A month in... and might have been doing it wrong all along.

izu87

Hello! I've been logging in on MFP for over a month now. Working out, trying to stay on the low-calorie side of things, but the more I read, the more I get to believe that I might have been doing it all wrong.

About me: female/27/172cm/72kg - dream weight 60ish? Lightest I have ever been - 66 kg (for about a summer a few years back, then went back to 70kg). Heaviest I have ever been 94+ kg (didn't start working onto losing weight until about 6 months after I saw that number on the scale, didn't check back onto my weight until about 3 months in onto my initial weight loss path). Got down to 72-70kg in 9 months, with more or less horrible diets, and ever since then (almost 3 years now) I've been on and off trying to get back onto the weight loss path to slay those final 10ish kgs that I'm dreaming to lose.

Now, I gave up on trying temporary 1-2-3-4 weeks/months diets that get me lose a few kilos, and then I gain those back with extras, and I've been trying to count calories for a month now. 36 days to be more exact. Along with it I started working out following Jillian Michaels' Body Revolution, so 6 days a week, with biking on weekends and sometimes roller skating whenever the weather is warm and dry enough. Yet, even though I've lost cms (2-3 from everywhere), I've only roughly lost 1kg. I thought I was doing everything right, but now I'm beginning to think that I might have got the whole calorie-counting deal wrong.

I've been trying to stay at 1200-1300 daily calories, but those are my totals - with my workouts I end up with Net calories of 950ish to 500ish depending on whether I do only BR or something extra as well. And what gets me completely confused is should I keep the total calories at 1200ish or the net ones? Isn't the idea of working out to create additional calorie deficit, so that with those 200-300 cut back from the calorie intake and then those 200-300 cut from working out per day, I'd get at 500-600 deficit per day and thus up to the ~3500 deficit per week to get a minus 1 pound end result?

I did find a few other topics in the boards here, but from the various post there I only got more and more confused. Some people are keeping the totals at 1200, others the net at 1200, and those two types of people get into long and confusing arguments...

So... Am I doing it wrong? Should I up my totals to get my net to 1200? Or should I keep going as I am right now?

I do think I log in everything correctly, but I also keep in mind the rule of 10% - if I think I've had a total of 1200 calories, then most probably it's about 10% more...

So... help...

Calorie counting for dummies?

AllOutof_Bubblegum

MFP is quite notorious for setting calorie goals FAR too low, regardless of height and weight. For example, it told me to eat 1200, and my BMR (the bare amount of calories I need to LIVE) is 1280. And I am extremely tiny, only 5 feet. So unless you are smaller than me, or bedridden, it is almost a CERTAINTY that you are eating too little. (This can result in lean muscle loss, chronic fatigue, metabolism damage, and bingeing due to over-restriction.)

Go to

http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/

and enter your height/weight/activity level.

Subtract 10-20% from the number it calculates for you, and that is the number of calories you should be eating a day in order to lose weight.

diannethegeek

The lower your net calories the more likely you are to lose muscle along with fat. Some people care about this and others don't.

These are three threads that I think everyone who's new to the boards should read:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1235566-so-you-re-new-here
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1234699-logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

lemurcat12

MFP works by setting a goal which you are supposed to hit with your net calories. In other words, you are supposed to eat exercise calories back. In many cases the estimates for exercise calories from MFP are too high, so you might want to count only a portion of them, however. On the other hand, if you said you were sedentary you probably aren't, so the calories might be low for that reason.

The way you understand it -- get part of the deficit from cutting calories and part from working out -- is how I always understood the ideal too, and how some other programs work. But the MFP system gives you a goal based on you not exercising at all (probably because many don't, even if they'd planned to). That means that if you say you want to lose 2 lbs per week it subtracts the entire 1000 needed for that from your maintenance calories, and similarly if you say 1 lb a week it will subtract 500 from maintenance calories, etc. If what you really want is to do half from exercise and half from eating less, you simply log your exercise and it adjusts the calories upwards. If you don't do that the calorie deficit plus exercise deficit will be too high.

At first I wasn't sure about this method, but I'm starting to like it, as it gives an added incentive to exercise.

izu87

Thank you for your time and your replies. I read a lot in the past day, got completely lost, got a bit better idea of what I've done wrong and where to seek help. I'll try following the TDEE method and I joined the Eat, Train, Progress group that I believe will help me further

But to summarize what I realized - yep, I've most probably pushed myself into starvation mode. Or well no-way-to-lose-weight-with-that-little-calories-mode.