Does not seem like I am losing anything

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My calorie intake should by 1840 per day. I have been taking in about 1500 calories a day and i am barely losing a pound or two a month. Can someone explain this?

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  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    You should be eating your calorie budget not less to start with. That said you should be losing at the 1500 if you are really eating that. Do you weigh and measure food for accuracy or just eyeball portions? Most of us are horrible at knowing exactly what we're eating without using a scale and measuring devices.
  • Oh2BeMaintaining
    Oh2BeMaintaining Posts: 188 Member
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    It will be hard to help you unless you open your diary and let us see how you are "spending" those 1500 calories, that really does make a difference.
  • alpine1994
    alpine1994 Posts: 1,915 Member
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    I would suggest getting a food scale and always using measuring spoons/cups. It's crazy how little two tablespoons of salad dressing is (compared to how much I used to squirt onto my salads). It's also good to make sure the 1500 cals of food that you're eating is good stuff. Lean meats (if you eat meat), veggies, and fruits mostly. Try to keep simple carbs lower and protein higher. Get in some regular exercise. If you're doing all of these things and not losing, you might want to go to the doctor.
  • ChrissME
    ChrissME Posts: 33 Member
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    Do you watch your salt intake? I cut my sodium limit to 1200 mg (instead of 2500mg allowed by MFP) The scales won't tip in my favor if I eat too much salt.
  • denice119
    denice119 Posts: 5 Member
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    Well that is definitely the problem. I was told when i started this program as long as you stayed under your calories it really did not matter what you ate and trust me i was not eating fruits and vegetables alot. Im not a big salt person which is good and I have been walking alot more but now the food intake will change. I know your probably saying it's common sense but i thought as long as calorie intake was down it would make a difference. THANK YOU EVERYONE for your replies and next month I hope to post on here a happier topic.
  • spoons81
    spoons81 Posts: 51 Member
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    You can eat twinkies every day, be under your calorie goal, and lose weight (not that I'd recommend it!!). Get a scale and measuring devices like spoons and cups. I used to eyeball things and I was WAAAAY off. Also, I have to double check some of the nutritional values that MFP spits out, because a lot of the member submitted ones are just flat out wrong. Livestrong.com verifies a lot of the entries, so that's not a bad place to start. When you start building up frequent and recent foods you'll be able to verify less and less.

    I'm no pro, that's just been my experience with this so far... :)