New Here! Undereating

Victoriaoogunro

Hi everyone!

I’m confused because i weighed 150-153 for 15 years, and returned to that weight easily after my first child 5 years ago. It’s now 3 years after my second child, and i can’t get below 160lbs.

I’ve lost the same ten pounds (170-160) four times, and each time i hit 160, i feel tired and hungry. This time, I also noticed my body fat is currently only 18.5%, which is low for a 41yo woman. Finally, i noticed my muscle mass trended downward slightly with my weight loss, so I think i’m undereating.

Maybe i no longer have enough muscle to maintain my normal 153 weight?

Clearly my body is telling me to stop the caloric deficit and forget about going below 160 for now. So my plan is to eat maintenance calories, rebuild muscle, and then see if my increasing BMR naturally starts bringing my weight down. Is that a reasonable plan?

My macros will be for 2400kcal

160 protein
80 fat
260 carbs

I have been walking or running 2-4 miles 4x/wk pushing a 120lb stroller. I also plan to start gentle resistance training.

My biggest challenge is not knowing my true BMR or true macro/cal intake. I don’t have time to weigh and log my food and find it very tedious. I joined this app in hopes of finding an efficient way to do that.

Any advice?

Corina1143

Yes, advice from a non-professional, not very educated, fellow hopeful loser.

Not a lot of information in your post. But your saying that you lose 10 pounds easily, then couldn't lose more,but you were tired rang a very loud bell for me.

Years ago I was 5'10", 160 lbs, aiming at 140-150. I was very active on the farm. Chopped cotton, hauled hay, fed 40 and 50 lb sacks of feed to livestock. You get the picture. Weight watchers put me on 1200 calories a day. I would lose 10 pounds in a week, then spend the next 2 weeks eating normally and recovering. I didn't know any better, so did it again. Finally learned it wasn't for me.

Are you losing too fast? Losing water weight, which makes you tired, but you regain it quickly when you resume your normal diet? Maybe aim at losing more slowly?

Try the 2400 calories for a month, but add daily calories eaten for 30 days, divide by 30 for average. Compare weight first day to last day to get an estimate of tdee. Then shave a few calories a day from that for slow weight loss?

With 3 kids, you also have some stress automatically built into your daily life. Take care of yourself. Find a way to relax and de-stress.

Best of luck!

AnnPT77

My biggest challenge is not knowing my true BMR or true macro/cal intake. I don’t have time to weigh and log my food and find it very tedious. I joined this app in hopes of finding an efficient way to do that.

Without logging, you won't know your true macro/cal intake.

It's possible to lose weight without logging or counting calories, but it's less predictable than losing by logging.

Corina gave you a way to find your approximate TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, i.e. total daily calorie burn from BMR plus daily life activity plus exercise). If you log for that 30 days and do as she says, you'll have a solid TDEE estimate.

If during the same 30 days you focus on and notice the eating patterns you use to get that result, it's possible that you can then stop logging, and work with those patterns. I'm talking patterns like "for breakfast I usually have one oatmeal packet, an apple and some Greek yogurt, or a 3-egg omelet with meat and veggies" etc. If you want to lose slower, eat a little more within those patterns, if you want to lose faster - and can do that without tanking energy level - eat a little less within those patterns.

If you do that, and watch the scale, I think you can reach success without logging forever. In fact, even logging the 30 days is optional, just makes things a little more clear. You can just notice your current eating patterns, notice what happens to your body weight over a month, and adjust your eating patterns until you're losing at a sensibly moderate rate with good energy level.

I'm old enough to have been an adult before calorie counting apps, when calorie counting via food logging was extremely unpractical. Pretty much no one stuck with counting on paper, but people did lose weight in other ways. Those ways still work.

One of those options is eat somewhat less than usual, and watch the scale as I described above, reducing foods - especially foods you know are calorie dense like fried foods and baked goods - until scale weight starts to drop slowly. Another way is to seek out a structured eating plan, or make your own, that tells you what to eat at each meal to achieve some probably-sensible loss rate, then adjust based on results once you have a few weeks of scale results data.

Calorie counting is more predictable, but the above ways will work. I've done it; my own father did it in his 60s and stayed at a healthy weight for the rest of his life having learned new eating habits. It can work.

If you want to log, honestly I think using a food scale as much as possible is the most accurate and the least time-consuming. Here are some efficiency tips that make it quicker than cups/spoons:

• If taking some peanut butter/mayo/etc. out of a jar or bag, or a piece off a hunk of cheese or something, put the jar/bag/box on the scale, and zero/tare the scale. Take out the amount you want, such as by swiping a knife through the peanut butter or cutting off a piece of cheese. When you take the amount you're going to eat off the scale, there'll be a negative number on the scale. That's the number of grams or ounces you're eating. Log that.
• If making a sandwich or building stew in a pan, put the plate or pan on the scale, and tare/zero. Add an ingredient to the plate/pan, note/log the weight, zero the scale; add the next ingredient, note/log, zero; repeat until done. I usually just jot the weights on a piece of scrap junk mail, log it when I'm done.

Also, for efficiency, learn how to use the MFP meal feature and recipe feature. I use Meals a lot. If you have a meal pattern you repeat, save it as a meal. For example, I often have oatmeal for breakfast with quite a list of add-ins: Frozen berries, peanut butter powder, nuts, Greek yogurt and more. I saved that as a Meal. I can log the whole list with one click. If I have an unusual amount of one ingredient, I can adjust that one ingredient right on my diary page. It takes mere seconds to log the whole breakfast, which includes my coffee and other beverages.

If you do choose to log for a while, there is a learning curve: It will feel like it takes a lot of time at first as you're learning and getting things set up. Once that phase is past, it doesn't necessarily take a huge amount of time. It would be a rare day when I spend as much as 10 minutes logging - usually it's way less. For me, that's a small price to pay for reaching and staying at a healthy weight for 9+ years now, after around 30 previous years of overweight/obesity. YMMV.

Best wishes for success, no matter which path you choose for going forward!