I'm new here and I'm kinda lost

carolyazzie12459

So I'm new to this journey and I'm struggling with all of the protein intake and work out things and I guess I was messing up for week eating back the calories back I was working off at the gym does anyone have any advice for a single mom in her 30s trying to do this

Corina1143

Welcome @carolyazzie12459
Yes. The most important thing is to just keep trying. It's a learning process. Learn from your mistakes. Keep learning. It's a lifelong journey. Be patient, kind to yourself, and positive. Enjoy it!

springlering62

Don’t worry about macros for a long while yet.

Instead, focus on learning to weigh accurately and log well.

I found that as I focused on calories, that caused me to make better food choices, which caused macros to improve. Once I had a grip on the basics, I could allow myself the luxury of focusing on macros- and now with a good basic knowledge of how to do it all better.

If you’re new and trying to do macros, learn weighing and logging, new exercise, worrying if your goals are OK, etc etc etc, your eyes start rolling around like pinballs and brain just freezes.

One thing at a time.

You’re not going to lose the weight in a day, a week, or a month. Why expect to master the app that quickly?

age_is_just_a_number

I agree with the first two responses. Keep it simple. Make one change at a time. Take your time. Track what you eat and track your progress. Then, once you have data, sit back and reflect. Then decide what your next change will be.

Take care

AnnPT77

carolyazzie12459 wrote: »

So I'm new to this journey and I'm struggling with all of the protein intake and work out things and I guess I was messing up for week eating back the calories back I was working off at the gym does anyone have any advice for a single mom in her 30s trying to do this

Take a deep breath . . . this is a process. It's not a quick project with an end date, it's about finding new, relatively happy routine habits that will take you to goal weight, improve health markers, maybe improve physical fitness . . . habits you can keep up to stay in the healthy zone forever, ideally.

Give yourself some time and grace to figure it out. Personally, I think gradual positive progress is easier - so likely to be more successful long term - than trying to revolutionize everything all at once.

You weren't necessarily messing up eating back exercise calories. I'm sure some people probably said you were. If you take on board every piece of advice - including mine - you'll get jerked back and forth and not settle into understanding the specific route you've chosen. Some popular opinions about weight loss are just plain wrong, fed by nonsense in the tabloids and blogosphere that are mostly about marketing and clickbait. Hearing something lots of times doesn't make it true, just popular.

In brief: There are two general methods for calorie counting.

The first method is the one MFP is designed for: You estimate your calorie needs excluding intentional exercise, and log/eat exercise calories when you work out. If you do that, it's important not to assume the exercise into your base calorie activity level (because that would double count exercise calories) and useful to estimate the exercise calories carefully (because it's easy to over-estimate).

The second method is to average your planned exercise into your base activity level, as many online TDEE calculators expect you to do. (TDEE = total daily energy expenditure, the number of calories you burn all day in every way, from just being alive to daily life humdrum to exercise). When using that method, it's important to actually do the planned exercise, or you'd be burning fewer calories than your goal calories assume, so lose weight slower or maybe not at all. You can still use MFP, but you put the TDEE minus calorie deficit number into your calorie goal manually in MFP, and don't log exercise.

Either of those methods can work find, with the right understanding/practice.

Mixing the methods isn't likely to work.

If you're syncing a fitness tracker to MFP to get exercise calories - a tracker you wear close to 24/7 - that's probably a great starting point. It sorts out many of the arithmetic issues for you. If that's your route, I'd strongly recommend turning negative adjustments on in MFP.

No matter how you get the goal, I also strongly recommend you follow it reasonably closely for 4-6 weeks, whole menstrual cycle if you have those. "Closely" is ideally maybe +/- 50 calories on average. The results will tell you whether that "average person" starting estimate is reasonably close for you as an individual. If it isn't, you can adjust your calorie goal.

My strongest advice, though, would be to pick a plan that's relatively easy and practical, doable for you. Don't try to lose weight super fast. That's harder. It's OK for sure to start slow, and fine to continue that way, too.

It's not essential to put all treats off limits, eat only superfoods or so-called diet foods, do miserable daily exercise like a maniac, etc.

Log your food, eating foods you like. Look at your diary. Tweak eating habits by reducing frequency/portions of foods that cost a lot of calories, but aren't worth it to you based on fullness, nutrition, or happiness.

Do that, paying some attention to which foods keep you mostly full and happy most of the time, until you're hitting close to your calorie goal. At that point, you can start looking at your nutrition, if you wish. Same process, review your diary, tweak your routine habits choosing foods you like that better help you meet your nutritional goals.

You can take some time: Weeks, even months. Nutrition is a good thing for health, but doesn't have a direct effect on weight loss, though their can be indirect effects via energy level or appetite. You can figure that out. Malnutrition doesn't happen quickly, and probably not at all, for someone who doesn't have a dire eating-related health condition and who's eating in a generally reasonable, common-sense way: Some meat/fish, some veggies and fruits, maybe some whole grains, and a few treats just for joy.

Exercise? Any kind of fun - or at minimum tolerable/practical - extra movement you have time for. It doesn't need to be at a gym doesn't even need to be official exercise. Just gradually move a little more, dance in the kitchen, take the stair, go for a walk around the block, play ball with the kids, whatever.

Progress, not perfection. Relatively easy, rather than super fast. This can work, and it's IMO more compatible with the busy life of "a single mom in her 30s trying to do this".

Wishing you success!