Concerned at the speed I'm losing weight.

zanatar

Hi all.

I have a question and well more of a concern. I've recently started on a new focus to lose weight again.

I started on August 14th, and weighed in at 265.4 pounds.
I've set My Fitness Pal, for a 2 pound a week weight loss.

I've been meticulously logging all my food and exercise. ie: The exercise adds more calories, and I've been matching that.

The issue is that I'm losing weight too fast, which I don't understand. My Fitness Pal is calculating that I lose 2 pounds a week. But it's more like 3.5 to 3.9 a week.

Monday Morning's are my weigh in. Here are my last few weeks of weigh in:

So from the start:

-Monday Aug 14th: 265.4
-Monday Aug 21st: 262.6
-Monday Aug 28th: 255.5
-Monday Sept 4th: 251.6
-Monday Sept 11th: 249.4
-Monday Sept 18th: 245.8
-Monday Sept 25th: 241.9 (this morning).

I don't understand why I'm losing faster then 2 pounds a week, given I'm following My fitness pal exactly. In fact I'm even going over my daily caloric intake by 50-100 calories on some days.

Any idea's?

Thanks, Mike.

cwolfman13

For starters, you have to understand that calculators like this only give you an estimation based on population statistics...it isn't gospel. Ultimately, adjustments often need to be made per real world data and results. Also, outputs are only as good as your inputs which can often lead to human error. For example, when I started I put my activity level to sedentary because I have a desk job and then logged my intentional exercise and ate those calories back. I was losing at a faster clip than I intended...I ultimately upped my activity level to light active and that got me to where I wanted to be. In my sedentary setting I was only taking into account my job and not the fact that at the time I had a 2 year old and an infant and my wife and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off when not at work.

Also, logging errors are common...either logging more calories than actually being consumed or less calories than actually consumed. This is due to the fact that logging calories is difficult...even registered dieticians have challenges with it. It's not an exact science and there is tons of room for human error. Also, the database is crowdsourced by other users and entries aren't always correct and my under report or over report calories and nutrients...or they may be just fine. It's a bit of trial and error. Regardless, if you're losing faster than you prefer you just need to bump your calories up a bit...your real world data at over a month in is going to be more important than what a very simple algorithm in a calculator is feeding you.

zanatar

cwolfman13 wrote: »

For example, when I started I put my activity level to sedentary because I have a desk job and then logged my intentional exercise and ate those calories back. I was losing at a faster clip than I intended...I ultimately upped my activity level to light active and that got me to where I wanted to be. In my sedentary setting I was only taking into account my job and not the fact that at the time I had a 2 year old and an infant

Would you say that walking daily, as cardio, for 30 mins a day. Ie so : dog walking pace for 30 mins a day. Do you think that would constitute as activity level of “light active” ?

If so maybe I’ll try that change.

zanatar

I just wanted to add a bit of context, concerning my activity level.

-So I too work a desk job all day, Mon-Fri, 40 hour week.
-After work for the most part, I'm either at my home computer playing a game, or I'm watching TV (Netflix, youtube) etc, until bed.

However, during my work lunch and immediately after work, I'll go for a walk. It's a lap around the neighborhood that takes 15 mins. So 30 mins total, although some days after work I'll do 2 laps ie: 30 mins. For a 45 mins total for the day. So it's between 30 and 45 mins a day of walking.

I log this exercise in My Fitness Pal as: "Walking, 12.5 mins per km, Mod.Pace, Walking Dog"

So I'm wondering , would this 30-45 mins of walking a day, constitute as activity level of "Light Active", or no?

So I basically have 2 choice:

A) I can keep the setting in my Fitness Pal to "Lightly Active" , which has upped my daily caloric intake from 1500 to 1740.

B ) Or, I can keep the setting in my Fitness Pal to "Not Very Active", which would change my daily caloric intake from 1500 to 1950.

I think option A) is best. But I'm not sure. I'd really love to understand the "Light Active" definition, and if you think applies in my case given my description above.

The over all goal is for me to lose 2 pounds a week. Not that I'm complaining that I've been losing 3.5-3.9 a week, but I don't know if that is safe or not. If losing 3.5 a week is considered ok, then I won't make any changes at all.

Thanks so much,
Mike.

cwolfman13

If you're logging your walks and eating those calories back then that activity is being accounted for. MFP is different than other calculators in that the activity level doesn't include deliberate exercise and you log it after the fact. If you're logging and eating back calories and then also put yourself light active to account for that activity, you are counting it twice.

That said, at your size I would wager you'd still lose 2 Lbs per week eating around 2000 calories per day. For reference, when I was losing I was losing about 1 Lb per week on 2000 calories per day without any exercise and I was only around 195 Lbs. You're using a lot more energy (calories) moving your size around in anyway shape or form than I was.

I ended up just customizing my calorie and macro goals after a bit because I just used my real world data to make those adjustments...it's just trial and error. These calculators are only meant to give you a starting point. They use very simple algorithms using average population statistics to arrive at a number...there are a lot of people above and below those averages. It's just a starting point...at some point you just have to use your own data and adjust to be wherever it is you want to be.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

@zanatar : Great effort so far! You are doing something right, so only a small tweaks at this point.

Most of the questions about weight loss rate can be answered by how you feel. If you are reasonably peppy during the day and not too hungry, then everything is going great! Just keep going! 👍

If you get to a point where you are really too hungry to have a normal day, you appear to be able to add up to 500kcals per day and still lose weight. You can even do that episodically if you have a bad day. It's best if this isn't 500kcals of sweets, however, but more like a second helping of a balanced dinner, for example.

Weight loss and maintenance is a long game: your deficit has to be sustainable for months to lose significant weight, and maintaining requires establishing habits you can maintain indefinitely. Typically, it's better to go slower when losing weight, but you can go at whatever rate is sustainable for you.

(Marvel at, but do not emulate, the story of Angus Barbieri, who fasted for more than a year to lose a couple of hundred pounds. Yikes, not a safe approach to weight loss!)

AnnPT77

IMO, you've been at this long enough to be seeing a weight loss rate that will persist at that calorie level (until you get enough lighter that your calorie needs materially change).

Wolfman is right, that the goal MFP gives you is basically an average for similar people. Once you have enough data - 4-6 weeks, which you now have - you can adjust based on experience. (If someone had wildly different results in the first couple of weeks, I'd suggest they ignore those weeks, and use a subsequent 4-6 weeks. That's because early wild results are usually about water weight, not fat changes. But your results are pretty consistent over the whole time.)

If you're losing 3.9 pounds a week, but want to be losing 2 pounds a week, that suggests you could eat about 950 more calories daily, and expect to lose closer to the 2 pounds a week. (500 calories daily = roughly one pound per week). You could try that - or even part of that if you're worried - and monitor for another 4-6 weeks, see what happens. (If you were a woman of relevant age, I'd suggest comparing body weight at the same relative day in at least 2 different monthly hormonal cycles, but I'm guessing you're male?)

It's rare to be so wildly different from MFP's or similar calculator estimates, but it can happen in unusual cases. MFP's estimated maintenance calorie estimate for me is around 500 calories wrong, which is around 25-30% off. That's stayed consistent over 8+ years now of calorie counting, through loss then 7+ years of maintenance.

I saw kind of what you are now when I first started on MFP: Faster than expected loss. Then I got weak and fatigued. It took several weeks to recover back to normal, even though I started eating more as soon as that happened. With your track record so far, I'd encourage you to eat more to avoid anything like that happening - no one needs that! Faster weight loss isn't necessarily better weight loss.

If you feel up to it, let us know how things work out as you continue? Best wishes!