Dumb Questions

sarahbond1016

I've been working out and changing my diet for a little over a month now, a HIIT workout every morning, staying active at work, and carefully monitoring how many carbs, protein and fat I am consuming. I am making sure I get enough sleep, and I am doing everything right that they keep saying to do, but I'm not losing any weight. So here are some dumb questions that maybe y'all can help me with because I'm starting to feel less motivated!

Is eating too many vegetables bad? I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years and if I could eat a salad for every meal I would! I know they can make you bloated, but can they make it harder to lose weight?

Should I just be eating as much protein as I possibly can? My trainer recommended 147-220 grams of protein a day, but unless I just chug shakes all day I struggle to even make it to 100.

When I eat the amount of food this app wants me to eat, I feel so uncomfortably full by the time I go to bed. I always thought that eating less was how you lose weight, but they keep telling me to eat more. So like, what gives?

I weight 185 and would like to get down to about 140. I've been weighting myself once a week on the InBody machine at my gym and I've gained a bit of muscle, but I'd really like some of these lbs to start coming off!

Help? I'm sure I have more dumb questions that I'll probably add in the comments later.
Thanks!

Lietchi

Some thoughts I have:
- Weighing only weekly can mask progress (fewer data points, not as easy to spot your weight trend)
- what were your precise weigh-ins?
- I'm presuming you're female, with a menstrual cycle? It's best to compare relative points in your menstrual cycle, since water retention from your hormonal cycle can mask fat loss on the scale.
- (true) HIIT is not something you should be doing every day The term is also very vague, what are you doing precisely? If the exercise is new and especially if it involves resistance training, I can cause water retention, masking fat loss on the scale
- 147-220gr of protein: a huge range, and especially the upper part of that range sounds like overkill. I like this calculator: https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/
- weight loss is determined by calories, not volume of food: how many calories are you consuming? Weighing everything you eat and carefully checking you are using accurate database entries?
- there are plenty of ways to get protein as a vegetarian, without protein shakes. Check out this spreadsheet: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10247171/carbs-and-fats-are-cheap-heres-a-guide-to-getting-your-proteins-worth-fiber-also

Retroguy2000

How is your food logging going? You say you've changed your diet, but you didn't say what you believe your current intake is relative to your estimated TDEE.

Are you eating back all your exercise calories? If so, those can be over-estimated for several reasons. Most users tend to use conservative estimates for workout calories, or eat back half, or in some cases none.

You can open up your diary for public viewing if you want, and some users will likely try to help point out possible tracking mistakes.

For your protein, 220 is way more than you could possibly need. If you're progressive overload training, 140g should be plenty. You could go as high as 180g if you really wanted to. It doesn't sound like you are lifting progressively, so again 140g should be more than enough. Do try to get more protein than the 100g you mention though. It will help retain and maybe build muscle, which burns more calories than fat each day just by existing, and it's satiating, and your body burns more calories processing protein than carbs/fats. Not a lot, but it all helps.

kshama2001

I agree with the others that the upper protein recommendation is serious overkill. How tall are you?

As mentioned above, here's a reputable protein calculator:

https://examine.com/nutrition/protein-intake-calculator/

I shoot for 500 calories of exercise per day, and when I achieve that, using the MFP default of 20% protein aligns with the protein grams recommendation from Examine. If I were completely sedentary, I'd need to bump it up to 30%.

kshama2001

sarahbond1016 wrote: »

I've been working out and changing my diet for a little over a month now, a HIIT workout every morning, staying active at work, and carefully monitoring how many carbs, protein and fat I am consuming. I am making sure I get enough sleep, and I am doing everything right that they keep saying to do, but I'm not losing any weight. So here are some dumb questions that maybe y'all can help me with because I'm starting to feel less motivated!

Is eating too many vegetables bad? I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years and if I could eat a salad for every meal I would! I know they can make you bloated, but can they make it harder to lose weight?

Should I just be eating as much protein as I possibly can? My trainer recommended 147-220 grams of protein a day, but unless I just chug shakes all day I struggle to even make it to 100.

When I eat the amount of food this app wants me to eat, I feel so uncomfortably full by the time I go to bed. I always thought that eating less was how you lose weight, but they keep telling me to eat more. So like, what gives?

I weight 185 and would like to get down to about 140. I've been weighting myself once a week on the InBody machine at my gym and I've gained a bit of muscle, but I'd really like some of these lbs to start coming off!

Help? I'm sure I have more dumb questions that I'll probably add in the comments later.
Thanks!

If the exercise is new, you are probably retaining water from that, so do give it more time. Do compare yourself to the same point in your menstrual cycle, if that applies. Many women retain water when they ovulate, as well as premenstrually.

Vegetables are not inherently bad, and are far more likely to be beneficial, but because you are uncomfortably full before bed, try swapping out some of your vegetable calories for high fat foods, especially in the evening. Veggies are filling because they are low cal and bulky. Fat has 9 calories per gram, more than double the 4 calories per gram of carbs and protein, and is not bulky, so it's much easier to get calories from fat. Because of this, it's important to accurately measure high calorie foods. Do you use a food scale?

Not using a food scale can also impair weight loss, but it might be too early to say if this is the case for you. If you don't already use one, get one, weigh religiously for a month, and report back.

neanderthin

How many calories are you recommended and actually finding hard to consume and how would that compare to the calorie amounts you would have normally eaten?

mnhughes22

I found that it's not just what you eat, but when you eat it too. I find my diet seems to work better for me by keeping larger meals earlier in the day, making my evening meal a lighter ordeal before bed so there isn't a lot on my stomach overnight.

Also, I started mixing up what I was eating. I make one meal a week a fish meal. I swapped lettuce out of my salads for chopped cabbage and dark greens like kale, spinach, arugula etc... which I felt gave my salads more heft and rounded out microvitamins/minerals better. I also started adding veggies to my breakfast, like eggs with roasted mushrooms and zucchini instead of just scrambled eggs or cereals.

Another thing is watching your liquids. Try cutting out caffeine, sugary drinks and alcohol. You'd be shocked how many calories are in some of those things.

I used to be obsessed with counting calories and such. I ended up figuring out that I was becoming more anxious with reaching a number than I was honestly paying attention to my diet, and my anxiety was making things worse for me on other fronts. I stopped number crunching and just focused more on what I was eating and how to make it healthier by spending that extra energy in the kitchen and things started clicking into place with my diet.

Lastly, I consulted my doctor when I was still struggling. Found out I had some issues with my thyroid and a few other hormones so I did end up getting on a couple of mild meds just to help realign things on that front and it put me back on track with my goals. Also, I talked to my doctor and they helped tweak a few things on my diet plan and suggested some other exercises to help me meet my goals.

ninerbuff

True HIIT SHOULD NOT be done everyday. Very taxing on the nervous system and CAN stall the body in weight loss.
HIIT should be done at max 3 times a week. Now INTERVAL training is a different story.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

csplatt

How many calories are you eating each day?

AnnPT77

Generally good info from posts above. I'm going to answer some of your specific points, may duplicate a little, but will try not.

As context, I'm also female, started losing weight at 183 pounds, so not very far off from where you are (if your 180 is pounds as I'm guessing, rather than kilos). From your goal weight and just statistical probability, I'm going to guess that you're probably medium height for a woman. I'm 5'5".

I've also been vegetarian (ovo-lacto in my case) for 49 years (yeah, I'm that old, 67), and quite active exercise-wise.

sarahbond1016 wrote: »

I've been working out and changing my diet for a little over a month now, a HIIT workout every morning, staying active at work, and carefully monitoring how many carbs, protein and fat I am consuming. I am making sure I get enough sleep, and I am doing everything right that they keep saying to do, but I'm not losing any weight. So here are some dumb questions that maybe y'all can help me with because I'm starting to feel less motivated!

Since you're female, be sure you evaluate your weight loss trend by comparing body weight at the same relative point in at least two different menstrual cycles. (Hormonal water weight can be that weird.) I agree with others that you may still be seeing water retention from new exercise, and that can mask fat loss on the scale for a surprisingly long time. Hang in there!

Is eating too many vegetables bad? I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years and if I could eat a salad for every meal I would! I know they can make you bloated, but can they make it harder to lose weight?

No. I'd almost say there's no "too many vegetables", in weight loss or heath terms, but I'd be exaggerating. That said, I shoot for at least 800 grams (about 1.8 pounds) of veggies and fruits daily, and usually get there or beyond. I'm in maintenance now (around 130 pounds), so it was probably less volume of veggies/fruits while losing (in 2015-16), but it was lots even then.

FWIW, I don't think they make me bloated. They do have lots of fiber, so if you haven't eaten that much fiber before, it's good to increase gradually (for digestive comfort), and be sure to get enough water and fats alongside for good digestive throughput. Constipation can add body weight temporarily. The fiber per se (plus the water to metabolize it) adds a little weight while it's in our digestive tracts, but most of us end up with similar fiber intake from one day to the next, so there can be a small temporary scale jump when starting to eat lots more, but that weight won't keep increasing more and more, so it's just a temporary thing in effect, too.

Should I just be eating as much protein as I possibly can? My trainer recommended 147-220 grams of protein a day, but unless I just chug shakes all day I struggle to even make it to 100.

No. I endorse the calculator kshama linked. In that site's documentation, they say it can make sense to base your protein goal on your healthy goal weight (rather than overweight current weight), and I think that's true. I strive to exceed 1g per pound of estimated lean body mass daily, so my daily minimum is 100g. (Usually I get more, average around 120g, but that's on maintenance calories. It was probably 80s-90s grams most of the time while I was losing weight. Most people don't have a great estimate of lean body mass, so 0.6-0.8 grams per pound of healthy goal weight should be a rough rule of thumb, and for many people that range will overlap with what the linked protein calculator recommends based on the science.

When I eat the amount of food this app wants me to eat, I feel so uncomfortably full by the time I go to bed. I always thought that eating less was how you lose weight, but they keep telling me to eat more. So like, what gives?

Eating fewer calories is how you lose weight. It's not the physical volume of food. Some foods are tiny but calorie dense (fats/oils, nuts, nut butter, seeds, sugary things, etc.). Some foods are not calorie-dense but large volume and filling (for some people), such as veggies.

If MFP is telling you to eat more, I'm assuming you're netting fewer than 1200 calories, which probably wouldn't be a good idea, if accurate. If you're too full, back off the filling but low calorie things a little, add in some calorie dense things. If you don't want to turn to treat foods, things like nuts, nut butters, starchy veggies, avocados, seed, etc., are nutrient-dense and higher calorie, not as filling (for many people). You can also spread your eating over more meals/snacks, or over more time, to be less full at any moment. Some people also find that drinking calories is less filling than getting them from foods they chew. Experiment.

I weight 185 and would like to get down to about 140. I've been weighting myself once a week on the InBody machine at my gym and I've gained a bit of muscle, but I'd really like some of these lbs to start coming off!

Well . . . maybe. The InBody machines aren't very accurate, unfortunately, and muscle mass gain is quite slow, requiring patience. A pound a month of muscle gain would be a good result for a woman, and that would be surprisingly fast if in a calorie deficit, not to mention if getting sub-ideal protein. (I'm not sure your current protein is sub-ideal, BTW.) Don't get me wrong, strength training is important and very useful, but it's a bit of a long term investment. Takes patience.

It's normal to gain strength fast when starting strength training, and people think that means they've gained muscle. Those early gains are mostly from better recruiting and using existing muscle fibers (neuromuscular adaptation, NMA), not from building new muscle. We have to pretty much max out NMA to convince our body to start building new muscle fibers.

The only exercise you mention is HIIT. Many things can be called that these days. Most of those now called HIIT are a mix of strength in high-rep formats with some cardio. If so, they're not maximum muscle builders, and it's easy to over-estimate the exercise calories (for a variety of reasons, but I won't belabor that now). If you could be more specific about what you're doing, and for long, and how you estimate the calories for it, we could probably give semi-informed opinions about the calorie burn level.

Help? I'm sure I have more dumb questions that I'll probably add in the comments later.
Thanks!

These are not dumb questions. It's normal to have questions when starting. Good for you for asking forthrightly!

I hope you're getting some clarity. I think most people here do try to help, but we all have different opinions and communication styles, so sometimes it can be a little confusing or overwhelming.

Best wishes for success!