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My BMR is 2018
My TDEE is 2422
My daily Calories should be is 1937
Normally I'd say eat over your BMR (BMR - Basal Metabolic Rate - is the calories your body needs just to function, so you typically don't want to eat under this). However, your BMR does seem high to me (Mine is 1870 and I'm a 200 pound guy). I think you could get away with eating between 1800 and 2000 calories and you'd probably be just fine. If you feel really, really hungry or tired, go up to 2100 or so. Just be sure to stay under your TDEE in order to lose weight.
2,000 calories is a lot of food in a day. You will definitely not starve.
Again, it's simple math... if you eat 2100 you'll have a 300 calorie deficit every day - 2100 calories per week. A pound is 3500 calories so you'll lose a pound every week and a half or so. If you burn 200 calories on an easy walk every day, you'll have a 500 calorie deficit each day and lose a pound a week.
There are several problems with not eating. The biggest is that you will eventually get really, really hungry. I don't know about you, but if I'm really, really hungry and you put a box of donuts in front of me - it's OVER! If you eat a small meal every 3 hours or so, you won't be hungry and you'll feel a lot better - you'll have more consistent energy throughout the day. Consider 6 meals of about 300 calories each - that's an Egg McMuffin or a Subway 6" Turkey sandwich every 3 hours throughout the day.
Hope this helps!0 -
You seem like a very nice lady, so I hate to question your honesty, but do you really tread water for 90-120 minutes? That's an awful lot of work. I don't think I could do it for more than a few minutes myself. If that's a typo or an overestimation, you are "earning" a lot more calories than you should probably be consuming.
Your %BF makes a huge difference in how much work treading water is. The higher the %BF, the more bouyant you are.
That said, the standard test to be allowed to go swimming in the deep end at my old summer camp was to tread water for 60min. I can't remember any kids who failed, and there were plenty who were not fit and were not great swimmers. Maybe your technique is not very efficient - the goal is to move as little as possible - or you have very low %BF that makes it exceptionally difficult for you?0 -
Don't eat back your exercise calories. MFP way overestimates calories burned, so if you are eating them back, in all reality you are going over your calories, even though it says you aren't, because MFP mis-calculates this (which is pretty normal). Also, eat healthy. You said you don't eat fast food every day... Don't eat fast food AT ALL. It has almost no nutritional value, and is just loaded with fat. If you want to lose weight, it takes more than exercise. You need to eat healthy too, and track all your calories, literally everything, even drinks.0
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You seem like a very nice lady, so I hate to question your honesty, but do you really tread water for 90-120 minutes? That's an awful lot of work. I don't think I could do it for more than a few minutes myself. If that's a typo or an overestimation, you are "earning" a lot more calories than you should probably be consuming.
Your %BF makes a huge difference in how much work treading water is. The higher the %BF, the more bouyant you are.
That said, the standard test to be allowed to go swimming in the deep end at my old summer camp was to tread water for 60min. I can't remember any kids who failed, and there were plenty who were not fit and were not great swimmers. Maybe your technique is not very efficient - the goal is to move as little as possible - or you have very low %BF that makes it exceptionally difficult for you?
Honestly, I haven't tried to tread water for more than a few minutes since I was in swimming lessons close to 30 years ago. Now that I think about it, I could probably do it for an hour or so, but I can't imagine doing that unless I needed to. It seemed an odd choice of exercise for the OP. She is logging 800+ exercise calories a day and I suspect that is not quite accurate.0 -
You seem like a very nice lady, so I hate to question your honesty, but do you really tread water for 90-120 minutes? That's an awful lot of work. I don't think I could do it for more than a few minutes myself. If that's a typo or an overestimation, you are "earning" a lot more calories than you should probably be consuming.
Your %BF makes a huge difference in how much work treading water is. The higher the %BF, the more bouyant you are.
That said, the standard test to be allowed to go swimming in the deep end at my old summer camp was to tread water for 60min. I can't remember any kids who failed, and there were plenty who were not fit and were not great swimmers. Maybe your technique is not very efficient - the goal is to move as little as possible - or you have very low %BF that makes it exceptionally difficult for you?
Honestly, I haven't tried to tread water for more than a few minutes since I was in swimming lessons close to 30 years ago. Now that I think about it, I could probably do it for an hour or so, but I can't imagine doing that unless I needed to. It seemed an odd choice of exercise for the OP. She is logging 800+ exercise calories a day and I suspect that is not quite accurate.
Did I misread her post or did she reply that she is "playing frisbee and carrying her son around"? This is NOT treading water. Also, unless you're wearing a HRM during exercise, I wouldn't feel comfortable logging exercise calories unless they were reduced by about 30% (I'm no expert of course).0 -
What the posters above said is true - not logging foods or eating below 1200 calories (if that's why your log shows gaps) will hurt your body's ability to lose weight.
You have set your daily calorie goal to 2,322 now after you had it set to 1,500. How tall are you and how much do you weigh now?
I'm 6'1"/1.86m and weigh 275lbs/124,9kg right now, and to lose 1 1/2lbs a week I need to stay below 1890 calories a day, and that's mostly because I'm really tall! If you're shorter than me, then your goal needs to be lower or equal to mine depending on how much you want to lose a week.
That said, DON'T over estimate your calories burned! MFP's values are quite off by default, so if you overestimate how much you burned by several hundred calories and you eat those calories back, you're not eating a deficit of calories. I've heard that walking is the only exercise MFP has that's relatively accurate (which is the only exercise I currently do) and I still am careful to eat only about 50% of those calories burned back just in case.
Thank you for your comment. I am 5'4" and weigh 306 as of today (weigh in days are Friday) How do I know what calories I have burned if not through MFP?
Get a heart rate monitor. That's the most accurate way of determining how many calories you burn doing various exercises. I swear by mine, it has taken my fitness to a whole new level.0 -
You seem like a very nice lady, so I hate to question your honesty, but do you really tread water for 90-120 minutes? That's an awful lot of work. I don't think I could do it for more than a few minutes myself. If that's a typo or an overestimation, you are "earning" a lot more calories than you should probably be consuming.
Your %BF makes a huge difference in how much work treading water is. The higher the %BF, the more bouyant you are.
That said, the standard test to be allowed to go swimming in the deep end at my old summer camp was to tread water for 60min. I can't remember any kids who failed, and there were plenty who were not fit and were not great swimmers. Maybe your technique is not very efficient - the goal is to move as little as possible - or you have very low %BF that makes it exceptionally difficult for you?
Honestly, I haven't tried to tread water for more than a few minutes since I was in swimming lessons close to 30 years ago. Now that I think about it, I could probably do it for an hour or so, but I can't imagine doing that unless I needed to. It seemed an odd choice of exercise for the OP. She is logging 800+ exercise calories a day and I suspect that is not quite accurate.
Did I misread her post or did she reply that she is "playing frisbee and carrying her son around"? This is NOT treading water. Also, unless you're wearing a HRM during exercise, I wouldn't feel comfortable logging exercise calories unless they were reduced by about 30% (I'm no expert of course).
I was kind of thinking that myself. To me, treading water for 120 minutes means two hours of being suspended in the water, using arms and legs to stay vertical, not touching the ground at all. That's why it sounded like an odd choice of exercise to me. Playing in the pool, while great exercise, is not the same as treading water and probably burns fewer calories.0 -
You need to log everything you eat, everyday. Also, Also burning over 1000 calories fairly consistently is hard to do. Are you sure you log your exercise correctly?
17 lbs is nothing to overlook. Just keep it up.0 -
When I was my heaviest (275lbs) I was hardly ever truly hungry, I ate because I wanted to or was bored. I decided to log everything I ate one day (not on MFP) and realized I was drinking my calories and eating so bad, I thought I ate alright, not the best I knew it could be better but thought it was ok. I cut the soda and found that my hunger increased, now I don't know if this was a fluke or not, but I also found as I cut sugar my craving for it went with it. When I want something sweet I found fruit to satisfy it for the most part. Like others have said, make small changes, ones that are sustainable over the long haul. Slow and steady wins the race.
I suggest taking the word diet out of your vocabulary, a "diet" is a short term thing, the goal here is to get healthy and STAY healthy to be around for your family, true? So this NEEDS to be a life style change. I applaud you for taking the steps and reaching out, and unlike so many who post here for help you seem to be receptive to the help and not defensive.0 -
You seem like a very nice lady, so I hate to question your honesty, but do you really tread water for 90-120 minutes? That's an awful lot of work. I don't think I could do it for more than a few minutes myself. If that's a typo or an overestimation, you are "earning" a lot more calories than you should probably be consuming.
Your %BF makes a huge difference in how much work treading water is. The higher the %BF, the more bouyant you are.
That said, the standard test to be allowed to go swimming in the deep end at my old summer camp was to tread water for 60min. I can't remember any kids who failed, and there were plenty who were not fit and were not great swimmers. Maybe your technique is not very efficient - the goal is to move as little as possible - or you have very low %BF that makes it exceptionally difficult for you?
Honestly, I haven't tried to tread water for more than a few minutes since I was in swimming lessons close to 30 years ago. Now that I think about it, I could probably do it for an hour or so, but I can't imagine doing that unless I needed to. It seemed an odd choice of exercise for the OP. She is logging 800+ exercise calories a day and I suspect that is not quite accurate.
Did I misread her post or did she reply that she is "playing frisbee and carrying her son around"? This is NOT treading water. Also, unless you're wearing a HRM during exercise, I wouldn't feel comfortable logging exercise calories unless they were reduced by about 30% (I'm no expert of course).
I tried to find to the swim exercise that was close to what I was doing. And, I might add, we (meaning my grandson and I) spend a ridiculously great amount of time in the pool and I am not resting for very long I make sure of that. I find this is the best way to accommodate my injuries to my back, knee and ankle being low impact and all. I also put in less than what I spend in the pool for the fact that I did not how accurate it was.
I tread water in the deep end of the pool, I am there more than I play all the water activities (which are done in the pool) MFP only offers all of the activities together. I once was in the pool for 3 hours swimming, playing, and resting. That has to count for something ppl right??0 -
I love that you seem to be reading every piece of advice, and not hair-flipping or pulling the rude card!
(I think I saw that it's your birthday? Happy Birthday!!!)
Do you have a phone or device that you can load apps to? I don't have a smart phone, but I do have an iPod. I am able to log foods without internet (granted the database is more limited without connection), but it syncs when I do get onto the internet. You would be able to track everything, and stick within your goals, even if there isn't any wifi!0 -
Firstly, you don't lose weight through exercise. It will help you look and feel better, but really, to drop the pounds you have to concentrate on your diet.
This! You lose weight in the kitchen, you get fit in the gym. Weigh, measure and log every single bite that goes in your mouth.
This is absolutly the best advise that you have been given on here!
Stop half-assing it. You cannot say that nothing is working when you are not really trying. You cannot log one day and then not the rest of the week and wonder why that doesn’t work. Log EVERYTHING! Like others have already said, write it on paper, write it on the back of a cardboard box for that matter, just log it.
Stop eating back your exercise calories. You do not need them. Drop you count to around 2000 and stick to that. Just because you walk around in the pool for a little while does not mean that you can stop and grab a Big Mac on the way home. You need to eat right 99% of the time and treat yourself every once in a while. Add a lot of fruits and vegetables to your everyday food intake. I do not know how old you are but I am 31 and I have been eating horribly for most of my life. So when you hear that everyone needs a cheat day, well I am assuming that like me you have had several years of cheat days and so more cheat days is not really needed. No certain food makes you gain / or not gain weight, but the excess of bad foods is the problem. As long as you are honestly sticking to your calorie count, watching your fat and sodium then you will lose weight. That is a fact.
You have to be committed to this to make anything that you are doing work. The weight is not going to simply fall of on its own. Think about what you are going to eat every day before you eat it. Pre-log. Carry a water bottle around with you where ever you go. I am currently down 90 lbs from where I was at a year and a half ago. I plateaued for a very long portion of that time and it drove me nuts! I could not figure out what was going wrong. Then I figured it out. I stopped tracking, I stopped paying attention to the food. I was counting on my exercise to take care of it all. However, as others have said on here, you have to be consistent. Eating right is going to take care of 2/3 of the problem. Exercising is only a little bit of it. If fast food is easier to get because you are busy, stop it. Pre make meals, carry good snacks…I have 3 kids, a demanding job and a wife who is as busy (if not more) as I am, so I know about being busy. Do not opt for the easy route. Park at the back of the parking lot. Take the stairs (go slow if it hurts your knee or back or whatever it was that you said you have pain in). Burn more calories, but not so you can eat more…burn them so you can lose more!
Good luck…It’s time to get serious.0 -
I love that you seem to be reading every piece of advice, and not hair-flipping or pulling the rude card!
(I think I saw that it's your birthday? Happy Birthday!!!)
Do you have a phone or device that you can load apps to? I don't have a smart phone, but I do have an iPod. I am able to log foods without internet (granted the database is more limited without connection), but it syncs when I do get onto the internet. You would be able to track everything, and stick within your goals, even if there isn't any wifi!
Thanks....I see no reason to be rude because I did post and ask for advise and ppl are just expressing their opinion (which I am grateful for)
Yes, yesterday was in fact my 46th birthday. So thank you! I recently got a smart phone (Android) but it says that there is not enough room for it to download (I have one app on it) I think it is a not-so-smart-phone!! LOL0 -
I love that you seem to be reading every piece of advice, and not hair-flipping or pulling the rude card!
(I think I saw that it's your birthday? Happy Birthday!!!)
Do you have a phone or device that you can load apps to? I don't have a smart phone, but I do have an iPod. I am able to log foods without internet (granted the database is more limited without connection), but it syncs when I do get onto the internet. You would be able to track everything, and stick within your goals, even if there isn't any wifi!
Thanks....I see no reason to be rude because I did post and ask for advise and ppl are just expressing their opinion (which I am grateful for)
Yes, yesterday was in fact my 46th birthday. So thank you! I recently got a smart phone (Android) but it says that there is not enough room for it to download (I have one app on it) I think it is a not-so-smart-phone!! LOL
I'd look into the space issue on the phone. Do you take lots and lots of photos? If so, maybe dump them onto a computer/thumb drive? Was the phone new or used? It may not have been wiped.. (This may be from left field, my phone is as dumb as they come!!) Or clearing the cache?0 -
Firstly, you don't lose weight through exercise. It will help you look and feel better, but really, to drop the pounds you have to concentrate on your diet.
This! You lose weight in the kitchen, you get fit in the gym. Weigh, measure and log every single bite that goes in your mouth.
This is absolutly the best advise that you have been given on here!
Stop half-assing it. You cannot say that nothing is working when you are not really trying. You cannot log one day and then not the rest of the week and wonder why that doesn’t work. Log EVERYTHING! Like others have already said, write it on paper, write it on the back of a cardboard box for that matter, just log it.
Stop eating back your exercise calories. You do not need them. Drop you count to around 2000 and stick to that. Just because you walk around in the pool for a little while does not mean that you can stop and grab a Big Mac on the way home. You need to eat right 99% of the time and treat yourself every once in a while. Add a lot of fruits and vegetables to your everyday food intake. I do not know how old you are but I am 31 and I have been eating horribly for most of my life. So when you hear that everyone needs a cheat day, well I am assuming that like me you have had several years of cheat days and so more cheat days is not really needed. No certain food makes you gain / or not gain weight, but the excess of bad foods is the problem. As long as you are honestly sticking to your calorie count, watching your fat and sodium then you will lose weight. That is a fact.
You have to be committed to this to make anything that you are doing work. The weight is not going to simply fall of on its own. Think about what you are going to eat every day before you eat it. Pre-log. Carry a water bottle around with you where ever you go. I am currently down 90 lbs from where I was at a year and a half ago. I plateaued for a very long portion of that time and it drove me nuts! I could not figure out what was going wrong. Then I figured it out. I stopped tracking, I stopped paying attention to the food. I was counting on my exercise to take care of it all. However, as others have said on here, you have to be consistent. Eating right is going to take care of 2/3 of the problem. Exercising is only a little bit of it. If fast food is easier to get because you are busy, stop it. Pre make meals, carry good snacks…I have 3 kids, a demanding job and a wife who is as busy (if not more) as I am, so I know about being busy. Do not opt for the easy route. Park at the back of the parking lot. Take the stairs (go slow if it hurts your knee or back or whatever it was that you said you have pain in). Burn more calories, but not so you can eat more…burn them so you can lose more!
Good luck…It’s time to get serious.
^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^
I was SO wrong in my head FOR so long - I associated exercise with weight loss. Now I'm beginning to really accept and understand that it's my dietary habits that lead to a healthy (or unhealthy) weight and the exercise is for making my body look better once the fat layers have decreased!
Whenever I would lament my size, my husband would say "It doesn't seem like you eat very much" - and I've heard others state that they don't eat much/snack/eat sweets, etc. What we THINK we consume and what we actually consume are SO VERY different.
**Try not to even think about the exercise except to think to do it. I wouldn't even worry about the calories you are or aren't burning via exercise.
**Log everything every day. Give yourself permission to eat real foods - but log them honestly.
**Invest in a food scale (I love the OXO from Amazon with the pull out thingy) and try to stick to foods that are easy to measure and weigh. (Multiple ingredient foods like casseroles are very hard to accurately enter unless they come premade with a barcode on them - MFP has the capability to scan barcodes which automatically finds that item in the diary).
If you're doing these things, then there's ONE MORE important thing you MUST DO...
STAY WITHIN YOUR CALORIE GOAL.
Do these things and you'll lose! Just don't be discouraged as it comes off slowly.
Best of luck to you!
Paula0 -
I am nowhere if I don't log ALL of my food. You don't have to log online necessarily. I've kept a small notebook (purse size) and logged that way - at least you can get your calories jotted down and keep track.When I do exercise, I rely on the readouts on the equipment, which I don't think are that accurate anyway, so I don't eat my exercise calories. I don't really burn enough to justify it.
I am really, really good at conning myself, so I have to make an effort to accurately log what I'm eating.
Also, it helped me to look at exercise differently - exercise helps my back feel better - that's why I do it. When I only saw exercise as a weight loss tool, I got really discouraged because it wasn't working for me. I had to do a reality check and realize that if I burn 200 calories at the gym, that justifies my eating ONLY 200 more calories (which isn't much:)) - it does NOT justify a fried chicken dinner, which I had myself believing. Only people that exercise extremely strenuously daily and burn hundreds of calories in one session really lose weight this way. Most of us aren't like that, though. Its all about what we're eating.
Please know I share your frustration!! Hubby has threatened to throw out the scale more than once because sometimes I really let it get to me. We all need to hang in there!
Good luck to you and to us all!!0 -
When you are just starting on a food logging program, like using MFP, it is really important to log everything! I mean everything down to the 3 almonds you grabbed on the way out of the house. These kind of oversights can cause you to not be as much under your calorie allotment as you might think. Also, the best (ok one of the best) investments into my health that I have made is a food scale. Some people say I am anal, but I weight everything I put on my plate. Even when I cook recipes I weight the total finished product and for each serving I take subsequently I weight it and divide by the total grams/ounces to get the serving size I am eating. Which brings me to my final suggestion on a healthy lifestyle program....Cook at home as much as possible!! Stay away from fast food. If you really need to stop and get a quick meal, research the options available at fast food places so you know what you can have there that wont break your calorie budget. Most places have nutrition out there. Even with that said, cooking at home is the best way to control the ingredients, portion, and quality of food you are putting in your body. And if you get a craving for something figure out how to make a healthy version of it at home so you don't ever feel like you are depriving yourself. Just stick with it and really be serious about your healthy lifestyle.
Good Luck!0 -
You eat too much food and you don't have any control over it. You overestimate your exercise calories so you allow yourself eat even more. I'm surprised you're not gaining weight this way.
I'd suggest you work on your diet and life style with a doctor.
I am dieting with a doctor visit once a week.0 -
Do you log everyday? Are you honest about what you log? Do you weigh and measure everything you put into your mouth? Do you eat protein first? These are vital to weight loss!
Thank you for you comment. Here are your answers: I try to log in everyday when I have access to the intenet. Yes, I am honest about what I put in my mouth. I weigh but I haven't really measured along the way. I have a really-really hard time eating in the morning, I have to force myself.
She's talking about weighing your food. It really makes a difference. Weigh your meats raw... You'll be surprised what 3-4 ounces really looks like... it's teeny and a portion size. You can find a food scale at Wal-mart, target or even bed bath and beyond.0 -
I know how you feel...I went through this a couple of years ago. I was working out and eating properly faithfully and managed to lose about 25lbs...then I got stuck... I talked to a fitness trainer, I tried changing my eating patterns...anything I could think of. 6 months of constant aggravation and I just gave up. Nothing seemed to be working. I reverted to my old patterns and gained 20 of those lbs back. Looking back, I realize I likely was not eating well enough. I was a horrible tracker. I FELT really good and fit though...stairs were nothing and I was walking daily and working out 3x a week. I was fitter and I wish I had stuck it out. So don't give up. Start tracking just on paper if you have to and keep working out. You may not see a difference on the scale for a while but your body knows its good. YOU definitely don't want to revert and lose what progress you've made.
I have just signed up today and feel overwhelmed with what I need to lose but hope that tracking daily will get me to open my eyes up to what I'm doing wrong.0
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