Protein and weight gain
bercela
Posts: 1 Member
Hello. I have drastically changed the way I eat. I have increased my protein and have limited my calories to 1600. I run 7 miles a week. I have GAINED 9 pounds! I'm trying to lose weight 😭 What am I doing wrong?
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Replies
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What timescale for the change in diet? Any other changes in your routine?0
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More info...
Current weight, height
How are you estimating your protein and calorie intake?
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10012907/logging-accuracy-consistency-and-youre-probably-eating-more-than-you-think/p10 -
Give any calorie amount 4-6 weeks to confirm whether that amount is allowing you to meet yur goals.
Less than that and there is a lot of noise with water weight masking things.
Always weigh first thing in the morning when getting up and using the bathroom.
There is alway the possibility that you are being inaccurate with your calorie counting and tracking and not counting every day and logging everything. Even some of the calorie amounts on this app that are listed are WAY OFF so there are many factors that can contribute to taking in more calories than you think. "1,600" can easily be almost double that in reality. Studies show the average calorie counting person is off by 43% when figured on a weekly basis.2 -
7 miles a week is only just over an hour of exercise a week. did you think that would make a big impact in weekly calorie burn?0
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7 miles only burns around 800 calories for a normal person so that really doesn’t do a lot so don’t rely on that as far as a major calorie burning fctorHello. I have drastically changed the way I eat. I have increased my protein and have limited my calories to 1600. I run 7 miles a week. I have GAINED 9 pounds! I'm trying to lose weight 😭 What am I doing wrong?
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Wow, i didn‘t expect everyone here to be so negative and assuming that you can‘t count calories.
It sounds like you have just started so absolutely stick with it, you are your own hero!
If you are just starting, and by the way 7 mi is great, and 7mi is 7 more than I run, you are using your biggest muscles to run. When you get that burning feeling those muscles are rebuilding, and getting bigger. Protein is what feeds that process.
So it could well be that that is what is causing your temporary weight gain. Try to stick to all the nutrients suggested by the app and keep an eye out on the protein levels, i had the same when i increased my nordic walking activity two fold and ate too many proteins, I gained weight!
Keep at it 🙏🏻6 -
poodle_whisper wrote: »7 miles a week is only just over an hour of exercise a week. did you think that would make a big impact in weekly calorie burn?
Well it would for me. I’m a shite runner and I couldn’t do that in one hour. I run like a wounded hippo.
@bercela let’s just break this down a bit. Firstly you say you’ve drastically changed the way you eat. That in itself can have a temporary impact on the scale - but it doesn’t mean it’s fat. For instance if you’ve recently increased protein, it can take a while longer to digest. So that’s food weight (I.e poo) sat in your bowel. It will come out at some point!
You’re running: if that’s new, then your muscles will be screaming and holding water as they repair themselves. That’s not fat - and again it will come out at some point.
I don’t know whether 1600 is right for you, but if that is a significant drop then your system can rebound and hold more water (stress reaction), but again that is not fat.
The entries on MFP aren’t always reliable and there is a chance you’re eating more than you think - it’s happened to pretty much all of us, particularly when we were new to logging.
Can you come back, give us your weight, height etc, and how long you’ve been trying with the changed diet and exercise? We can then offer some productive advice (based purely on what’s worked for each of us in our journeys).7 -
claireychn074 wrote: »poodle_whisper wrote: »7 miles a week is only just over an hour of exercise a week. did you think that would make a big impact in weekly calorie burn?
Well it would for me. I’m a shite runner and I couldn’t do that in one hour. I run like a wounded hippo.
@bercela let’s just break this down a bit. Firstly you say you’ve drastically changed the way you eat. That in itself can have a temporary impact on the scale - but it doesn’t mean it’s fat. For instance if you’ve recently increased protein, it can take a while longer to digest. So that’s food weight (I.e poo) sat in your bowel. It will come out at some point!
You’re running: if that’s new, then your muscles will be screaming and holding water as they repair themselves. That’s not fat - and again it will come out at some point.
I don’t know whether 1600 is right for you, but if that is a significant drop then your system can rebound and hold more water (stress reaction), but again that is not fat.
The entries on MFP aren’t always reliable and there is a chance you’re eating more than you think - it’s happened to pretty much all of us, particularly when we were new to logging.
Can you come back, give us your weight, height etc, and how long you’ve been trying with the changed diet and exercise? We can then offer some productive advice (based purely on what’s worked for each of us in our journeys).
Just because it feels harder to you does not mean you are burning more calories. that's just perceived effort.1 -
Congrats on making such big changes to your lifestyle! We all know how difficult that can be.
The short answer to why you're gaining weight is that you're not in a calorie deficit. That means either that 1) 1600 calories a day is too many for you, based on how much energy you burn, or 2) You're miscounting your calories.
There are calculators (including one in MFP) to calculate your calorie requirements. Try using more than one calculator and make sure they approximately agree with each other on how many calories you need in order to lose weight.
In terms of the possibility of mis-counting calories, in my experience, there are 3 main ways that can happen:
1. You're eyeballing and guestimating amounts rather than weighing and measuring the food you eat with a scale and other measuring tools. Gotta measure everything.
2. You're simply forgetting to log some of the food that goes into your body. This is really easy to do. It's easy to forget the breath mint/hershey's kiss you eat from the bowl at work, or the 2 tsp of olive oil or butter you cooked your food in.
3. You're logging different foods than you're actually eating. For example, you log "Oat Milk" and you log the one that says 40 calories per cup, instead of the 150 calories per cup version that's actually in your fridge. There are lots of foods like this, where the various versions in MFP's database vary WIDELY in calorie count.
FWIW, the foods that I temporarily cut out of my diet entirely that made the biggest difference in making it easy to meet my calorie goals were: Nuts (including peanut butter), Oil and butter, wheat flour (bread, muffins, cakes, bagels, pasta, etc.), alcohol, and high-fat dairy (cheese and ice cream). Also, be careful of protein bars--most protein bars are really just energy bars (high in calories) with a bunch of protein added.
The foods I added to my diet that made it easiest to hit my calorie goals were Greek yogurt, egg whites, shrimp, turkey, and non-fat cooking spray.
Hope this is helpful.
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People talking about the 7 miles. You pretty much burn the same calories weather you walk, job, run or sprint the miles assuming they are not all at once. You just burn them faster sprinting.
Most likely factors:
1. Water/ Waste that is building up. Once you expelled your weight adjusts down quickly.
2. Scale issue. all condtions match. best is right after sleeping and going to restroom.
3. Mistake in the food log. check your foods if you want to be sure spend a week weighing and making your own food for accuracy.
4. Medical issue. Your thyroid can cause you to gain or lose weight by releasing or not releasing hormones.
if all else fails go to a doctor. The human body knows what it is doing if you create a deficit you will lose weight if your body isn't malfunctioning.1 -
poodle_whisper wrote: »claireychn074 wrote: »poodle_whisper wrote: »7 miles a week is only just over an hour of exercise a week. did you think that would make a big impact in weekly calorie burn?
Well it would for me. I’m a shite runner and I couldn’t do that in one hour. I run like a wounded hippo.
@bercela let’s just break this down a bit. Firstly you say you’ve drastically changed the way you eat. That in itself can have a temporary impact on the scale - but it doesn’t mean it’s fat. For instance if you’ve recently increased protein, it can take a while longer to digest. So that’s food weight (I.e poo) sat in your bowel. It will come out at some point!
You’re running: if that’s new, then your muscles will be screaming and holding water as they repair themselves. That’s not fat - and again it will come out at some point.
I don’t know whether 1600 is right for you, but if that is a significant drop then your system can rebound and hold more water (stress reaction), but again that is not fat.
The entries on MFP aren’t always reliable and there is a chance you’re eating more than you think - it’s happened to pretty much all of us, particularly when we were new to logging.
Can you come back, give us your weight, height etc, and how long you’ve been trying with the changed diet and exercise? We can then offer some productive advice (based purely on what’s worked for each of us in our journeys).
Just because it feels harder to you does not mean you are burning more calories. that's just perceived effort.
Politely disagree. When I was much larger, I got far more calorie burn for the same workouts I do now while smaller.
I started swimming laps about ten months ago. As I got better at it and more efficient with my strokes, my calories burn for an hour session dropped 20-25%, even while I maintained the same weight.
YMMV, but I’d venture to say there’s more to it than perceived effort.
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springlering62 wrote: »poodle_whisper wrote: »claireychn074 wrote: »poodle_whisper wrote: »7 miles a week is only just over an hour of exercise a week. did you think that would make a big impact in weekly calorie burn?
Well it would for me. I’m a shite runner and I couldn’t do that in one hour. I run like a wounded hippo.
@bercela let’s just break this down a bit. Firstly you say you’ve drastically changed the way you eat. That in itself can have a temporary impact on the scale - but it doesn’t mean it’s fat. For instance if you’ve recently increased protein, it can take a while longer to digest. So that’s food weight (I.e poo) sat in your bowel. It will come out at some point!
You’re running: if that’s new, then your muscles will be screaming and holding water as they repair themselves. That’s not fat - and again it will come out at some point.
I don’t know whether 1600 is right for you, but if that is a significant drop then your system can rebound and hold more water (stress reaction), but again that is not fat.
The entries on MFP aren’t always reliable and there is a chance you’re eating more than you think - it’s happened to pretty much all of us, particularly when we were new to logging.
Can you come back, give us your weight, height etc, and how long you’ve been trying with the changed diet and exercise? We can then offer some productive advice (based purely on what’s worked for each of us in our journeys).
Just because it feels harder to you does not mean you are burning more calories. that's just perceived effort.
Politely disagree. When I was much larger, I got far more calorie burn for the same workouts I do now while smaller.
I started swimming laps about ten months ago. As I got better at it and more efficient with my strokes, my calories burn for an hour session dropped 20-25%, even while I maintained the same weight.
YMMV, but I’d venture to say there’s more to it than perceived effort.
If you're using some sort of fitness tracker, all it's doing is measuring your heart rate. The calories-burned are derived from that, but like the poodle said - a lot of exercise tracking is about perception. You aren't actually burning 25% fewer calories at the same rate, your heart rate has simply gone down with your fitness level. It still takes approximately the same effort to move a given body weight through water.
It doesn't account for your fitness or efficiency unless it is also tracking your O2 consumption (which would be in the settings, and would have to be measured in a lab)...so your numbers are not telling the whole story.
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Heart rate is not a good gauge of calorie burn otherwise you could drink a gallon of coffee and sit in a chair and lose weight. While heart rate CAN be helpful to some degree in SS cardio, its oxygen usage that will better determine the rate of calories being burned.
Swimming wise you burn more calories when you suck at swimming. The less efficient you are the more that the body has to compensate by burning more calories to propel you forward. The trade off is a more efficient swimmer can swim farther in the same timeframe.1 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »Heart rate is not a good gauge of calorie burn otherwise you could drink a gallon of coffee and sit in a chair and lose weight. While heart rate CAN be helpful to some degree in SS cardio, its oxygen usage that will better determine the rate of calories being burned.
Swimming wise you burn more calories when you suck at swimming. The less efficient you are the more that the body has to compensate by burning more calories to propel you forward. The trade off is a more efficient swimmer can swim farther in the same timeframe.
I was trying to not answer the original response to my comment but I am going to bite!
Basically, this.
I know (because of years of tracking calories and weight gain / loss) what different exercises do for my calorie burn. I am also a qualified martial arts coach, have English gold medals for competing in that sport, and I now compete in weightlifting as an old fart. So I know MY body.
I am an inefficient runner. I hate it, I have poor technique and I get bored. My calorie burn for running 7 miles is a LOT more than my husband (who is heavier but sooo much more efficient). Oh I also trained and did a 10k just to prove to myself that I could. I suck at running and I burn c600 calories an hour doing it because I’m so inefficient. Husband - c25kg heavier than me - only burns about 350-400 an hour (based on tonnes of trial and calorie tracking).
What I’m saying is that MY evidence for MY body is that running 7 miles would burn a decent amount of calories. For the reasons @tomcustombuilder says.
Oh and maybe, just maybe, the first part of my post was an attempt at empathy to help someone who sounded despairing.3 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »Heart rate is not a good gauge of calorie burn otherwise you could drink a gallon of coffee and sit in a chair and lose weight.
Technically drinking black coffee or unsweet tea will slightly increase your deficit. It is so small that the amount needed to make a real difference would be way worse on your health though.1 -
claireychn074 wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »Heart rate is not a good gauge of calorie burn otherwise you could drink a gallon of coffee and sit in a chair and lose weight. While heart rate CAN be helpful to some degree in SS cardio, its oxygen usage that will better determine the rate of calories being burned.
Swimming wise you burn more calories when you suck at swimming. The less efficient you are the more that the body has to compensate by burning more calories to propel you forward. The trade off is a more efficient swimmer can swim farther in the same timeframe.
I was trying to not answer the original response to my comment but I am going to bite!
Basically, this.
I know (because of years of tracking calories and weight gain / loss) what different exercises do for my calorie burn. I am also a qualified martial arts coach, have English gold medals for competing in that sport, and I now compete in weightlifting as an old fart. So I know MY body.
I am an inefficient runner. I hate it, I have poor technique and I get bored. My calorie burn for running 7 miles is a LOT more than my husband (who is heavier but sooo much more efficient). Oh I also trained and did a 10k just to prove to myself that I could. I suck at running and I burn c600 calories an hour doing it because I’m so inefficient. Husband - c25kg heavier than me - only burns about 350-400 an hour (based on tonnes of trial and calorie tracking).
What I’m saying is that MY evidence for MY body is that running 7 miles would burn a decent amount of calories. For the reasons @tomcustombuilder says.
Oh and maybe, just maybe, the first part of my post was an attempt at empathy to help someone who sounded despairing.
Just to be contrary, lol. What do you think about being less efficient increases calorie burn. Could it be that your husbands heart rate raises slower and tops out at a lower rate for the same run?
However, because I dont know much TBH.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/3260020 -
it can increase calorie burn by making you more active however those things don’t directly burn fat.trixsterjl31 wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »Heart rate is not a good gauge of calorie burn otherwise you could drink a gallon of coffee and sit in a chair and lose weight.
Technically drinking black coffee or unsweet tea will slightly increase your deficit. It is so small that the amount needed to make a real difference would be way worse on your health though.
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OP, @bercela, before I get into tangential wrangling on details, I'd say this:
If we're talking a short time span (less than 4-6 weeks, less than one full menstrual cycle if you have those), and the running is new, then water weight gain (for muscle repair) is a potential explanation, partially or maybe even fully. If you're still in a shorter time span, hang in there, see what happens over a longer time period.
If it's been longer, it's more likely to be something about the calorie counting. That's not a diss: It can be a surprisingly subtle skill. But it can also work, IME. There are other possibilities, but that's a key one. If you were to open up your MFP food diary to other MFP-ers, some of the old hands could take a look and see if anything jumps out. (That's an offer, not a demand.)
I hear your frustration, and I empathize, truly. But you haven't given us much context (age, current weight/height, daily life activity level, how long you've been at this, etc.). It's hard to give you sensible advice - if that's what you want - without more information.
I'd truly like to help, and I think most others here in the Community have that intention, too . . . but there's just not enough information to go on.
.trixsterjl31 wrote: »claireychn074 wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »Heart rate is not a good gauge of calorie burn otherwise you could drink a gallon of coffee and sit in a chair and lose weight. While heart rate CAN be helpful to some degree in SS cardio, its oxygen usage that will better determine the rate of calories being burned.
Swimming wise you burn more calories when you suck at swimming. The less efficient you are the more that the body has to compensate by burning more calories to propel you forward. The trade off is a more efficient swimmer can swim farther in the same timeframe.
I was trying to not answer the original response to my comment but I am going to bite!
Basically, this.
I know (because of years of tracking calories and weight gain / loss) what different exercises do for my calorie burn. I am also a qualified martial arts coach, have English gold medals for competing in that sport, and I now compete in weightlifting as an old fart. So I know MY body.
I am an inefficient runner. I hate it, I have poor technique and I get bored. My calorie burn for running 7 miles is a LOT more than my husband (who is heavier but sooo much more efficient). Oh I also trained and did a 10k just to prove to myself that I could. I suck at running and I burn c600 calories an hour doing it because I’m so inefficient. Husband - c25kg heavier than me - only burns about 350-400 an hour (based on tonnes of trial and calorie tracking).
What I’m saying is that MY evidence for MY body is that running 7 miles would burn a decent amount of calories. For the reasons @tomcustombuilder says.
Oh and maybe, just maybe, the first part of my post was an attempt at empathy to help someone who sounded despairing.
Just to be contrary, lol. What do you think about being less efficient increases calorie burn. Could it be that your husbands heart rate raises slower and tops out at a lower rate for the same run?
However, because I dont know much TBH.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326002
I don't really know why we're quibbling about the 7 miles. I'm in both the "any exercise is better than no exercise" and "we need to account for exercise calories somehow" camps. As long as OP isn't wildly over-estimating the running calories and eating them back, that's unlikely to be a significant factor in the reported problem. (Yes, many people do assume exercise is a more important factor than it tends to be in practice.)
There is something in this "being inefficient burns more calories" idea IMO, but it's pretty situation specific, and I think sometimes oversold.
Some activities have a narrow range of efficiencies when comparing skilled (efficient) people to beginners (inefficient). Others can vary more widely in efficiency based on skill. Some methods of estimating calories handle efficiency variability better than others.
Think about it this way: Let's say we compare person X running 1km with person Y running the exact same distance at the exact same pace. Person X is efficient. Every move they make moves them forward along the course. Person Y is inefficient. They flop their arms around in unhelpful ways, they move their body weight around in planes that don't contribute to forward motion, and that sort of thing. Person Y is likely to burn more calories doing what looks like the same amount of exercise. Lots more calories? Dunno. Hard to say. There have been studies of running efficiency, but it's still complicated.
The problem is that we don't have a way to directly measure calories burned during exercise, outside of a sports lab anyway.
Most of the time, we're estimating calories for running based on something like:
1. Speed, distance and bodyweight; or pace, duration and bodyweight. That misses the efficiency dimension. It just considers the inherent required work, essentially assuming some efficiency factor. (Whether it's assuming full efficiency or average efficiency depends on the research underpinning the estimating method, pretty much.)
2. A fitness tracker that may include heart rate in the calculation (instead of or in addition to the things in #1). Most of the time, people don't know their true HRmax, and the age estimates the trackers use are wrong for a fair percentage of people, possibly meaningfully wrong. If two otherwise identical people (call them A and
run that same 1km course, but are exactly the same efficiency at running, but A trains running more (lots more volume/frequency) than B, then A will tend to have a lower heart rate during the run than B has. If a fitness tracker uses heart rate in the calorie estimate, then it will say B burned more calories than A, but they didn't. A's heart just pumped more blood and oxygen per beat than B's, and it's oxygen consumption that correlates better with calorie burn. Heart rate is just a poor proxy, but more easily measured under routine life conditions.
There are various ways to estimate calories for various activities, but pretty much none of them are going to be accurate . . . outside of things they can only do in a sports lab (such as actually measuring oxygen consumption during exercise). Power metering on a bicycle is pretty good IMU, but that's based on there being a pretty narrow range of efficiencies between skilled and unskilled cyclists.
I'm most knowledgeable about rowing. I've watched people at the gym on rowing machines. I'd absolutely guarantee that quite a few of them are burning more calories than the machine's power metering estimates. Rowing has a fairly wide variability in efficiencies between skilled and unskilled people. (Ironically, most of those people set the monitor to show "calories burned" as their main performance metric
.) A fitness tracker's estimate would have the same problem as for running: They don't account very well for training effects, or variability of HRmax.)
It's complicated. I'd say very few of us know how many calories we burn during exercise. Fortunately, all we need is a workable estimate, and a practice that adjusts calorie intake based on our own experience.
Personally, I like to compare different methods of estimating the same exercise . . . not just different calculators, but literally different methods (METS vs. heart rate vs. metered power, for example), when possible. Sometimes we can assume (based on research evidence) that a particular method is better for a particular activity (like power meter for cycling). Sometimes there's reason to believe a particular method is sub-par for a particular activity (like heart rate for strength training). Otherwise, our best shot at a reasonable estimate is probably going to work out OK.
It's fun to talk about this stuff, but IMO the best we've got is workable estimates, not "accurate" estimates.trixsterjl31 wrote: »People talking about the 7 miles. You pretty much burn the same calories weather you walk, job, run or sprint the miles assuming they are not all at once. You just burn them faster sprinting.
Most likely factors:
1. Water/ Waste that is building up. Once you expelled your weight adjusts down quickly.
2. Scale issue. all condtions match. best is right after sleeping and going to restroom.
3. Mistake in the food log. check your foods if you want to be sure spend a week weighing and making your own food for accuracy.
4. Medical issue. Your thyroid can cause you to gain or lose weight by releasing or not releasing hormones.
if all else fails go to a doctor. The human body knows what it is doing if you create a deficit you will lose weight if your body isn't malfunctioning.
To the bolded, a quibble about an otherwise good post: No, I don't think so. Without getting further into the weeds, one reason walking burns fewer calories over the same distance is that generally one foot is on the ground at all times whereas running routinely has both feet sometimes off the ground at the same time. There's more to it than that, but that's one relevant factor: More defying of gravity, basically.2 -
@AnnPT77 Good replies. I get board at work and started posting stuff. I try not to pretend to know more than I know and post crap that will mislead stuff.
Exercise log
Walk 4mph 45 mins 587 cal
Just 6mp 30 mins 782
Run 10 mph 18 751
Dashing my own point. Joging and running actually burns almost 50 percent more calories over the same distance. Thanks for the input. So I guess i'm gonna start trotting as far as i can get in the future before I walk. That isn't really different for me though i've always started off walking and slowly increase jogging over time until I was jogging the 3 miles going for 1 hour down to 30 mins for w/e route i take. I hate running now but I remember how mentally freeing it was during the short time I didn't totally suck at it.1
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