Why am I not losing

Your diary for last week wasn't that bad. 850 is a large calorie deficit but it seems you try to hit around 1400 each day. 6 lbs in 7 weeks is awesome...Just because a computer tells you 2 lbs will come off each week, don't believe it, your body is not an exact machine. Take measurements and go by BF%.

FYI, my wife has only lost 3-4 lbs in 5 weeks (not counting the stupid WW she was trying before), but her inches lost have totalled more than 9 inches.

Women..99% of the time...Inches and BF% come off first due to you less amount of Lean Body Muscle/Mass (LBM) you have. The scale catches up after you have already gone down 2 sizes. Just the way it works. This is why women get so mad at their hubbys, because we drop weight faster...at first.

BF% tells you how much
Measurements tell you where

Keep up the good work....No worries

To you all who know better than I, here's a newb question.

I looked at the goals section. My calories burned through normal activity is 2440. I multiplied that by .80 and got 1952. 1. How much weight will I lose a month eating this many calories? 2. When I eat healthy foods, I struggle to get in 1480 calories (which is what MFP is telling me to eat) Nutrient dense foods are filling!

Before starting this journey I would eat a bag of chips and 12 soda a day and that's kinda it. Maybe eat more but not often. I really did just drink my calories. (I know this is sad)

Now that I am learning to cook clean healthy foods (Ignore this past 2 weeks I had finals both kids were sick, now I am sick) I am literally never hungry. I force feed myself a meal replacement shake in the morning as eating at 630am just doesn't sound good. I normally don't eat again until noonish where I try ot have salad with chicken breast. Then I am I normally eat a protein bar around 3pm (I love them, secret new favorite food) and then force feed myself dinner which is normally chicken, brown rice or whole grain pasta with some type of herb. Than around 7pm I have a smoothie (Minus the milk and yogurt more like a bunch of fruit blended with ice and a little juice)

I am seriously never hungry. I eat now because I know I need to to fuel my body. I broke the habit of eating for emotional reasons so my food issue are gone. If I am supposed to be eating 1900+ calories, I may cry.,

So should you base your calories off you BMR or TDEE? Or do the numbers come out to be about the same?

Based on a calorie deficit of more than 850/day, I should have lost 12 lbs. over the last 7 weeks. I've lost 6 lbs. It is so discouraging. My net calories average 1,025-1,050/day and I run a 5K on the elliptical 5-6 times/week with other, lighter exercise the other days. My protein and fiber intake are great. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. The math shouldn't be this off.

My thoughts?

1) You are eating more calories than you think.

I looked at your diary for the last 2 weeks, and you are actually averaging about 1350-1450 on the days you've logged what I assume to be everything. There were a couple days that were lacking in logging. I'm assuming that you ate on those days and simply didn't log. If you don't log every single thing you are eating, then you can't really know how much you are eating even if you *think* you know. Just using the average of 1450 calories per day instead of 1050, you are already knocking out 400 calories x 7 weeks = 19600 calories = 5.6 lbs. That alone is pretty much enough too take you from the "expected" goal of 12 lbs in 7 weeks to 6 lbs in 7 weeks.

2) You aren't burning as many calories as you think.

I don't know your weight or body fat %, but if you've had significant losses in the past and then put weight back on, there's a good chance that you have a higher body fat % than is estimated for your height/weight/age. If you use a BMR calculator based on body fat % and weight, you might discover that your BMR is lower than expected, which makes TDEE lower than expected, which means losses are lower than expected.

Your calorie burns from exercise can also be off, especially if you are doing elliptical. One thing I've read about ellipticals is that they have forward momentum, so you don't have to work as hard, especially if resistance is not high enough. Have you ever noticed that when you are going all out on the elliptical and try to slow down or stop it takes you a few rotations of the legs? If so, then you likely are not working as hard as you would think because the machine is doing some of the movement for you. Even if calculating your calorie burns from a heart rate monitor it could be off if you are also moving your arms with your legs because movement of the upper body can increase the heart rate more even if you aren't necessarly doing all that much work load.


My solution?

Track every single food and beverage that you consume without fail and with as much accuracy as possible for the next 7 weeks. This means weighing EVERYTHING that can be weighed, including fruits and veggies and protein powder, etc. This also means that if you are having a prepared dish, you should try to enter each ingredient seperately or build it in the recipe builder. If you are eating out, look at various entries and choose the one that's most accurate for what you are eating. We got Indian food last weekend and there were tons of entries for chicken tikka masala that ranged from 200 calories to 700 calories. I looked at recipes and serving sizes and nutrition iformation online and chose a calorie count that seemed the most reasonable.

At the end of the 7 weeks, you should have a good idea of how many calories you are burning per day by doing some simple reverse math. You lost 6 more lbs? That means that you had a calorie deficit of about 425 calories per day. You consumed an average of 1450 calories per day? Then your TDEE is probably around 1875. You can up your TDEE by increasing your exercise intensity and duration.