Critique my food diary please

Laura_Ivy

So,I've been at this for a little over a month(6 weeks) now with less than 2 lbs lost. I keep losing one lb and gaining it right back. For the first 2 weeks I was doing Weight Watchers and would input my food here out of curiosity and found I was eating less than 1100 calories a day. I decided after that to stick to calorie counting and found the Olivia Method(so don't be alarmed when you see the number there! I usually eat 1440 which is my BMR).

I've been trying to eat at least my BMR and only eating a fraction of my exercise calories back since I find the estimates are sometimes ridiculously high. I'm trying to mostly stick with cardio at the moment since I want to lose pounds and will add strength training into my routine once I get to a lower number.

My diary is open and I was hoping that I could get others opinions on improvement and maybe an insight into why I'm not losing?

I'm sorry if this such a redundant topic but I'm so frustrated and I need input and encouragement maybe?

Many Thanks
Laura

EricNCSU

I only looked at one day, but you're not eating enough. 600 cals will not keep your body going much less burn anything. It sounds counter-intuitive but metabolism is a raging fire, you have to add fuel to it to keep it stoked. If your metabolism is weak or shut off eating tiny amounts will do nothing for you at all.

MB_Positif

Looks decent to me. Try upping your fiber maybe? Do you have regular bowel movements? Sorry if you think it's gross that I would ask if you are pooping, but keeping things moving through is important...

savlyon

Don't skip the strength training for now.
Have you ever noticed that guys will drop weight super fast while we hit the gym constantly running and doing zumba all the time?!?! They weight train. What happens is that you will build muscle which burns calories longer. Also, after you strength train you will continue to burn an elevated number of calories for several hours.

Another thing to remember is that the SCALE is not the enemy. The enemy is body fat. Studies have shown that over the course of time, people who strength train and do cardio lose more body fat than people who do only cardio.

UponThisRock

you'll retain more lean mass if you get the protein up to around 100g/day

SusanneWhittington

you should have looked at days before today, because she eats more than 600, she did not finish the day today. Your food looks great, perfect actually. I would try to go with less carbs and more protein, though with yesterday's food that would still be all perfect. What are you drinking and how much? What kind of exercises are you doing? When you don't drink enough water that could be a reason, not enough different exercises could be another, but your food looks fantastic.
when you are still not able to loose weight, I would talk with a doctor, I had that problem and after I am on the right medication I can finally loose weight.

peacek

Your diray looks so clean to me, I am sorry to be of little help - but I think you need to check with your doctor!

Eleanorjanethinner

I'd had a wee look and your diary looks fine to me! (I'm not an expert...) You could do some things like switch to whole grain bread if you wanted, but hey...

Maybe some folks might have ideas about your settings. I just put in my details, aimed to lose 1 1/2 pounds a week and mostly eat the calories they say (including most of my exercise calories. I use the exercycle read out instead of MFPs calories for stationary bike). Doing that I've lost between 1/2 a pound to a pound or more a week (depends how closely I'm sticking to calories and seems a bit random too).

Good luck!

hnsaunde

What kind of cardio are you doing? I found that doing interval training helped break my first plateau. Also, I would add the strength training in now, I wish I had done it from the beginning, and you'll see inches lost even if the scale doesn't move.

bstamps12

I looked at your diary for the past week or so and it seems you are over on Fat quite a lot. Look at your macronutrients (carbs/fat/protein) and try to keep them balanced for your lifestyle. Try eating more protein and less fat. Fat from nuts and avacados is okay because it's healthy fats. But fats from cheetos, butter, and milk chocolate are not the good fats. Not to say you should never eat those, because I have my share of them too, but don't have them every day. Do some searching about your lifestyle and macronutrients....endurance athletes tend to have super high carbs (I have 50% carbs/25% fat/25% protein) for example. Google or the search feature here on MFP will have tons of info on macronutrients. Then just try to follow that. Changing my macros broke a plateau for me that I had tried everything to break beforehand.

It's important to remember calories aren't the whole picture. Where the calories come from (macronutrients) is equally as important.

Laura_Ivy

Right now I've been just using workout videos. I try to do a different one each day like Tae Bo, Jillian Michael's: Banish fat,Boost Metabolism, Biggest Loser DVDs and I did one by The Firm. They all are pretty much like interval training except the Tae Bo.

I had my blood work done in May of this year because Thyroid problems run in my family and the same thing happened, I'd lose 2 lbs and gain them right back, but it came back fine.

But maybe I need to see an endocrinologist if this keeps happening.

*sigh*

Laura_Ivy

I looked at your diary for the past week or so and it seems you are over on Fat quite a lot. Look at your macronutrients (carbs/fat/protein) and try to keep them balanced for your lifestyle. Try eating more protein and less fat. Fat from nuts and avacados is okay because it's healthy fats. But fats from cheetos, butter, and milk chocolate are not the good fats. Not to say you should never eat those, because I have my share of them too, but don't have them every day. Do some searching about your lifestyle and macronutrients....endurance athletes tend to have super high carbs (I have 50% carbs/25% fat/25% protein) for example. Google or the search feature here on MFP will have tons of info on macronutrients. Then just try to follow that. Changing my macros broke a plateau for me that I had tried everything to break beforehand.

It's important to remember calories aren't the whole picture. Where the calories come from (macronutrients) is equally as important.

Will look into that,thank ya!

zontuin

Laura,
I have to agree with the others, that your food diary looks great! You're doing all the right things: focusing on cardio, drinking your water, and had your thyroid tested.

I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful. I can only suggest a few things that you might consider:
1) Try lowering your daily calorie goal. Recheck your calculations. Maybe you just don't need as much as you originally thought.
2) If you're not doing it already, focus on doing cardio every day. This can help give your metabolism a kick in the b*tt.
3) Get your thyroid re-checked. You did the right thing to get it checked in May. Some thyroid conditions can result in a kind-of "sputtering" effect on your thyroid levels, though, so it's possible you have an issue, but it didn't show up on that one test. Seeing an endocrinologist is a good idea, if your primary care physician is giving you a hassle about it. Your TSH should be below 3.0, so don't let them tell you otherwise. Some doctors are still using the old threshold of 4.5, which is no longer accepted guidance. (And yes, I'm sure it's evident that I myself have been managing my own thyroid issue the last few years). Pregnancy can wreck havoc on the thyroid, even up to 12 months postpartum, and even for women who have never had a thyroid issue in the past.

It's not one thing that we do that helps us lose weight, but it's a series of choices that we make each day, and consistently over the weeks. So it's important that you stick with it, even though you feel discouraged. At some point, you will get the upper hand and your body will start releasing it's stores.

Hang tough! I'm here for you. We all are. So don't lose hope. Try to adjust one thing, give it a few weeks, and see what happens.
It WILL work!
Cheers,
Judith

BlueLikeJazz

I just wanted to expand on your comment on MFP overestimating for calories burned: it certainly does, and sometimes almost doubles what you actually burn. I just started wearing a BodyBugg and a Polar FT7 heart rate monitor while exercising recently. I consistently find that with the more generic exercises (elliptical, dance, aerobics, etc.) MFP is way-overestimating. For instance, I burn 300 cals in 40 minutes on the elliptical according to both my HRM and BodyBugg, but MFP gives me 548. That's a significant difference. With the more specific exercises (for instance, the walking/running ones that include mph) it seems to be a bit more accurate. But you're definitely right in only eating back half your exercise cals if you're using MFP's counts.