minimal loss

39ang

i have been using mfp since 21/7/11using 1200 cals a day as sugested by mfp and exercising 3 to 4 times a week, at first i gained a few pounds which i put down to muscle gain but since then ive been really disapointed as ive only lost 2 pounds even after going to gym every day this week and doing 13 miles cardio on bike and resistance machines every other day , what else can i do??? plz help!!
:sad:

MrsCupCakeBoyle

when i only eat 1200 i don't lose weight..

dls06

Eat your exercise calories.

anneyeats

Keep on keeping on. It will happen. Tape measuring yoursef helps to show what is really happening. Keep the motivation going!!

39ang

how much should i eat ? im eating that as recomended by mfp

MrsCupCakeBoyle

I Eat or try to eat between 1400-1600

TrishaLeighNelson

Thats nott what MFP recommends, thats what it says for you to eat because of how much youu chose to loose each week, like 2 pounds a week. You need to find out what your BMR is and eat thatt many calories a day. Also eat off what you burn

koosdel

Step 1. Open diary.

39ang

? i keep a diary on MFP

TrishaLeighNelson

Yes, your food diary

39ang

MY BMR IS 1,474

koosdel

Based on the limited info provided, 1,400BMR + excersize calories + eating only 1,200/day = potentially (defnatly) malnirished 39ang.

If your BMR is 1,400 you should be eating 1,400 minus what ever deficit MFP recommends. If you are excersisng, this will add to your bmr, this amount should also be eaten.

Back to step one, open the diary. Otherwise, no can really help.

39ang

i cant find how to open diary ive been looking , presumably this means everyone can see what i eat?
today is the first day i have used MFP on the computer the rest of the time i have used it on my iphone which is a lot more limited .
a x

jerryellis

You should never eat less than your BMR, your body thinks it is starving, this is why you are not losing . On days you don't exercise you should probably eat around 1600 depending on how active you are at your job, around the house and what not. On exercise days, if you burn 400 calories exercising you should eat 1800 calories that day so that you are eating back half of the calories you burn, because, once again, if you don't your body will think it is starving and will hold on to anything you eat and not let you lose anything. Now these are rough estimates for your calories, I don't know all of your details like height weight age and activity level, but, at bare minimum you should be eating your BMR of 1474 because that is what your body burns in a day even if all you did was sleep for 24 hours, which of course you don't. This is why you should eat more than your BMR or you go into starvation mode.

My fiance and I were not losing any weight for about 3 weeks and when she upped her calories from 1200 to 1350 and I upped mine from 1800 to 2150 we both started losing right away and much more quickly than before!

jerryellis

Go to settings then diary settings and at bottom of page change from private to public

39ang

hey all ive managed to open diary , thanx everyone im clearly eating too little ... 1200 was what MFP set my calorie intake to, so ill try change it manually

lbvx

I'm so glad I found this thread. MFP set my daily calories to 1200 as well, and I'm having so much trouble sticking to that. I just calculated my BMR and it is 1400, which seems more doable. @jerryellis, it sounds like you're saying that we should never go under our BMRs - so I should actually eat more than 1400 if I exercise to burn some calories... this sounds great to me and it makes sense, I'm just so confused about why MFP would be telling people to eat so little. Is this a bug in the software?

tigersword

There's nothing wrong with eating under your BMR. It all depends on your activity level. In order to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you take in. If you keep to your BMR, on a sedentary lifestyle, for me personally, that would only be about one quarter pound of weight loss per week. Now I'm not sedentary, but with 40 pounds left to lose, I'm certainly not limiting myself to my BMR. And honestly, I can't find a single scientific study that supports the "Never eat under your BMR" stance.

As with everything else, it all depends on how much you have to lose and what your progress is. If you want to focus on a specific BMR, figure out the BMR for your goal weight, and adjust from there. As you gain and lose weight, your BMR constantly changes. It's not a set in stone number.

peppa33

There seems to a lot of maths involved in losing weight and I am so not good at maths. my BMR is 1968.75, my daily calorie needs are 2707.03 based on this, however, if I ate this many calories a day i would never lose any weight. What should I be eating a day on a "normal" day and how much on a gym day bearing in my mind I burn around 530 calories 3 times a week at the gym? Can someone give me the calories per day in really simple terms x

shadykins

I just learned of a diet that you can eat all the vegetables, meat, yogurt, eggs that you possibly can plus brown rice each day and it is supposed to be a very healthy diet with maximum weight loss. I typed into a google search "fastest safest weight loss" and it came up with "harcombe diet". If you do Phase 1 of this diet for 5 days you can lose up to 14 lbs. YOu dont have to think of calories because its all you can eat of the items they tell you you can have...check it out.

inlander

^ That's obviously a gimmick. The only weight you'd be losing is water weight, and the foods being ingested together (as much as anyone wants) wouldn't create an amazing weight-loss-formula in order to lose 14 pounds of even water weight.

This thread is long and confusing and unhelpful. Here's what the original poster needs to do:

1. Increase your daily caloric intake per MFP. (I'm at 1,620 and it works well for me.)
2. When you work out, log your workouts and then eat those calories back.

You don't sound like you're eating enough, which means your body isn't going to lose any weight. It'll retain as much fat as it can.