Am I the only one??

you are not alone! I ate scallopped potatos that were LEFTOVERS from a few nights ago last night, just cuz i was bored and it sounded good, when it really wasn't. and YES i feel guilty. but that one cheat cannot interfere with my goals! we can do this!

main thing I am doing is consuming 1700 calories. sounds like a lot but if you are working out your body needs those calories. Just make sure you go with healthy options and try to avoid processed foods as much as possible.

A guy at work told me that if you think of it as a diet you will never make it. Its not a diet its a life style change. When you are hungry skip the milk and cookies and go for the carrots or 90 calorie snack pack. I have also found that the pickles we by are 0 calories and I love pickles so Ill eat a few of those for a snack. By the way the guy at work has lost 60 lbs in about 6 months after he ended up in the hospital on the verge of going into a diabetic coma.

I know for me, it's best not to let myself get hungry. It sounds like you were trying to be way under your goal and you get yourself get really hungry. And yes, eat all the way up to your goal. Your deficit is built in. (In case that's what you were trying to do)

A guy at work told me that if you think of it as a diet you will never make it. Its not a diet its a life style change. When you are hungry skip the milk and cookies and go for the carrots or 90 calorie snack pack. I have also found that the pickles we by are 0 calories and I love pickles so Ill eat a few of those for a snack. By the way the guy at work has lost 60 lbs in about 6 months after he ended up in the hospital on the verge of going into a diabetic coma.

pickles are obviously not 0 calories. they're just so low in calories that, in a small enough serving size, they can "get away" with calling it zero.

watch out for all that salt though. Just a few pickles could be all the salt you're supposed to have in a day.

A guy at work told me that if you think of it as a diet you will never make it. Its not a diet its a life style change. When you are hungry skip the milk and cookies and go for the carrots or 90 calorie snack pack. I have also found that the pickles we by are 0 calories and I love pickles so Ill eat a few of those for a snack. By the way the guy at work has lost 60 lbs in about 6 months after he ended up in the hospital on the verge of going into a diabetic coma.

pickles are obviously not 0 calories. they're just so low in calories that, in a small enough serving size, they can "get away" with calling it zero.

watch out for all that salt though. Just a few pickles could be all the salt you're supposed to have in a day.

Nutrition Facts

Great Value - Hamburger Dill Chips Pickles



Servings: 1 oz (28g/3 chips) 1 container (18 oz (28g/3 chips) ea.)







Calories 0 Sodium 390 mg
Total Fat 0 g Potassium 0 mg
Saturated 0 g Total Carbs 1 g
Polyunsaturated 0 g Dietary Fiber 0 g
Monounsaturated 0 g Sugars 0 g
Trans 0 g Protein 0 g
Cholesterol 0 mg
Vitamin A 0% Calcium 0%
Vitamin C 0% Iron 0


Both this and the jar both say the same 0 calories

Ok, I read your reply and now am feeling anxious. "If you set up your profile correctly". I sure hope I did that.
This is intended to be in reponse to cwolfman14. I'm sorry, I'm new here.

A lot of people over estimate or underestimate their activity level. A lot of people who are sedentary will put "lightly active"...because they do have a desk job, but they have to get up to go talk to people or go to the bathroom or whatever...they basically cheat and lie to the system and then wonder why they don't get results. Also, the opposite often also occurs...someone is genuinely lightly active but they put themselves as sedentary which often results in too big a caloric deficit in the goal.

Additionally, many go with the most aggressive approach...i.e. 2Lbs per week. MFP, unlike other calculators does not really factor in your weight or anything and doesn't give any kind of warning that 2 Lbs per week is generally considered to be unhealthy unless you are obese; that said, MFP does recommend 1 Lb per week (as this is generally considered safe and healthy weight loss).

The reason I mention obese and the 2 Lb per week goal is that generally, they have enough fat to sustain such a large deficit without doing any real damage...they have enough fat to fuel the deficit. Someone who is just a bit overweight simply doesn't have enough fat to fuel that kind of deficit so the body, in an effort to protect you from starvation, goes into a metabolic stall. Not that this happens right away, but this forum is chalked full of posts about hitting a plateau on the 1,200 calorie plan.

1,200 calories per day is generally the 2 Lbs per week plan and on average represents an 800-1,000 calorie per day deficit from a maintenance level of calories (TDEE Total Daily Energy Expenditure) for most women (on average). It is also below BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) for most women as well (unless you are very short).

I personally wish MFP had some kind of warning like other TDEE method calculators do to let people know that the caloric goal selected is greater than 20% of your TDEE and could potentially dangerous...20% less of your TDEE is roughly 1 Lb per week loss. Many calculators will inform you that you should speak to a physician if you intend to go below 20% of your TDEE as there can be numerous unintended consequences of doing so long term.

It seem no matter how much you tell people to just go slow and low, they always want the quick fix. In reality, people who go nice and slow often see better results and ultimately faster results because they aren't going into frequent plateau...short range, you obviously see more results with 2Lbs...long range, from what I've seen, people going slower just end up having more success.

Also, unfortunately, a lot of people simply don't comprehend that MFP builds in that deficit...they automatically assume that the output provided by MFP is a max when in fact, it is a minimum (net of exercise)

A guy at work told me that if you think of it as a diet you will never make it. Its not a diet its a life style change. When you are hungry skip the milk and cookies and go for the carrots or 90 calorie snack pack. I have also found that the pickles we by are 0 calories and I love pickles so Ill eat a few of those for a snack. By the way the guy at work has lost 60 lbs in about 6 months after he ended up in the hospital on the verge of going into a diabetic coma.

pickles are obviously not 0 calories. they're just so low in calories that, in a small enough serving size, they can "get away" with calling it zero.

watch out for all that salt though. Just a few pickles could be all the salt you're supposed to have in a day.

Nutrition Facts

Great Value - Hamburger Dill Chips Pickles



Servings: 1 oz (28g/3 chips) 1 container (18 oz (28g/3 chips) ea.)







Calories 0 Sodium 390 mg
Total Fat 0 g Potassium 0 mg
Saturated 0 g Total Carbs 1 g
Polyunsaturated 0 g Dietary Fiber 0 g
Monounsaturated 0 g Sugars 0 g
Trans 0 g Protein 0 g
Cholesterol 0 mg
Vitamin A 0% Calcium 0%
Vitamin C 0% Iron 0


Both this and the jar both say the same 0 calories

Yes, and that's technically legal, but incorrect. Cucumbers contain calories, do you think they disappear once pickled? Carbs and protein just disappear?

It is not zero but it is so low that they are allowed to "round it down" to zero.

As you even posted, it says there's 1 gram of carbs in there. You know how many calories are in a gram of carbs, right? It's one of the most basic facts in the nutrition world.

According to the default MFP entry for dill pickles, 28g contains 1g of carbs, 5 calories, 359 mg sodium, 32 mg potassium, and 1% vitamin A, C, and iron (each would be rounded up or down from anything from 0.5%-1.4%)

It's really a semantic point, and if you're counting calories and damning all else, yes, you could call them zero calorie for all intents and purposes, but the fact remains that they don't ACTUALLY contain no calories.

You had 1000 calories left and you feel like you sabotaged yourself by eating cookies and milk? How much cookies and milk did you eat? If you were under 1000 calories, then what is the problem? Why didn't you want to eat the 1000 calories?

How many total and net calories do you typically eat in a day?

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who has a problem counting calories. I was doing so well the other day. I had about 1000 calories left to go for the day to divide between an afternoon snack and dinner. I did not want to eat all of it back since I had went to the gym twice that day. When I got home, all I could think about is food. I tried to distract myself but I couldn't. Eventually I gave in and ate some cookies and milk. I hate that I'm sabotaging myself. I also don't want to exist in a constant state of dieting for the rest of my life either. HELP!!

So don't go to the gym twice daily, it is not necessary unless you are an athlete (in which case you should be eating for fuel and recovery anyway not aiming to eat back fewer calories) and is high risk for injury or overtraining syndrome. Overexercising can lead to cravings even in the absence of hunger, exercise breaks the body down it is nutrition and rest that build it back up again. Try not overexercising OR seeing this as a long term healthy lifestyle change not a temporary diet.

If you went to the gym twice, I think you should be able to have a cookie or two. No need to binge, but if you have calories left, why not. Beating yourself up about it won't help at all. If you want to avoid the cookies, maybe you should try not to have them in the house.

I counted meticulously for 5 months, then started getting so OCD and obsessive that it was leading to binges for the first time in my life. I had to stop counting and tracking. I've been still exercising and using portion control, didn't start eating chips and soda and candy again and have been losing weight steadily still and my head is in a much better mental place now. I don't know if I'd be successful doing it this way if I hadn't of learned so much in the previous months of tracking though, I learned a lot. But for now, it's working so I'm going with it.

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who has a problem counting calories. I was doing so well the other day. I had about 1000 calories left to go for the day to divide between an afternoon snack and dinner. I did not want to eat all of it back since I had went to the gym twice that day. When I got home, all I could think about is food. I tried to distract myself but I couldn't. Eventually I gave in and ate some cookies and milk. I hate that I'm sabotaging myself. I also don't want to exist in a constant state of dieting for the rest of my life either. HELP!!

Don't keep cookies in the house and you can't binge on them spontaneously. That's a good start...