Been struggling lately.

Adiemus200

Hello everyone, I was wondering if I could have some advice please. I have really been struggling lately. I joined myfitness pal last year but I haven’t used it solidly until recently. I was doing slimming world previously and it started off well. Then I stopped losing weight. I can assume that I was eating too much to lose any more weight. So I took a break for a while, then I tried my fitnesspal. It worked very well, in fact I am now just 5lbs away from my target. I’m going on holiday in three weeks time and I wanted to do my best until I went away, but I am struggling.

I’m a 33 year old female. I’m 154 cm tall and 139 lbs. I have my fitness pal set to lose half a pound a week. My activity level is set to lightly active. I walk to work and back every day at a brisk pace, it takes me 30 minuets to get to work (I don’t log this as exercise). My job is a very busy job, I am a medical laboratory assistant and I spend most of the day on my feet and I walk a lot. Occasionally I get a day where I sit at a desk all day but this is very rare. I go to the gym twice a week and I train hard fencing 4 to 6 hours a week (not including fencing competitions on the occasional weekend). My net calorie goal is 1530 and I always eat back my exercise calories. On an average day I eat 1900 - 2000 calories. My BMR is 1425 and my TDEE is 2458. I drink 2000 to 2500 litres of water a day.

I lost 8 lbs in 4 - 5 weeks, the weight fell of me and I felt fine most of the time. But then I think I burned out. I lost my motivation to go to the gym and I got fed up with calorie counting. Work has been increasingly busy and stressful and I felt tired. I stopped calorie counting to give my self a bit of a break from it (but made healthy choices most of the time) and I stopped going to the gym and just continued to fence. I had two tough fencing competitions recently on the weekends. Surprisingly I only gained one pound in two weeks with out calorie counting at all.

Thing is…I wouldn’t mind losing another few pounds before going away on holiday. But I’m finding it very hard to get into the swing of it. I feel hungry a lot of the time recently especially on exercise rest days. I feel tired because I have been fencing a lot because of the fencing competitions I have been going to the past two weekends on top of my normal training. Work has been very busy and stressful, I have just completed a huge audit for my boss. I had to force my self to go to the gym today, too be honest I would have rather stayed at home with a nice glass of wine I don’t know if I’m struggling because I just really need my holiday or weather its worth changing my activity level on my fitness pal to from lightly active to active? Maybe I’m just lacking in energy? Sometimes on exercise rest days I feel famished on 1530 calories

SunofaBeach14

You seem pretty active for 1500 calories, and honestly if I were you I'd take diet break and go to maintenance for a couple of weeks or so. Keep counting but go to maintenance. Dieting is stressful mentally and physically, and sometimes you need to time to not care so much.

ValGogo

Are you trying to gain weight because the weight you are at for 5'8" is right on the edge of too thin.

StaciMarie1974

I tend to be more hungry the day following a very active day. (Most of my days are not as active as what you describe.) So I don't think its unusual that you find yourself particularly hungry on rest days.

Aim for maintenance, and decide in a few weeks whether or not you need to continue trying to lose a few more pounds.

SunofaBeach14

Are you trying to gain weight because the weight you are at for 5'8" is right on the edge of too thin.

FFS

Adiemus200

Opps. Sorry that was a typo, i'm 5'1 which is 154 cm

Thanks for the advice guys, I think i will try to maintain for a while.