Can’t figure out why I’m not losing weight…too many calories?

kaygracee

Hi all,

I’ve been sitting at the same weight for months now and I thought I would have slowly been losing at least something.

I workout (running) 6 days a week anywhere from 3-6 miles usually). Shorter runs throughout the week with longer runs on the weekend. I have 2 young kids so I’m running after than most days too. I stay pretty active!

I track calories for the most part as I eat very similarly most days so I have an idea how much I’m eating. It’s usually around 1700 a day. I’m wondering if that might be maintenance for me?
It just doesn’t seem like THAT much. Typically Im really trying to stay in that range…it doesn’t feel like that many calories if that makes sense.

Curious any thoughts. Maybe my workouts/runs are not as hard as they should be?

For reference I’m 5’4, 31 and 142 pounds. I fluctuate between 140-143

cmriverside

Yeah, 1700 could be close enough to your maintenance, but also this:

I track calories for the most part as I eat very similarly most days so I have an idea how much I’m eating. It’s usually around 1700 a day.

Seems like you don't really know - exactly - how much you are eating. Tighten that up. Log everything. If you're not losing weight, you need to eat a little less...and with not much weight to lose you'd need to be pretty precise. Expect to lose around 1/2 pound per week. I bet if you eat 1700 and log it accurately then you will lose about that amount.

ninerbuff

It's the small things that add up to large things. 50 calories here and there, but THROUGHOUT the whole day can easily lead up to an extra 200 calories before you know it. Be accurate completely and then see.

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

wm3796

Weigh and measure all of your foods, including oils and sauces. You also may need to lower calories to start losing. I am 5’4 also , exercised 5-6x week and lost weight at 1400 calories. It takes longer to lose when you don’t have that much weight to lose

cwolfman13

If you're maintaining weight, you're overall calorie intake is at a maintenance level. I would also wager that there are little things that are adding up and you're likely not eating 1700 calories on a consistent basis. For most women, that would be a pretty small deficit to start with and weight loss would be pretty slow even if done consistently...but little things can easily make that 1800 or 1900 or 2000 pretty easily and would wipe out any nominal deficit you might have on a singular day here and there.

AnnPT77

kaygracee wrote: »

Hi all,

I’ve been sitting at the same weight for months now and I thought I would have slowly been losing at least something.

I workout (running) 6 days a week anywhere from 3-6 miles usually). Shorter runs throughout the week with longer runs on the weekend. I have 2 young kids so I’m running after than most days too. I stay pretty active!

If working out hard 6 days a week were enough to trigger weight loss, I wouldn't have been overweight to obese for the last dozen years that I was. Sad, but true.

Of course exercise increases your calorie expenditure, but it's not usually dramatic in a "percentage of the total" way.

I track calories for the most part as I eat very similarly most days so I have an idea how much I’m eating. It’s usually around 1700 a day. I’m wondering if that might be maintenance for me?

I think there are some hints in there about what may be happening.

It's not necessary to track calories with exactitude in order to lose weight. (People lost weight even back in the days when calorie counting wasn't practical. I was adult back then, saw people do it.)

But if you're trying to use calorie counting, and you're not seeing success as expected, tightening up logging is one way to figure out exactly what the problem may be.

But if you're too busy or stressed to tighten logging . . . yup, eat a little less, as a pattern over time.

It just doesn’t seem like THAT much. Typically Im really trying to stay in that range…it doesn’t feel like that many calories if that makes sense.

It doesn't feel like THAT much in what way? Are you struggling with appetite? Is your energy level tanking? Is it just that it seems like a low number?

Sailrabbit estimates that your TDEE - if you were a statistically average person of your age/size - might be as much as 2200-2400 or so with your activity/exercise levels. An accurate 1700 would result in maybe result in a pound a week loss, possibly a bit more.

Maybe you're not quite statistically average. It's unusual to be far off average in this way, but possible.

But it's also easy, as others have said, for enough calories to creep in to cancel out that size of deficit. A tablespoon of oil or butter in cooking on on veggies is around 120 calories. That's easy to miss. So are other things: Dressings, condiments, eating the last of a kid's fries, the quick beverage we grab, you name it.

Even a weekend cheat meal at a restaurant could add enough calories to a week to wipe out most of all of the other 6 days' deficit. A large fancy sweet coffee drink at Starbucks can wipe out one days deficit. I'm not saying you eat these specific things, I'm just saying that extra calorie intake can be sneaky and insidious.

Curious any thoughts. Maybe my workouts/runs are not as hard as they should be?

Like I said, exercise is optional for weight loss. So, nope. In fact, over-exercise - if fatiguing - can bleed calorie burn out of the rest of the day by making us rest subtly more in compensation. Of course, it can also spark appetite.

Are you eating back your exercise calories? If so, over-estimating them is a common problem (and fitness tracker estimates aren't an infallible answer). As a comparison, consider using this calculator to estimate net running calories (set the energy box to "net"):

https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

For reference I’m 5’4, 31 and 142 pounds. I fluctuate between 140-143

You can figure this out.

If you can log more consistently and accuracy, try that for a few weeks, logging every single bite, lick, and taste, ideally using a food scale as much as possible, but certainly not just eyeballing if there's a more accurate method available.

Otherwise, figure out a way to cut some less important to you food out of your routine to reduce calories further, and see how things go after another month or so.

Best wishes!

tomcustombuilder

No fatloss after a certain amount of time is always too many calorie for a relatively healthy person