Stuck!!

i dont believe in the eating back nonsense. since you put your activity level in, those calories are techincally already accounted for. if you want a true accurate calorie number, google the harris-benedict formula. its the best formula to go on. it will calculate your basal rate, and you can add an activity level to tell how much you need to intake to maintain your weight. from there you can reduce.

unfortunately just walking isnt gonna cut it after a while. i walk about 3 miles every day, lift weight and hit the elliptical for about 20 mins. i try to jog a few times a week too. not too long, maybe a mile. if you want to melt off lbs you need to bump up the exericse.

Wrong If using the MFP method you have to eat most if not some of your exercise calories back. When you set your activity levels you are telling it what your normal daily activity is not including your exercise. The only method that you don't eat back exercise calories is the TDEE method which you when setting up you set how much exercise you do.

Here is a posting I gave someone else on a different forum. In your case with back issues work with a trainer to work around it for weights. i would also recommend a bike for cardio or the stair machine.

There are multiple ways to break thru the plateau. Before I mention it here are a few things you need to get right. Make sure your macro nutrients are in the right proportions. For me, to loose weight I have 50 percent of my calories as protein, 40 percent carbs, and 10 percent fats. The carbs mostly consist of vegetables and I will throw in yams or quinoa if I need the extra energy.

Now here are some other things to not do. Do not eat too little food. You will put your body into starvation mode and you will only make things worse. Make sure you are keeping approximately a 500 to 600 calorie deficit every day. Also, don't eat a few large meals a day. Space them out, I eat 7 to 8 small meals a day every 2 to 3 hours. Constantly feeding your body will keep your metabolism at a steady pace. You have to eat to loose weight. DO NOT UNDER EAT!!!!! If you are not loosing still cut back a little on the carbs or swap the starchy carbs for vegetables.

Lastly you need to exercise. When you do weights your metabolism can stay higher for as long as 36 hours than if you just did cardio. I cannot emphasize enough you NEED to do weight bearing exercise. And I don't mean just go thru the motions. You need to be breaking a sweat while doing weights. I would recommend using a trainer to get started. and Lastly if you want to do cardio, only do 20 minutes worth of H.I.T. (High intensity training). I will either do sprints on the treadmill or use a weighted barbell, and at times jump rope. Long steady state cardio does more harm than good. Short high intensity cardio burns fat like no other. But I will re iterate YOU HAVE TO EAT!!!! 80% of your weight loss is in the right diet. If you don't follow that you are only making things worse.

To give my background. I am Hypothyroid and have been struggling with weight all my life. I have tried every diet and workout out there. I was as high as 215 putting me in the obese category. I did only cardio for a while and cut back on my food and I lost weight but at the expense of loosing muscle as well, which only made things worse because I lost muscle to burn fat and I didn't loose anything more. I cut back my food more and i just ruined my metabolism even worse. After doing a lot of reading I changed my diet and ate more and changed to the weights and H.I.T cardio and I went all the way down to 160 lbs. I lost 55 lbs but also I lost a good chunk of muscle also. So I didn't change my workout at all and just changed my diet and I gained 20 lbs of pure muscle. I have kept the weight off over 2 years now and I am putting on more muscle. What I have seen is the more muscle you have the easier it is to keep the weight off.

Hope this helped

Put the 'lose 1 lb a week' setting. Eat 100 calories more the days you walk. Or use http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ and just eat that amount all the time (if your only activity is 6 miles a week you're sedentary).

You need to eat more, it will give you more energy to exercise.