Eating 1500 calories a day, exercising and still not losing

Eat closer to 2000 than the 1200 approximately that I see you are eating quite a lot of the time in the past couple of weeks. I didn't go back further than that but it's just not enough even for a short, older woman like me let alone a six foot man! Your body is holding onto the fat because it think you are trying to starve it.

You really should work out what you should be eating properly. See this:

http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html

or this:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/975025-in-place-of-a-road-map-short-n-sweet

weight loss is a simple equation.
(BMR + exercise) - calries consumed, if the result is positive you'll be gainimg weight, negative and you lose weight. Healthy weight loss is 1-2 lbs/week.
~3500 calories is 1 lb of fat. Running a calorie deficit of 500 calories/day is approx 1 lb/week. It is this simple, MFP provides you with a BMR. Best wishes with your weight loss.
james white
CNA/BS MBON/UMD

I tried tracking carbs by grams by find that hard to do and so now I track total calories.

Surely I should be losing eating less than 1500 calories as a man and I am just over 6 foot tall.

What am I doing wrong? Why am I gaining weight?

Are you a vegetarian ? and how heavy are you.

You should try to eat at least 100g of protein a day, as evidence says this is better for weight loss and preservation of lean mass.

Also get your fat intake up - there are essential fats you have to eat. Eat some walnuts, for example, to get Omega-3 fats.

Currently you have a diet very high in carbohydrates. It's like you're on a glucose drip. It's likely you have high blood sugar levels - has this been tested ? High carb intake = high insulin levels = inhibited fat release from storage.

1500 should be fine for weight loss, but it's the composition of the 1500 that needs attention.

I have been eating less than 1500 calories a day and exercising but I still dont appear to be losing.

Feel free to check my diary. I pretty much eat oatmeal and fruit maybe some toast with it for breakfast and then in the late afternoon or evening eat a cooked meal usually consisting of rice, vegetables and pulse.

I usually do 10 to 20 minutes of intensive interval type training in the park or go for 3 mile walk at a good pace. I do daily press ups too.

I started to lose in the first week but now after 3 weeks I seem to have gone up in weight by 5 pounds.

I tried tracking carbs by grams by find that hard to do and so now I track total calories.

Surely I should be losing eating less than 1500 calories as a man and I am just over 6 foot tall.

What am I doing wrong? Why am I gaining weight?

You should be hemorrhaging weight.

thanks that's good to hear because I have not mentioned this but I look better and feel like I am losing its just the scales are the not in line with what I believe is happening.

If you feel like you're losing, you might be. When you start to work out, you retain water and glycogen in your muscles, which are very dense. This retention can offset any fat losses on the scale and keep the scale from moving, or push it in the wrong direction. Losses in inches will still show up, however, so a tape measure is the preferred tracking method. The scale can lie.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but you want to eat more to maximize fat loss. Your body burns calories in the form of fat and muscles, but the ratio of the two can shift depending on whether you do resistance training and how close to your maintenance calories you eat. When you run a small deficit, your body tends to take mostly from fat cells since the muscle cells are being utilized and no long term shortage is anticipated. When you eat at a large deficit for extended periods, your body shifts the ratio to mostly muscle cells. Muscle requires more calories to maintain than fat, so if a long term shortage is expected by your body, you will hold on to fat cells as an inexpensive energy reserve. A small deficit combined with resistance training will maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHzie6XRGk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHzie6XRGk

I've just gone through the same pain.

5'11" and 223lb. I lost 14lb dead easy, but the second 14lb has been torture.

I tried to lose at 2lb-per-week and MFP set the target at 1460 cal-per-day. Add the exercise cals in and even after say a mile swim at speed (by chosen cadio exercise because running incurs too many injuries) and I was still at around 2000 cals-per-day limit.

Naturally I thought 'don't eat back the cals' and I would reguarly run a defit of 400-800 cals (after MFP had calculated -1000 cal-per-day to start off with). So the overall defect would be 1400-1800 cal-per-day.

I thought I'd be a dead certainty to lose the 2lb-per-week as I had before I ran into trouble. But instead my weight plateued and even some weeks increased (a physiological impossibility but plenty of others report it).

Pushing your body into thinking it is being backed into a corner and is on the cusp of going into starvation mode is the problem. There's a fine balancing act between being able to lose weight, and tripping the body into automatically preparing for a period of reduced calorie income, and when the calories do come along, the body stores them like mad as fat to alleviate the next anticipated period of starvation.

Now I've changed my profile to 1.5lb-per-week and my MFP target is much more reasonable. I eat back every calorie from exercise and it seems to be working. Avoiding starvation mode is the key element. Keeping the body pretty much 'in the dark' that you are actually aiming to lose weight seems to be the strategy, whereby your eating routine doesn't substantially change and it doesn't automatically start taking steps to batten-down-the-hatches.

Good luck!

If you don't weigh your food with a scale, get one and start doing it. You may be eating more than you think. You should be losing on 1500 since that's not nearly enough for a man of your size. I'm a 5'6" woman and at 112lbs I lost eating 1500 calories.

ETA: you don't sound overweight to me btw. I would suggest building up some muscle because that will change your body more visibly and most likely give you the results you are hoping to see :flowerforyou:

For the record, I'm a 6'-1" vegetarian at 195 lbs, and my body fat is under 20%, so 197 lbs may not be overweight at all. Have you checked your body fat level?