Calorie advice.. Views sought. :)

porffor

Ok.. I need some help / advice please.

I'm doing the 30 DS day 8 today of level 1 (bit daunted about moving up a level but thats another story).
I'm using my exercise bike at a good speed for 25 mins, with intervals of 'as fast as I can go' to get me up in stamina / speed eventually and I've gone up a resistance too.
I wasn't totally 'un fit' before, in that I had a summer of riding up till oct, but had a gap from then with just a belly dancing class from January.

Now.. my weight seemed to stall since starting Uni, been struggling to maintain loss and went up down the same few lbs.

I want to lose body fat more than scale weight but only have a regular scales at home. I weighed in on a BF scales in a pharmacist recently to get an idea - I know it's not very accurate but figured it'd show me progress in time.

Now, what should I do about my scales? I weigh daily and have done for years as a way of managing my motivation and insight into my weight - if I ignored it I'd gain.

I got down to 180 on friday but am back up at 181.5 and am finding it's annoying me now, I ate some of my calories back but not many at all. But honestly I'm one of those that if I ate them all I'd be in the gaining situation even more.

Advice welcome - I'm 40, 5'3" and came up at 43.2% BF on the scales I weighed on last week so really do need to still lose fat while gaining muscle.
MFP has me at 1200 cals if I want to lose 2lb or around 1400 for 1lb a week.
Another site I went on said 1123 for my height so confused..

Thanks.

sloew

Ok so here is my story and you can take it as you want....

I've been working out and on my getfit health journey since Jan 2011 and lost a good 30 lbs in the first 6 mo.. The last 7 mo I've been at a stand still.. eating more cal, cutting back cal... shocking my body with diff exercises ect and no change!!! I finally went and took a metabolic test with my nutritionist and found out that I had a high metabolism and eating 1500-1800 wasn't enough for me it was enough under my bmr that my body was holding on to everything. My bmr is 1962 and so my caloric intake should be 2200-2400 daily! I'm 28 female. 5'6'' and weigh 171. I just found this out so monday I will start on my new calorie set. It makes since to me and I'm hoping i start to lose again!

I'm not sure if this helps any but it was a great eye opener to me to know for sure what my bmr is. I hope this helps you. Maybe your just not eating enoug, esp if you are doing strength training, it speeds up your metabolism.
Good luck!!

AprilOneFourFour

Ok so here is my story and you can take it as you want....

I've been working out and on my getfit health journey since Jan 2011 and lost a good 30 lbs in the first 6 mo.. The last 7 mo I've been at a stand still.. eating more cal, cutting back cal... shocking my body with diff exercises ect and no change!!! I finally went and took a metabolic test with my nutritionist and found out that I had a high metabolism and eating 1500-1800 wasn't enough for me it was enough under my bmr that my body was holding on to everything. My bmr is 1962 and so my caloric intake should be 2200-2400 daily! I'm 28 female. 5'6'' and weigh 171. I just found this out so monday I will start on my new calorie set. It makes since to me and I'm hoping i start to lose again!

I'm not sure if this helps any but it was a great eye opener to me to know for sure what my bmr is. I hope this helps you. Maybe your just not eating enoug, esp if you are doing strength training, it speeds up your metabolism.


Good luck!!

That's really interesting. Will you report on how it goes?

Rae6503

Your 1.5 "gain" is probably water weight. This is why some people advocate weighing only once a week. If you are going to be irritated by small fluctuations, once a week might be a better idea for you.

I'd recommend going for the 1lb a week number and eating your exercise calories. That approach seems to work before for most people.

BernieMBurke

Lord knows, I'm not an expert, but here goes.

I lost 80 lbs. in nine months using MFP and here's what I found that I needed to do. I needed to exercise (sounds like you're doing that), needed to watch carefully what I ate (another check) and drink at least 8 glasses of water a day (don't know what your situation is).

The exercise helps speed up your metabolism (assuming you're not in starvation mode) as well as making you feel better overall. The food part is fairly obvious, so I won't dwell on that except to say the types and amounts of food do make a difference. Water is necessary to keep you hydrated, but it also helps flush "stuff" out of your body.

I've heard of muscle-memory where your muscles "remember" the same repetitive exercise. I suscribe to the thought that your body has "food memory" where it starts to understand that more food is coming at certain times. For example, if you eat three times a day (8 AM, 12 PM, and 5:30 PM) consistently for awhile, your body will start to expect that. If you get off that routine frequently, your'e body is confused and might go into starvation mode quicker (assuming you are keeping your caloric intake in check). I, personnally, tend to eat smaller meals and more often, when I can.

The last thing I would add might be the hardest depending on your life-situation. SLEEP!

I try to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night. Also, I try to go to sleep around the same time and get up around the same time. One advantage is that when you're sleeping, you're not eating. Another is, like exercise, it's good for your overall health. With the crazy life most of us lead, this might be really hard to do. Nonetheless, at least consider it.

Finally, you've already made the first and hardest step. You've already admitted to yourself you need to do something (i.e. lose weight, eat better, ...). This is something that you, and you alone, have to do. Nobody else can do it, so stay with it.

Good luck!

porffor

Ok so here is my story and you can take it as you want....

I've been working out and on my getfit health journey since Jan 2011 and lost a good 30 lbs in the first 6 mo.. The last 7 mo I've been at a stand still.. eating more cal, cutting back cal... shocking my body with diff exercises ect and no change!!! I finally went and took a metabolic test with my nutritionist and found out that I had a high metabolism and eating 1500-1800 wasn't enough for me it was enough under my bmr that my body was holding on to everything. My bmr is 1962 and so my caloric intake should be 2200-2400 daily! I'm 28 female. 5'6'' and weigh 171. I just found this out so monday I will start on my new calorie set. It makes since to me and I'm hoping i start to lose again!

I'm not sure if this helps any but it was a great eye opener to me to know for sure what my bmr is. I hope this helps you. Maybe your just not eating enoug, esp if you are doing strength training, it speeds up your metabolism.
Good luck!!

What a good job you got checked. I'm not sure how you get that sort of check in the UK.
What calories have you been advised to consume? I'm assuming 2200-2400 is for maintanence?

Hope you get on well and would love to read about it as you go along.

porffor

Thanks everyone - perhaps it is that I'm eating too low.

One thing I'll need to change is def the daily visit to the scales. It didn't used to bother me it fluctuating but it's really started to bother me as I've been around this weight since Sept.

Will keep at the exercise and try eating a bit more. I've got the water sorted so thats not a prob.