it means the total cals burned that hour, but your setting in MFP already accounts for X cals per hour from your sedentary or whatever daily activity, which means double counting. Maybe just 50-100 cals per hour of working out, but it adds up over the week.
You didn't say if you set MFP to sedentary or moderately active or whatever. Each of those can increase MFP's estimate of your TDEE by about 20% of your BMR.
But again, at the end of the day, your actual deficit is about 350.1 -
You are being impatient. Carry on. You aren’t building new muscle in a large deficit. (Others here will know more about this than me… I have read some interesting comments about new lifters putting on some in a small deficit). 3 lb per month means you are doing it right, even if you would prefer it go faster.
How much do you need to lose? Menstrual cycle can also impact our weight as women - different weeks will impact our water retention. I weigh more the week before my period and perhaps also at ovulation.
Over 50 pounds and I don’t want to pace it this slow. At least losing like 6 pounds a month is ideal.
"I don't want"
Is it tough love time yet? 😁
Idk is it? 👺
LOL I don't know but I was just basically going to say that in weight loss, as in life, we don't always get what we want.2 -
the possibility of 100-400 calories off can definitely be the difference in weight loss vs being in maintenance on accident. granted, most of us are doing the best we can (especially if we eat out) and are making errors. but this is part of why the math is frustrating you.
i don’t get many steps outside of my intentional exercise so i set my profile to sedentary then eat back some of my exercise calories. but i also know that my logging is as accurate as I can get and even calories burned exercising could be inaccurate, so I adjust as needed depending on what my loss is looking like. so it seems your options would be either carry on at current rate or tighten up that logging (not eating out helps!)
cheat days can also erase several days worth of deficit if we aren’t careful. not saying we shouldn’t ever enjoy ourselves — i am going out to tai food tonight — but it’s just part of the math! maybe making those less frequent than once a week could help.
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You are being impatient. Carry on. You aren’t building new muscle in a large deficit. (Others here will know more about this than me… I have read some interesting comments about new lifters putting on some in a small deficit). 3 lb per month means you are doing it right, even if you would prefer it go faster.
How much do you need to lose? Menstrual cycle can also impact our weight as women - different weeks will impact our water retention. I weigh more the week before my period and perhaps also at ovulation.
Over 50 pounds and I don’t want to pace it this slow. At least losing like 6 pounds a month is ideal.
"I don't want"
Is it tough love time yet? 😁
Idk is it? 👺
LOL I don't know but I was just basically going to say that in weight loss, as in life, we don't always get what we want.
Dammit!
But if you try sometimes, you might find, you'll get what you need.
(I had to come back. It's just like that one South Park episode where Cartman can't NOT finish singing Come Sail Away
)
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@Ashlove5
Just trying to help you get to the bottom of the discrepancy between you thinking you should be on track for 2 pounds per week, and thinking you're in a 1500 deficit 6 days of each week, but the reality is you're losing at 0.75 pounds per week, which suggests an average deficit of 350.
"i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day."
What does MFP estimate your TDEE is at Sedentary with no weight loss goal, i.e. maintenance goal?
You have 50 pounds to lose, and you're working out a lot, so yeah your TDEE will be high, but is it really about 3550? I wonder if workout calories are being exaggerated. Weights doesn't burn a lot. I'm a 220 pounds guy and I enter 275 cals per hour for my weights (MFP estimates 300).
And as we talked about, you think you're on 2000 but maybe it's a few hundred more, especially counting the weekly cheat day. If you're also over-estimating workouts by a few hundred, these two things may explain the discrepancy.0 -
Not sure but I wonder if OP is saying that 1,500 is the calorie goal (to eat) for weight loss, as opposed to 2,000 or 2,100 calories consumed on “relaxed” days.1
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herringboxes wrote: »Not sure but I wonder if OP is saying that 1,500 is the calorie goal (to eat) for weight loss, as opposed to 2,000 or 2,100 calories consumed on “relaxed” days.
this was the way i read it
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snowflake954 wrote: »Retroguy2000 wrote: »
In MFP "sedentary" refers to non-workout activity, which you can add yourself. According to Google, under 5K steps is considered sedentary. If you set your activity level higher and added workout calories on top (which again, can be easily inflated), it could easily produce a difference of hundreds of calories from your actual TDEE.I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
You have two months of history. If your calorie input has been accurate, if you have tracked everything incl drinks, sauces, coffee creamers, etc., and accounted for portion sizes, and tracked all treats, etc., then you can estimate your actual TDEE. A loss of 6 pounds in 2 months is about 21000 calories, about 350 deficit per day. If your calorie inputs are correct, your actual TDEE is that + 350.
How confident are you that all your food and drink inputs are as accurate as possible?
Okay let me specify this, i have 1 day a week where i don’t eat in deficit more like a cheat day and i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day. I don’t think i am tracking my calories 100% correct, i could be 100 - 400 calories off but even if that’s the case my scale would still more even a half pound down. Also there are times i eat food which i don’t know the calories of and i make a rough estimate, like this neighborhood salad spot where they don’t provide macros i have to assume, or the neighborhood taco spot.
This is your problem. Doing these things is just fine and may make weight loss tolerable. However it will, and has, slowed down your loss.
I make my cheat days in a way where i end up eating less the rest of the week to match up for my calorie deficit. My weight loss could also be slow for many reasons such as the fact that i have PCOS. Don’t start assuming i am eating double the food and not losing weight and i am only worried because i am eating how i should and still not. So let’s start there. But maybe this isn’t something my fitness pal can help with.1 -
You are losing at a pace of almost a pound per week (6 pounds in 8 or 9 weeks ie 2 months)
Nobody is assuming you are eating double the food - however a reasonable assumption is that you are eating more than you think.
If it were me I would just continue on as you are - at current pace you will lose 50 pounds in 12 - 18 months which seems reasonable to me.
but if you want to lose faster you have to create a bigger deficit - ie eat less/move more than you are currently.0 -
How's your rest and recovery? Are you restless or sleep deprived? Also are you getting in all the nutrients you need? And skip the extra calorie day. Just eat the food you like to equal 1500 calories. You'll still have to limit the amount.
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Retroguy2000 wrote: »
In MFP "sedentary" refers to non-workout activity, which you can add yourself. According to Google, under 5K steps is considered sedentary. If you set your activity level higher and added workout calories on top (which again, can be easily inflated), it could easily produce a difference of hundreds of calories from your actual TDEE.I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
You have two months of history. If your calorie input has been accurate, if you have tracked everything incl drinks, sauces, coffee creamers, etc., and accounted for portion sizes, and tracked all treats, etc., then you can estimate your actual TDEE. A loss of 6 pounds in 2 months is about 21000 calories, about 350 deficit per day. If your calorie inputs are correct, your actual TDEE is that + 350.
How confident are you that all your food and drink inputs are as accurate as possible?
Okay let me specify this, i have 1 day a week where i don’t eat in deficit more like a cheat day and i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day. I don’t think i am tracking my calories 100% correct, i could be 100 - 400 calories off but even if that’s the case my scale would still more even a half pound down. Also there are times i eat food which i don’t know the calories of and i make a rough estimate, like this neighborhood salad spot where they don’t provide macros i have to assume, or the neighborhood taco spot.
You, yourself, say--"I don't think I am tracking my calories 100% correct....." You have a cheat day, you're eating out and don't know what those calories really are. You admit it yourself.
This is very normal on here. It's nothing to worry about, however you need to change things up a little if you are not happy with your rate of loss.2 -
snowflake954 wrote: »Retroguy2000 wrote: »
In MFP "sedentary" refers to non-workout activity, which you can add yourself. According to Google, under 5K steps is considered sedentary. If you set your activity level higher and added workout calories on top (which again, can be easily inflated), it could easily produce a difference of hundreds of calories from your actual TDEE.I workout for 5 days a week, and after the workout ( i don’t count workout steps) i get 5,000 steps and I am assuming that would be sedentary?
You have two months of history. If your calorie input has been accurate, if you have tracked everything incl drinks, sauces, coffee creamers, etc., and accounted for portion sizes, and tracked all treats, etc., then you can estimate your actual TDEE. A loss of 6 pounds in 2 months is about 21000 calories, about 350 deficit per day. If your calorie inputs are correct, your actual TDEE is that + 350.
How confident are you that all your food and drink inputs are as accurate as possible?
Okay let me specify this, i have 1 day a week where i don’t eat in deficit more like a cheat day and i consume about 2,000 - 2,100 calories a day and my deficit is around 1,500 cals a day. I don’t think i am tracking my calories 100% correct, i could be 100 - 400 calories off but even if that’s the case my scale would still more even a half pound down. Also there are times i eat food which i don’t know the calories of and i make a rough estimate, like this neighborhood salad spot where they don’t provide macros i have to assume, or the neighborhood taco spot.
This is your problem. Doing these things is just fine and may make weight loss tolerable. However it will, and has, slowed down your loss.
I make my cheat days in a way where i end up eating less the rest of the week to match up for my calorie deficit. My weight loss could also be slow for many reasons such as the fact that i have PCOS. Don’t start assuming i am eating double the food and not losing weight and i am only worried because i am eating how i should and still not. So let’s start there. But maybe this isn’t something my fitness pal can help with.
I am not assuming that you are eating double. I am saying that you should tighten up your logging---IF you want to lose more per week. IF you do not, continue as is. BECAUSE you have to be able to live with your deficit. THAT'S what I said.
As for PCOS, many people on here have it. You can ask for specific help with that. You can still lose weight, but there are some strategies that you can use.1 -
Firstly - hope you're doing okay! There are lots of valid points here, but not always nice or easy to feel like you're being told that you're doing the wrong thing. Everyone's just trying to help though
On a basic level, yeah it probs looks like underestimating/logging cals and over estimating burn, is logically the most obvious reason for a slower loss than you'd be expecting. Everyone's been guilty of it at some point!
Practical advice, maybe go a week where you don't log your exercise, and just stick to the calories provided here as the base rate and steps (if you have a fitbit type thing)? Obviously don't put yourself at risk, and listen to your body- if after a couple days or so you find yourself feeling mega weak, then eat a few more cals.
But trying that for even a week could provide the results you were looking for and suggest that the exercise was over estimated. If nothing changes, maybe you need to reassess how you log cals etc.
A pound a week is still great of course! And you should totally see that as a win, you're doing great!
My final thought - is it 1500 cals as your base rate? That feels a little high to me based on my own mfp allowances.
Eg, I started this diet in March at around 240lbs, target to lose 70lbs at sedentary activity. MFP put me on around 1320 cals a day (I've since lost about 45lbs and mfp has readjusted me to 1200). I say all this as with your goal to lose 60lbs being around the same as mine - surprised it's given you a 1500 base rate if you've entered the aim for 2lb weekly loss. I may of course be wrong and waffling for no reason, but maybe could be worth reworking mfp to make sure it's accurate. Or a calculator elsewhere (ones that factor in your body fat percentage are more accurate than mfp anyway) and following that to manual adjust your calorie goals.
I'll shush for now ;D
But stay strong and keep your chin up! You'll get there 0
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