Help Reaching Goals
hotmamaanne
Posts: 1 Member
I have been working out with a trainer/body builder for a year. I have been following his diet and nutrition plan, and while I have gained muscle, I have not lost the fat that I wanted to lose. I do see more definition, but not enough fat loss. I’d like my BMI to not be 30, closer to 27. Not unreasonable.
While I use MyFitnessPal, I also use the InBody app. This past month I went off his eating plan because it’s been the exact same menu for the past 10 months. I used the InBody app to calculate my macros and grams and put it into my goals for my fitness pal and made sure they matched. I workout 5 to 6 days a week. I log everything…every sauce, every bite, even when I rarely have a treat (cookie etc)
I do cardio for an hour low/high intensity 5-6x weekly. And I lift weights 3 to 4 times a week. Hot yoga 2x. I’m a female in my 50’s and I’m not seeing the results I want. When I eat less calories Myfitnesspal requires, I get the “you are not eating enough” message. I know hormones are huge and I’m on replacement. How can I shed/shred these fat lbs?
While I use MyFitnessPal, I also use the InBody app. This past month I went off his eating plan because it’s been the exact same menu for the past 10 months. I used the InBody app to calculate my macros and grams and put it into my goals for my fitness pal and made sure they matched. I workout 5 to 6 days a week. I log everything…every sauce, every bite, even when I rarely have a treat (cookie etc)
I do cardio for an hour low/high intensity 5-6x weekly. And I lift weights 3 to 4 times a week. Hot yoga 2x. I’m a female in my 50’s and I’m not seeing the results I want. When I eat less calories Myfitnesspal requires, I get the “you are not eating enough” message. I know hormones are huge and I’m on replacement. How can I shed/shred these fat lbs?
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Replies
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Macros are not the determining factor in weight management, it's about calories.
If you're not losing on the meal plan you've been using, make the portions smaller or just eat less in general of whatever food you decide to eat.
So.
Eat less. Ain't no other way, sorry to tell ya.1 -
Just for the record, I lost 80 pounds in my mid fifties and I've kept it off for 17 years.
Just get your calories dialed in and you'll lose.
Set Myfitnesspal to "Lose 1 pound per week."
When you have a moderate exercise day (like an hour or more of any moderate thing except maybe yoga) then add a couple or three hundred more calories through logging your exercise and eat the extra calories it will give you.
Do that for a month and re-assess.
It's
About
Calories0 -
Can you be more specific about how many calories you're eating? Your current height/weight? How fast you're trying to lose? How long since you recalculated your macros/calories and started eating that way? Maybe comment on your logging practices or share your diary (even temporarily) with the Community so we can take a look at it?
I'd like to help, sincerely.
I'm puzzled, on the surface of it. Why puzzled? I'm a female in my 60s (68) doing less workout activity than you are, and there's a big gap between my maintenance calories and the very low number of calories that will cause MFP to give that warning message. For me, that created a lot of options for weight loss rate that wouldn't trigger that message. We're all different for sure, but that has me wondering about details.
Even if you're very petite of stature, you say you're at BMI 30. (I've been there. Not now, though.)
Usually, only a woman who is very petite, inactive, older, not very overweight needs to eat at a warning-triggering level of calories in order to lose weight at a sensibly moderate pace. There are people who are outliers, but it's hard to understand and respond to your question without more information.
Best wishes
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Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.0
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
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She is eating more than 7000 cal a week possibly double that several things count for under counting and whether it's not counting everything, using the wrong data , or not counting every day.tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
No loss in a month or so means no weeky deficit. You can have a few days a week where you're in a deficit and the other days you're not so you have to average everything
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »
She is eating more than 7000 cal a week possibly double that several things count for under counting and whether it's not counting everything, using the wrong data , or not counting every day.tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
No loss in a month or so means no weeky deficit. You can have a few days a week where you're in a deficit and the other days you're not so you have to average everything
Not clear how long she's been on this macro-based routine, nor how many calories she's logging, other than that she gets the low calories warning sometimes. Too-quickly thinking loss isn't happening on a new routine is also a common theme in posts here. Premature to advise cutting calories.1 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »
She is eating more than 7000 cal a week possibly double that several things count for under counting and whether it's not counting everything, using the wrong data , or not counting every day.tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
No loss in a month or so means no weeky deficit. You can have a few days a week where you're in a deficit and the other days you're not so you have to average everything
Not clear how long she's been on this macro-based routine, nor how many calories she's logging, other than that she gets the low calories warning sometimes. Too-quickly thinking loss isn't happening on a new routine is also a common theme in posts here. Premature to advise cutting calories.
what are you even saying here?
No way to know why/how she's getting that warning and not losing.
I'd guess it's
1. She's not logging correct amounts or calories for her meals
2. She's doing a lot of exercise but not adding back in any of the earned Exercise calories.
3. Both the above.
Regardless, if she's not losing then she's not in a deficit and Tom's right. She needs to eat less...however that happens. I took that "warning" she talked about as being a one-off or occasional pop-up and NOT that she's been doing that on the regular. She was just asking why/how that happened. She was using the InBody to calculate what she should eat then using MFP to log the food. That's gonna cause MFP to not work correctly and give that warning.
Apples oranges, right?
I could be wrong.
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »
She is eating more than 7000 cal a week possibly double that several things count for under counting and whether it's not counting everything, using the wrong data , or not counting every day.tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
No loss in a month or so means no weeky deficit. You can have a few days a week where you're in a deficit and the other days you're not so you have to average everything
Not clear how long she's been on this macro-based routine, nor how many calories she's logging, other than that she gets the low calories warning sometimes. Too-quickly thinking loss isn't happening on a new routine is also a common theme in posts here. Premature to advise cutting calories.
Noted that it takes a month or so to see if youre in a weekly deficit. Definitely questioning the 7K weekly intake. No mention of dropping cals at this point however good to double check all counting and tracking methodstomcustombuilder wrote: »
She is eating more than 7000 cal a week possibly double that several things count for under counting and whether it's not counting everything, using the wrong data , or not counting every day.tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
No loss in a month or so means no weeky deficit. You can have a few days a week where you're in a deficit and the other days you're not so you have to average everything
Not clear how long she's been on this macro-based routine, nor how many calories she's logging, other than that she gets the low calories warning sometimes. Too-quickly thinking loss isn't happening on a new routine is also a common theme in posts here. Premature to advise cutting calories.
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cmriverside wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »
She is eating more than 7000 cal a week possibly double that several things count for under counting and whether it's not counting everything, using the wrong data , or not counting every day.tomcustombuilder wrote: »Reduce weekly calories by 2,000 -3,500 while continuing to lift.
MFP only gives women the "too few calories" warning message if they log fewer than 1000 calories.
If a 50-something y/o woman who's working out 6 days a week and is BMI 30 is eating around 7000 calories per week in reality, reducing that to around 5000 (714 per day) or worse yet 3500 (500 per day) is not the solution, IMO.
Yes, one of the very real possibilities is under-logging calories eaten, since logging accurately is a surprisingly subtle skill. Figuring that out and improving accuracy would be a better, more robust solution for OP than simply cutting lots more calories, if logging accuracy is the problem.
Plus logging issues are not the only possibility.
No loss in a month or so means no weeky deficit. You can have a few days a week where you're in a deficit and the other days you're not so you have to average everything
Not clear how long she's been on this macro-based routine, nor how many calories she's logging, other than that she gets the low calories warning sometimes. Too-quickly thinking loss isn't happening on a new routine is also a common theme in posts here. Premature to advise cutting calories.
what are you even saying here?
No way to know why/how she's getting that warning and not losing.
I'd guess it's
1. She's not logging correct amounts or calories for her meals
2. She's doing a lot of exercise but not adding back in any of the earned Exercise calories.
3. Both the above.
Regardless, if she's not losing then she's not in a deficit and Tom's right. She needs to eat less...however that happens. I took that "warning" she talked about as being a one-off or occasional pop-up and NOT that she's been doing that on the regular. She was just asking why/how that happened. She was using the InBody to calculate what she should eat then using MFP to log the food. That's gonna cause MFP to not work correctly and give that warning.
Apples oranges, right?
I could be wrong.
She followed the bodybuilder/coach's meal plan for a year, didn't lose. She switched to a macro-based plan (no details about goals) an unknown amount of time ago. We don't know how many calories those macros add up to, nor do we know how many calories she was eating during that year with the coach.
We know roughly how old she is, and that she's BMI 30, but no idea how tall or how much she weighs. She works out a moderately large amount. We know she gets the below-1000-calories warning sometimes, or thinks she will. (I didn't read it as necessarily being an occasional warning - not clear.)
Your numbered list is true, it could be those things.
It could also be that she's been on the macro-based plan too short a time to realistically know its effect. (That's the one I'm most interested in answers about.) Or it could be that the macro-based plan for some reason is adding up to inappropriate calories.
That's why I'm in camp "not enough information".
I think all of us have been pretty clear about what we think, and why. (In particular, your 2nd reply was solid advice IMO also.) At this point, she hasn't been active here in the Community since the day of her post, 11/6. I don't think there's much point in arguing further amongst ourselves about whether she should simply cut calories further now, or look at diagnostic details. There should be enough info here for her to either cut calories, or offer further details.
What am I saying? What I said in my first reply: There's not enough information to give nuanced advice.
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