EM2WL FTL :(

MissyMissy18

Sigh... I so wanted to believe that EM2WL would work for me. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case.

I started on weight watchers and lost about 30 pounds in 11 months that way before switching over to calorie counting. WW uses points, so I'm not 100% sure what my normal cal intake was, but if I were to guess I'd say between 1200-1450 daily, probably a little more on the weekends because I saved up my "weekly" and "exercise" points. However, when I reached a healthy BMI and WW recommended I start eating even less (I'd estimate it to be a 100-150 cal reduction) I knew it wasn't going to work for me. I was running regularly, and the idea of eating even LESS food seemed totally counterproductive to me, and that's when I switched to calorie counting. I set my calories at 1350, sometimes eating back my exercise cals, sometimes not. I coninued to lose, albeit slower than before. When I got tired of the weight loss going slow, I tried cycling my calories, and it sped up a bit... but planning out a different number of calories every day was too time consuming. I set my cals to 1400, again sometimes eating back exercise cals. Weight loss slowed more. This is when I stumbled upon MFP and EM2WL... it sounded like just the thing I needed to break through my plateau. I did some research, and set my calories to around 1580, and did NOT eat back my exercise cals at all.

My weight loss has come to a standstill.

Since May, I have been bouncing around between 134.5-135.8 and I am just about ready to GIVE UP.

I'll admit that my workout regimen has been less than strict, sometimes going a week without a real workout (I've been traveling a lot recently) but I try to stay fairly active during those times. And sometimes I just get sick to death of counting calories, so I'll loosen up a bit, but I never go on a crazy binge. I eat pretty damn clean. Very, very few refined sugars and starches, plenty of veg and lean protein and healthy fats, cut way back on sodium, and even cut back on fruit and grains a bit recently to see if lowering my carbs would help (nope.)

I usually feel very satisfied on 1500-1600, but I'm considering cuttin down to 1350 again (about my BMR) and eating back excercise cals.. and maybe I'll try EM2WL again when I have more time and can be more consistent with my workouts.

If anyone has any insight or advice, I'd super appreciate it. My diary is open, feel free to take a look. Also, I'm 5'4", 135ish, medium frame, 25 YO. My TDEE is different according to everyone. CalorieCount claims 1877, MFP claims 1650 or so, and my FitBit average is about 1800 (including workouts).

Halp

theartichoke

1580 is not EM2WL.

A small cut, if any, from your TDEE is. BMR is only relevant in terms of never wanting to NET below it. Try reading through the info again if you'd like. Read about doing a reset as well if eating more is something you're truly interested in. There are 20 different ways to do this. The key is finding which one works for you. Good luck!

CoderGal

How do you determine the calories in your food?
How do you determine how many calories you burn while exercising?
Do you log exercises (Sedentary TDEE+exercise) or are you going on TDEE? That would make a difference considering you've been 'slacking'

I did some research, and set my calories to around 1580, and did NOT eat back my exercise cals at all.

The 1580 number comes from? What's your BMR/TDEE (let me know what calculation you're basing that on)? And you didn't eat back your exercise calories? That's the opposite of what most people on emtwl do (unless you calculated that in the 1580 number...which means you're already including it)...

I'll admit that my workout regimen has been less than strict, sometimes going a week without a real workout

And sometimes I just get sick to death of counting calories, so I'll loosen up a bit

So why are you blaming the diet?

maybe I'll try EM2WL again when I have more time and can be more consistent with my workouts.

What does EM2WL have to do with workouts? I did it sedentary and ate more then you and lost?

Also, I'm 5'4", 135ish, medium frame, 25 YO. My TDEE is different according to everyone. CalorieCount claims 1877, MFP claims 1650 or so, and my FitBit average is about 1800 (including workouts).

Did you ever consider doing the math and figuring out why those numbers are those numbers?

CoderGal

Your dairy is closed so we cannot see what you're doing.

1426 is your estimated BMR according to the Harris-Benedict formula. I'm not sure about your Katch-McArdle Forumla since I have no body fat info. There's also a Mifflin et al. formula you can use. It's suppose to be about 5% more accurate according to Frankenfield et al. To get a accurate reading, get your RMR tested by a doctor and use that instead..

Estimated Sedentary TDEE: BMR*1.2 = ~1711.
Your TDEE based on the highest recommended activity level is ~2709, so yes, it's likely your TDEE with moderate exercise is about 1800

LOG EVERYTHING
LOG ACCURATELY

Do a Reset:
Set your goal to 1711, log all exercise calories (accurately) and eat all of them back for a few weeks. You should be exercising regularly if you intend on keeping a slim weight considering your tdee is under the recommended RDI for women (2000 cal/day).

You may not need to considering you said you've been slacking so you may have been eating over your TDEE.
Then do a cut again and you should be fine. Netting 1632 for the rest of your life would get you to 120 according to fat2fit.

Cristofori44

Sigh... I so wanted to believe that EM2WL would work for me. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case.

I started on weight watchers and lost about 30 pounds in 11 months that way before switching over to calorie counting. WW uses points, so I'm not 100% sure what my normal cal intake was, but if I were to guess I'd say between 1200-1450 daily, probably a little more on the weekends because I saved up my "weekly" and "exercise" points. However, when I reached a healthy BMI and WW recommended I start eating even less (I'd estimate it to be a 100-150 cal reduction) I knew it wasn't going to work for me. I was running regularly, and the idea of eating even LESS food seemed totally counterproductive to me, and that's when I switched to calorie counting. I set my calories at 1350, sometimes eating back my exercise cals, sometimes not. I coninued to lose, albeit slower than before. When I got tired of the weight loss going slow, I tried cycling my calories, and it sped up a bit... but planning out a different number of calories every day was too time consuming. I set my cals to 1400, again sometimes eating back exercise cals. Weight loss slowed more. This is when I stumbled upon MFP and EM2WL... it sounded like just the thing I needed to break through my plateau. I did some research, and set my calories to around 1580, and did NOT eat back my exercise cals at all.

My weight loss has come to a standstill.

Since May, I have been bouncing around between 134.5-135.8 and I am just about ready to GIVE UP.

I'll admit that my workout regimen has been less than strict, sometimes going a week without a real workout (I've been traveling a lot recently) but I try to stay fairly active during those times. And sometimes I just get sick to death of counting calories, so I'll loosen up a bit, but I never go on a crazy binge. I eat pretty damn clean. Very, very few refined sugars and starches, plenty of veg and lean protein and healthy fats, cut way back on sodium, and even cut back on fruit and grains a bit recently to see if lowering my carbs would help (nope.)

I usually feel very satisfied on 1500-1600, but I'm considering cuttin down to 1350 again (about my BMR) and eating back excercise cals.. and maybe I'll try EM2WL again when I have more time and can be more consistent with my workouts.

If anyone has any insight or advice, I'd super appreciate it. My diary is open, feel free to take a look. Also, I'm 5'4", 135ish, medium frame, 25 YO. My TDEE is different according to everyone. CalorieCount claims 1877, MFP claims 1650 or so, and my FitBit average is about 1800 (including workouts).

Halp

Your TDEE in fitness frog comes out to 1703 for sedentary. MFP's is even lower at 1650. The FitBit comes in at 1,800 (including workouts).

And what you say is you've been eating 1,580 and going a week at a time without exercise and "sometimes I just get sick to death of counting calories, so I'll loosen up a bit."

Guess what? It is easy to underestimate calories by 25 percent so the reason you're probably not losing weight is that you are eating at or close to your TDEE, and then not getting in your exercise. Because you were eating so close to TDEE and being loose about it to start with, you probably even went over TDEE on many occasions and then when you did exercise, just brought yourself back to TDEE.

This is probably why you're stuck, and it's why I log all my exercise manually and then eat back to a 15 percent of TDEE, or a 750 calorie cut from TDEE, knowing that maybe I underestimated what I ate. If I lose exactly 1.5 lbs. a week, I logged correctly. If I overestimated cals, I lose 2 lbs., and if I underestimated cals, I lose 1 lb.

Not so hard.

Cristofori44

In addition to the TDEE not being set correctly, and the OP should do that immediately, one other thing bugs me:

OP says: "Planning out a different number of calories every day was too time consuming. I set my cals to 1400, again sometimes eating back exercise cals"---and sometimes not. And then you say exercise was sporadic and that you would "loosen" up on calorie counting because you got tired of doing that.

Guess what?
(1) Losing weight is hard work; you have to work hard to lose weight.
(2) Part of working hard is being consistent:
--If you're going to be sporadic with exercise, going a week at a time without doing anything--and you're traveling, so I understand--you're going to have to--God forbid--spend all of 30 seconds and go into the system and adjust your caloric intake each day.
--If you can be consistent with exercise, you don't have to adjust the activity settings daily.
--In both cases, however, you need to accurately count calories.

You can't expect a calorie-counting system to work when you don't count correctly.

MissyMissy18

I may have jumped the gun with the name of my post, as I admittedly didn't do IN DEPTH research on em2wl (i know, i know, i'm a terrible human being!). I'm not blaming the diet. That's why I fessed up to not being super consistent with my working out and tracking recently. However, a large part of why I have been slacking is the lack of results is very unmotivating. I do appreciate all of your input, I will definitely take a second look at my calculations and try to readjust them.

I will tell you how I came up with the numbers I did, feel free to judge and analyze at your leisure: I calculated my BMR and TDEE on multiple websites (as mentioned in the original post). at 140ish and 25% bf (caliper test) my BMR according to katch-mcardle was, I believe, around 1350 (this was a few months and around 5 pounds ago). At this time I was working out fairly regularly. I used the calorie calculator on Scooby's Workshop, which gives you a TDEE that includes exercise cals (I set it for moderate exercise) and did a 15 or 20% cut... came out with 1580 a day and was instructed to not eat excercise cals back, as they are already accounted for in that number.

Unfortunately current life circumstances are making it difficult for me to stick to my usual workout regimen at the moment... not only have I been traveling frequently, but I am also in the process of applying for a new job and planning to move. I apologize if my post sounded whiny and ill-informed.. I guess my real confusion is with how many calories I should plan to eat daily at this time, when exercise is sporadic. I try to squeeze in workouts when I can, so I want to be eating enough calories so I won't keel over if I do an unplanned workout... but I also don't want to be netting over me tdee if I don't have a chance to exercise.

ANYWAY...

Again, thank you all for your input. And Cristofori44, thank you for your snark I would like to point out, again, that I have been tracking my food intake and exercise (oftentimes obsessively) for over a year, and have lost 35 pounds. I am well aware that losing weight is hard work. What's even harder? Losing the last 10 vanity pounds. Woof.

Cristofori44

"I'm an a-hole and proud of it." -Dennis Leary

Good job on the huge loss. The last 10 are hard and it sounds like you just need to adjust the settings. Or maybe you're at the point where you need to build muscle if you had a long cut period. Others can help more on the last 10 pounds challenge.

Snarkily,
Chris

CoderGal

^haha

Anyway, my advice is to log correctly. I exercise sporadically as well. And at different intensities and lengths. I set my NET to my sedentary TDEE and added exercise calories to get my actual TDEE. Perhaps do this with your goal weight statistics.