Hello.....I am getting FRUSTRATED!!!

heybales

Well , when I started on this thing it told me 1200 calories ..I was just looking it up and it says if I workout 5 times a week it should be more like 1500 calories. I don't understand why I can't stay at the 1000-1200....I don't really get hungry , last night was the first time after I worked out that I felt hungry but I just brushed it off and went to bed.

Just so you know - the eating goal has nothing to do with the exercise goal.

Eating goal is in fact based on you do NO exercise. Until you log it. Then the exact same deficit is taken off the now increased daily burn.
Make sense huh. 2000 - 500 = 1 lb weekly if done daily, and 2500 - 500 = same 1 lb weekly if done daily. But the eating levels are 1500 and 2000. But same weight loss.

Those exercise goals and calories burned from it is purely for the Exercise page. Most never even see it.
Those figures have nothing at all to do with your eating level.

And it told you 1200 based on your selection of activity level and weight loss goal.
Any female selecting sedentary and 2 lbs weekly will get 1200 calories for non-exercise eating goal if their BMR is 1760 or below.
A BMR of 1760 is rather large too, so that's any female avg 5' 5", avg age 35, and weight of 235 lbs or less is going to get a 1200 eating level.
Reasonable, appropriate, or not.

And so you are aware, you can screw up your hormones eating so little that you no longer feel hungry.

You feeling full and your body being fully fed are 2 entirely different things.

You ever crave vitamin D? Some minerals? Likely no - but you know you could end up deficient when serious effects of that show up, and blood test proves it out.
But you try to eat nutritious to limit that possibility, right.

Same with calorie deficiency, it'll show up eventually with some negative results.

Sammi_2014

So should I up my calorie intake where I am working out ? I work out at least 2 hours through the day and I wear a pedometer all day long to that helps track steps and calories. I was thinking about bumping it up to 1500 calories a day and see if that helps ?

gneedsit

As a big guy wanting to lose weight I do know this it took time for me to get this big and it will take time to get where I want to be.
As crazy as it sounds instead of a -getting this done mindset maybe try- let's see what I can do today. You're putting a lot of pressure on yourself.

Sammi_2014

As a big guy wanting to lose weight I do know this it took time for me to get this big and it will take time to get where I want to be.
As crazy as it sounds instead of a -getting this done mindset maybe try- let's see what I can do today. You're putting a lot of pressure on yourself.

I think you are right , I beat myself up when I weigh myself and like today I woke up weighed myself and then started bawling my eyes out cause nothing is changing. I just learned though , that I should be eating back some of the calories I am burning and I might been to up my calorie intake.
My husband made a good point today about learning to love myself and stop being so insecure.

CharlieBeansmomTracey

you will get there. I know its frustrating but since we dont gain it overnight its going to take as longer to lose it especially if doing it the healthy way. but once you get there or even close to that you will feel and look a lot better.we are our own worst critics .so hang in there.

heybales

So should I up my calorie intake where I am working out ? I work out at least 2 hours through the day and I wear a pedometer all day long to that helps track steps and calories. I was thinking about bumping it up to 1500 calories a day and see if that helps ?

If you use MFP correctly you should be eating more on workout days, and it does it automatically - if you log your workout honestly.

You log your workout, and that means you burned more that day.

MFP subtracts the same deficit, and you would be above 1200 now.

Just look at your daily eating goal. The NET may say 1200, but NET ain't your eating goal.

Just be honest with exercise logging as you are with food logging.
Was that Zumba class really 60 min, or 5 min at start and end for stretching, and another 5 min slow warmup and cooldown, making the actual class 40 min?
Was that average walking pace really 4 mph for 60 min, or did it take you 30 min to work your way up to 4mph from say 3 mph, meaning your average was really 3.5 mph.
Was the elliptical really hard the entire 30 min, or warmed up slowly for 10 min (count that as 5 then, so 25 total).

That's the idea, and the MFP exercise entries for walking/running are most accurate, more than HRM - if you really do that speed the entired stated time, flat incline.

And did you indeed select Sedentary as your non-exercise lifestyle? Really a 45 hr deskjob/commute with no kids or pet play, no lawn care, not much walking around on weekend, ect? If more than that, you are actually Lightly Active.

And only valid weigh-in day to minimize known expected water weight fluctuations:
Morning after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout.

Any other day is meaningless noise that is only useful with about 2 months worth of data for a woman to see a trend line (women's metabolism changes through the month).

And frequent intense exercise is a stress on your body, that and stress of diet (especially big deficit) just increases cortisol, which retains water.
So confirm that 2 hrs is reasonable.

Diet is for weight loss - done right just fat loss, done wrong includes muscle mass.
Exercise is for heart health and body improvements - done right supports fat loss, done wrong includes muscle. Body improvements are about weight gain too.
And recovery from exercise takes longer in a diet. And it's the rest for recovery and repair that actually allows improvement, not the actual workout.

Only thing exercise does for a diet is allow you to eat more. Because it increase what you burn on that day, so when you eat less than you burn, you are still eating the same or more than you might without the exercise - that may help adherence.

on2016

My wife originally had picked '2 pounds/week' as her goal, but her calorie intake was just too low. She changed it to '1 pound/week' just so that the calorie intake numbers were more realistic (1,000 to 1,200 just doesn't seem safe, even if MFP suggest it).

Also, we only weight once a week. They say your weight can fluctuate about 5 pounds in a day just from the 'normal' things like eating, drinking, sweating, and everything in between. So day by day numbers can be misleading. Also, don't let the numbers discourage you. How you feel, and how your clothes fit are a better read on you health than the scale numbers. 8^)

So keep on doing what you're doing, and make sure you track everything, and you'll see the weight start dropping again.

258357479

Maybe need more exercise and control the carbohydrate sources. Actually I think there is about 80 kcal energy in the small cup of coffee. I drink only one cup one day and eat one apple as breakfast . I think you can find ways to fix it.

DarbiB

If your goal is weight loss you may be focusing a bit too much on weights. Remember, muscles weights more than fat, so even though you may have lost some 'fat' pounds, you have probably gained some 'muscle' pounds. Google some pics of 5 pounds of muscle v. 5 pounds of fat. You may want to try more cardio and less weights - fat is burned when aerobic cellular respiration kicks in, and that takes about 20 minutes. So for a 30 minute cardio workout, you're really only burning fat for about 10 minutes.
Your loss of 9lbs in 10 days is also a bit concerning, that's a lot of weight in a very short time, I'm hoping it wasn't done by extreme fasting...

I'm not even going to finish reading this. No.

Aw, c'mon. I burned a couple calories reading it through...from giggling.

Genuine Question from an ignorant person: Why is this silly/wrong? Or why are people saying "no"?

I'm not new to MFP, but I've been stalled for awhile, (Losing 1-2 pounds a month, so not horribly stalled). Anyways, I'm cruising the boards looking for advice too, and thought I'd ask the question. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: DUH! 5 pounds of muscle weighs the same as 5 pounds of fat. Sorry ya'll.

heybales

If your goal is weight loss you may be focusing a bit too much on weights. Remember, muscles weights more than fat, so even though you may have lost some 'fat' pounds, you have probably gained some 'muscle' pounds. Google some pics of 5 pounds of muscle v. 5 pounds of fat. You may want to try more cardio and less weights - fat is burned when aerobic cellular respiration kicks in, and that takes about 20 minutes. So for a 30 minute cardio workout, you're really only burning fat for about 10 minutes.
Your loss of 9lbs in 10 days is also a bit concerning, that's a lot of weight in a very short time, I'm hoping it wasn't done by extreme fasting...

I'm not even going to finish reading this. No.

Aw, c'mon. I burned a couple calories reading it through...from giggling.

Genuine Question from an ignorant person: Why is this silly/wrong? Or why are people saying "no"?

I'm not new to MFP, but I've been stalled for awhile, (Losing 1-2 pounds a month, so not horribly stalled). Anyways, I'm cruising the boards looking for advice too, and thought I'd ask the question. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: DUH! 5 pounds of muscle weighs the same as 5 pounds of fat. Sorry ya'll.

Several things.
1 - You can't gain muscle fast enough to offset fat loss, so saying too much focus on weights and should do cardio instead is ill-informed advice, because you'll lose muscle somewhere just doing cardio. You eat less than you burn to lose fat, if it's a big burn of cardio or smaller burn of lifting doesn't matter, eat less than you burn daily. Now with bigger burn of cardio you can eat more, indeed, but lifting is going to retain muscle mass.
2 - Fat is only burned after 20 min is just plain wrong. Fat is your main source of energy at rest and going in to exercise at easy levels, at start of exercise tad more carbs is burned along with fat, then it drops to normal ratio again with more fat being burned. Until you keep increasing intensity and more carbs burned as you burn more calories, same amount of fat is reached at some point.

9 lbs in 10 days is valid comment, because even normal water weight loss usually isn't that great, unless person had huge problem eating tons of sodium and went totally opposite direction.

For your issue if still losing, though slower than desired, look at how accurate you log foods. Calories is per weight, grams, not by measurement of cups or spoons. Weigh all you eat.
Then are you following MFP correctly and logging exercise and eating new goal given?
Are you logging exercise honestly? Was Zumba class really 60 min, or really 55 min, and of that 10 min was stretch, and another 10 at easy warmup/cooldown pace so counting 1/2 time? So really 40 min to log.
With 50 lbs to lose, you have reached point of reasonable is likely 1.5 lbs weekly loss, if you are attempting to make it more - you have likely experienced what your body can do to adapt when you attempt too extreme.