Thought I was doing well, starting to doubt myself

lebaker310

So I lost like 20lbs in 6 months with healthy eating and cardio a couple days a week. Wasn't following any programs or anything. A couple months ago I started lifting weights. Besides the fact that I really enjoy it, I like some of the results I have gotten (my butt), and I love slowly getting stronger and being able to do things I couldn't before. I don't log. I tried it a couple times, but I'm just straight up too lazy. My goal in the beginning was 125lbs. I fluctuate between 133-138. My bf is 19% (also read that the hand held things are pretty inaccurate). Everything was going great until the past couple days I've been really questioning and doubting what I'm doing.

You can burn all the calories you want. I burn 1500 on my longer runs of 13.1 miles. Heck, some days I will work out 3 times, and burn 2000+ calories lifting and running.

And you don't have to eat anything back...that is bogus. Eat healthy and eat what you need to. I hardly eat anything on my long run days.

You just need to understand your own body and how it responds to exercise...

^Stole this from another topic I really want this to be true, but..

This is kind of confusing to me because I keep reading everywhere that if you burn too many calories and not taking in enough "fuel" then your body will go into "starvation mode" and starts to store fat. I burn about 1000 calories a work out, mixture of cardio and weight lifting. I am happy that I have lost pounds and body fat, but now I am confused. I want to still lose body fat and build muscle, but everything I read says that is impossible to do at the same time. I don't log, but I'm starting to think I should because I have no idea if I am eating at a deficit or surplus or at maintenance. I drink a lot of water. I don't really eat junk food and I don't binge. I eat when I'm hungry, and it's usually healthy stuff. My cheats are usually a snack every once in awhile, not a whole day or meal. Most of the time I feel like I can tell when I need to eat more or less, but everything I've been reading makes it seem like I HAVE to eat at a deficit to lose bodyfat but if I don't eat enough then I gain fat. But if I eat at a deficit I will lose body fat AND the muscle I've been working on. My weight has stayed the same for the past month (which is fine with me), but I feel like I'm getting a little bigger (bf says I look tighter, so might be muscle?). I just don't wanna wake up one day and realize I have been doing all that hard work and just end up with more fat or lose all the muscle from not having enough cals.

So the moral of the story is It seems like we are all different and should just do what feels right? Or I need to get my **** together and start logging...

or I'm just freaking myself out and should stop "reading" things on the internet.

Barbonica

You are freaking yourself out. Stop it. The scale is only one measure. If you like what the mirror says and you feel great, keep doing what you are doing. Sounds like you have made great progress, be proud! Maybe take a few measurements once every 2 to 3 weeks to make sure you keep on track. Waist at navel, chest, hips, biceps...

amnsetie

you joined mfp to log, cos that's what it's good at.
set up your goal and log
eat back most of your calories
don't go for to big a deficit
this thing works.
stop reading junk on the internet, it feeds your fantasies, not your knowledge.

The building muscle they are talking about is "Muscle!".
You may eat away at yr muscle etc if you set your deficit too high
Once you hit your target for fat loss you may need to up your food to build muscle, but you still need to keep it in check
Eat protein

Do what you came here for.
It only takes a few minutes

the_dude00

I would take tape measurements of you waist, arms, thighs, neck and monitor that more so than the scale. Or take a picture in the mirror once a month or both

Stephanie199023

you joined mfp to log, cos that's what it's good at.
set up your goal and log
eat back most of your calories
don't go for to big a deficit
this thing works.
stop reading junk on the internet, it feeds your fantasies, not your knowledge.

The building muscle they are talking about is "Muscle!".
You may eat away at yr muscle etc if you set your deficit too high
Once you hit your target for fat loss you may need to up your food to build muscle, but you still need to keep it in check
Eat protein

Do what you came here for.
It only takes a few minutes

somethingnewjc

my understanding is that calorie deficit will lead to weight loss, however, if weight loss is not your focus and getting leaner is, staying at some kind of roughly even caloric intake should be fine and your weight will remain roughly the same, so it becomes a matter or consuming leaner foods... if you make a conscious effort to not take in anything with very much fat in it you might be fine without logging, but if you aren't logging its easy to take in more fat than you realize because, well, you aren't keeping track... so i guess it depends how serious you are about this... personally i think it is really worth the effort of logging because it makes it much easier to get the results you are looking for without trying to guestimate what's going on... anyway i don't know exactly how little fat you would have to take in to produce some kind of "fat deficit" but there are probably lots of things you can find through google and if you see a nutritionist i'm sure they would know...

Lizzy622

Congratulations on the wonderful job you have done. You seem to have it under control. All you need to do is fine tune. I agree with the other posters to start logging but set your goal to only lose about 1/2 pound a week since you are already very close to goal. The macros may also help you fine tune. Warning the protein macro is preset a bit low. I usually go under on carbs and over on protein. This is ok.

Will_Thrust_For_Candy

First of all, @ something new......fat intake does not make you fat. Eating too many calories overall leads to weight gain.


OP....you have done a great job! Congrats! I would say try logging for a bit, just to get an idea of where you're at in terms of intake. Make sure that you are eating enough protein to help keep those muscles you are working so hard to uncover! It's amazing what you can learn when you start weighing, measuring and logging your food.

I noticed that you mentioned that you burn 1000 calories/workout.....this seems like a super high amount. Where are you getting this number from? The only reason it's important is if you are using this burn to figure out the number of calories you should be eating. It's very common to overestimate activity burns, I did it for a long time and it did affect my results.

Also, the scale is not the only indicator of success.....pictures are where the gold is! Even though I stated above that overestimating my activity burns affected my results, I did still see crazy changes in my body because I lift. It wasn't wasted time by any means, just took longer than I was hoping for

Anyway, hope this helps!

jeffpettis

my understanding is that calorie deficit will lead to weight loss, however, if weight loss is not your focus and getting leaner is, staying at some kind of roughly even caloric intake should be fine and your weight will remain roughly the same, so it becomes a matter or consuming leaner foods... if you make a conscious effort to not take in anything with very much fat in it you might be fine without logging, but if you aren't logging its easy to take in more fat than you realize because, well, you aren't keeping track... so i guess it depends how serious you are about this... personally i think it is really worth the effort of logging because it makes it much easier to get the results you are looking for without trying to guestimate what's going on... anyway i don't know exactly how little fat you would have to take in to produce some kind of "fat deficit" but there are probably lots of things you can find through google and if you see a nutritionist i'm sure they would know...

Eating fat doesn't make you fat, just like not eating fat isn't going to remove fat. Eating at maintenance calories with little fat intake isn't going to be any different than eating at maintenance calories while consuming lots of fat.

Fat doesn't make you fat. Eating too many calories makes you fat....

Docpremie

How tall are you? 19% body fat is already low, so your weight is most likely appropriate for your height. If you were measured with calipers (i.e. the hand held things), then those are fairly accurate. So at 19% body fat, there really isn't much to lose, EXCEPT MUSCLE! I don't think your goal is to lose muscle, so your body composition & weight are probably ideal. Don't let "the number on the scale" drive your choices, you look great!!!

somethingnewjc

sorry about my poor advice/had meant to help lol--thanks for the info guys... i'm not sure i understand how you can maintain a consistent weight while getting leaner though? i thought this was possible, but if the only way to lose fat is calorie deficit (is this the case?) does that mean you will be constantly losing weight as well?

*personally i am just working on keeping a calorie deficit, but it would be great if i could get my body to focus on burning fat first--how does one achieve this? if this seems off topic i would definitely appreciate any messages sent to me personally... thanks

sarahz5

OP - if you like what is happening with your body and you aren't hungry, don't worry about your intake. Don't worry about measuring. Don't worry about weighing. Be happy.

yoovie

you already said righ toff the bat that you might just be lazy - try starting there and conquering that part first.

lebaker310

OP - if you like what is happening with your body and you aren't hungry, don't worry about your intake. Don't worry about measuring. Don't worry about weighing. Be happy.

^I might just be pmsing but this made me kinda emotional, in a good way! Definitely need to remind myself to just be happy sometimes

Thank you for all the great responses! I am definitely gonna start logging after I invest in a scale and measuring stuff.

as for the 1000 cals, I meant that to be work outs through out the day. I like to do an hours worth of something when I wake up: run, swim, bike (200-300). Then I go to the gym in the evening and do about 45-1hr of weight lifting/calisthenics (100-200) followed by 45 on the stairmaster (600-800). At night while I'm watching my shows I like to hula hoop for maybe a half hour (100-200) Butttttttt besides the stairmaster and mapmywalk app those are just things I've googled to estimate the calories! So I could most likely be over estimating.

So hopefully in a couple months I'll post in the Success section and be like "Started logging and lost all this fat" and you guys can be like "yeah we told ya so".