Need help

From what I have seen .. I checked out your food diary, and I don't see anything really wrong.

I had a small stall for a few weeks in October .. and really didn't know the reason why, but things seem to have turned around. Did I change anything ... no. Just continue ... I think that the weight will come off. Our bodies are just weird. They always will do what they want .. which I know can be frustrating.

I am just a newbie here .. but NET is really just your total food calories less exercise calories burned. So if you eat 2000 and burn 500 .. you net 1500 cal. I would recommend eating back SOME of your exercise calories. I see 50-60% being used as a good percentage for that.

I think I DO understand the way MFP calculates calories, but it's not really working for me, either.

What I was told is that you should try and eat back SOME of your exercise calories (but not all, because MFP can be up to 30% off, for women).

For instance, if you have MFP set up to lose 1 pound a week (like me), which gives me 1550 calories to fool with (before exercise), and I exercise off 700 calories a day, MFP tells me I can eat 1550 + the 700, because it's already factored in the 1 lb. per week.

BUT, if I then subtract 30% of that number, I arrive at a total daily caloric intake of:

1550 (the number that MFP calculates that will give me a 1lb a week weight loss) + 450 (700-30% or 250, roughly).

So...........according to MFP, I should be eating (on the days when I exercise and burn, baby, burn), 2000 calories. At least, that's how I've been told it works.

I personally know that I've NEVER been able to eat 2000 calories a day, and LOSE weight, even when I was younger, running regularly and had a go-go-go, lifestyle.I have a cro-magnum metabolism and I am post-menopausal, now, so 2000 calories is a ridiculous number for me.

It's taken me a month to figure out but ............I've decided that I should be eating roughly 1550 calories per day, on the days I don't exercise (2 days a week) and 1600-1800 on the days that I do.

I also only lost about 3 pounds for the whole month of Oct. so I know more tweaking needs to happen. I've decided to do IF (Intermittent Fasting) one day per week, for the whole month of November. See how it goes, then tweak some more, if need be.

I know that's not really recommended, but sluggish metabolisms often need constant tweaking. That's one reason it's so good to track..........

Good luck and I hope I helped clear things up a bit!

Eating too little is counterproductive as it makes your body feel it's starving and needs to hang on to fat. It takes a deficit of calories of 3500 to lose 1lb, which averages 300 a day, so you can do it with small changes.

I am so not understanding Net calories... Currently I am trying to lose 1.5 - 2 pounds a week and have been using MFP, my fitbit and doing T25 5 days a week for exercise... In 4 weeks I've lost 3 pounds :-( so I'm wondering if I'm not eating enough... So currently my calories are set at 1450 and I have a net (what ever that is) of 777 and 683 calories left (I've eaten 1448 calories so far today) do I eat more today??? Thank you for any help you can give me!!!

There is a difference between loosing weight and changing body composition.
If you are lowering calories while increasing exercise, you do not want to cut out protein. Once you lose your muscle, it's hard to come back.

At the beginning of "losing weight", I did just that. I lost weight but at the same time, I lost fat and muscle at same rate.
I was targeting 1lb/week loss and but consistently lost 1 - 2 lbs/week for 2,3 months straight.
I now know, that was wrong. I lost probably good 5lbs of muscle, which takes 10 weeks to gain if I work very hard.

Please don't make the mistake I made. You want to keep lean muscle and lose fat as much as possible.
And if possible, add more muscle to your body. That's changing body composition.
You need a lot of protein, about 150 - 200g / day to gain muscle with appropriate exercise.
If successful, it's very hard to lose weight 1.5-2 lbs / week. But you'll see your body changing quite fast.
I now lose maybe 1/2lbs per week or two, but I can see better muscle definition all over my body.
(I get compliments all the time at my tennis club now.)

Also, I did hit a "diet wall" at 5th month. I needed "cheat day". Not a lot of calories but add some carbo back in my diet once a week so that my body metabolism does not slow down.

If I do over my "getting fit" -
1 - Eat less sugar/bread/pasta/rice from get go
2 - Eat a lot of veg, fruits, eggs, meat and tofu.
3 - Take good protein supplement
4 - Have beer and pizza only on weekends with your friend (I had a beer when RedSox won the game 6 at the tennis club. It's not a weekend but it doesn't happen very often. :-)
5 - Don't do short period diet. Change your eating habit.
6 - If your new eating habit allows you to lose weight, don't worry too much about scale.