Weight loss advice needed - a lot of weight to lose...

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Replies

  • Phoenix_Warrior
    Phoenix_Warrior Posts: 1,633 Member
    Find healthy foods you like though and not just something for the sake of dieting. That'll help you stay on track and not feel like you're torturing yourself. When I started dieting I tried so hard to like celery. .. ugh. Then, it went too far back in my fridge and got partially frozen. It was a train wreck! :) Good luck! Take a before picture just for you to look back on and keep moving forward. Stay committed and any time you feel like giving up, remind yourself hoe far you've come!
  • Cjei2001
    Cjei2001 Posts: 6 Member
    Please explain why you said to not eat your workout calories back.
  • Phoenix_Warrior
    Phoenix_Warrior Posts: 1,633 Member
    I, personally, hate the MFP method and use www.iifym.com to calculate my TDEE. I set up how many times a week I plan to work out and it calculates my calorie intake, protein, fat and carb macros. That version you don't have to eat back exercise because it's calculated. MFP overestimates burns from exercise and I really didn't want to buy a HRM.
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
    Please explain why you said to not eat your workout calories back.

    Because unless you are using a HRM and know for sure what you burn it can be counter productive to eat back calories estimated by gym machines or online calculators. Even MFP wildly over estimates burns for a lot of things for me compared to my HRM. Since the OP is at a stall she can tweak her budget by not eating back all her exercise to see if that may be the issue.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Low carb is not necessary really. But yes definitely use a food scale and don't rely on MFP numbers for exercise. Personally I like http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ much better, it's a fixed number to eat, not having to worry about logging exercise calories or eating too many back etc. And you'll be able to eat a bit more, which you might need once you start weighing your food and realize that you've been underestimating what you eat (or you could switch your goal to 1.5 lb a week I guess).
  • themanda04
    themanda04 Posts: 60 Member
    what everyone else said about weighing food and not eating back exercise calories.

    i can only comment from my own experience on being faced with a great, big, scary number on the scale: it took a very long time to get this fat, and it'll take a very long time to get not this fat. i put my focus on making good food choices and teaching myself how to eat at normal levels (no binge eating, no boredom eating, blahblahblah) and not on losing weight. i figure as long as i stay under my cals for the day and don't feel bad about anything that i ate, i'm golden. the weight is coming off as a result of those choices.
  • 4daluvof_candice
    4daluvof_candice Posts: 483 Member
    Please explain why you said to not eat your workout calories back.

    Hey Chris,
    when I used the MFP way I used to only eat 50% of my exercise calories thats why I switched to TDEE so I would have to worry about over estimating them. Just eat my TDEE-20% and committ to fitness.
  • lucan07
    lucan07 Posts: 509
    I forgot about exercise calories at the start and then started to eat some of them when I started to exercise more vigorously, I weigh everything I eat accurately, and calculate cardio burns with my VO2max and avg HR before converting them to nett. I have lost 90lbs since 31 January and since I started logging on MFP average about 2-3lb per week.

    Accuracy is the key both in and out, its very easy to underestimate intake and overestimate exercise calories.
  • donjessop
    donjessop Posts: 186
    The difficulty when eating back exercise calories is determining how many calories you actually burned. The MFP number for exercises seems to be consistently higher than the number that comes off my treadmill and other sites. If you are eating back all of those exercises you may actually be exceeding the target number set for you.

    In addition, your diet seems to be very carb heavy. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, protein is useful for building muscle and is recommended for those losing weight. A 25% - 35% ratio would be a better number for you but I don't see you getting there. Change some carbs to proteins and make sure that the calories you think you have burned are actually the calories you have burned and things will work out well.

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