About to quit!

Keep at it! You will get as thin as you want. My gosh you are working so hard. You must be eating to many calories. It is amazing how many calories are in foods that we would never think of. So track every LITTLE bit of food. Every thing you put in your mouth. Only eat the 1200 calories suggested. NO MORE!!!!!!! NO MATTER WHAT!!!! I promise you, you will loose again. Your body can put on 6 or more pounds of water weight overnight so do not be concerned at what the scale says, If you are eating 1200 calories, you are loosing and thats a fact. If you look at monthly weight loss you will see it.

I also regularly burn 700+ calories a day and 1200 calories is way too little food for that kind of activity. You have to fuel your body for your workouts or it causes negative side effects. Bad advice in my opinion and in my experience.

Uhm no, that is VERY wrong. your body processes different foods in different ways. If your eating processed crap and what have you, your body isnt going to burn it efficiently when you work out. You can work out as much as you want, and if you think "oh ill just take the single patty instead of the big mac" your not going to lose anything because the minute you put a real meal in your mouth, youre body is going to store it because you havent been feeding it properly. Lets say you eat cheeseburgers all day and your calorie intake is 1200, but you burn 1600 in workouts. The next day when you go and eat your cheeseburgers again, your just going to gain the weight right back because your body is starving for HEALTHY food and better nutrition. It cant run on processed crap, and your certainly NOT going to see results. Itll just be a weight teeter-totter..

What the what?

OP -- this has pobably been said, but have you had your thyroid checked? What kind of birth control are you on and have you switched recently? Are you weighing and measuring your food so you know it's accurate, rather than eyeballing it? Have you dropped calorie intake as you've dropped weight?

And I agree about switching up the exercise routine.

I burn anywhere from 700-1200 calories 4-5 times a week.

How do you measure that? What type of exercise? It is extremely common for folks doing callisthenics/"cardio" type workouts to significantly over-estimate their burns. HRMs are NOT accurate for this!

I eat probably 1500-1800 calories a day now instead of 1200.

I don't see a diary.

Or am just not eating enough for what I burn?

If you weren't eating enough for your burn, you wouldn't be able to burn anymore.

yeah... a bit of pot calling kettle black.

IMO she hasn't been arguing, or even rude. She HAS been providing data. She gets asked questions, she answers them.
People have made assumptions, she has clarified. When you go to the doc, do you want a diagnosis based on one symptom? Do you know every symptom to share, or do things sometimes get triggered upon further investigation.

She has indicated that she wants to learn, to understand, and will incorporate the feedback. All of those are stellar, and often sadly lacking in most ops.

You on the other hand, are being overly rude. Calling her an askhole? Telling her to stay fat? She isn't even close to FAT.
SMH


ETA... and YOU aren't worth the strike either. Carry on. Go find another person to insult. You've exceeded expectations in this thread.

I highly highly doubt you're burning THAT much per day. MFP grossly overestimates cardio burn.

^^That may not be true. I aim for at least 1000 cals burned per workout on most days...and it's usually 1.5 to 2.5 hrs worth of work. According to my HRM (and my level of hunger afterwards lol), I am definitely burning that much! MFP usually overestimates by default, but you are able to adjust the calorie count to the correct one once you select the type of exercise.

I'm beginning to see a commonality with people who are over-estimating their calorie burns. I don't want to say the name because I don't want to take the fun out of other people figuring it out too, but I'll say the initials:

H.R.M.

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of thing. Most will agree MFP's estimates of your caloric expenditure are not accurate, at least not for most people. Likewise, there is a ton of variation in the caloric burn as given by machines at the gym. About the best you can do is buy a quality HRM, feed it your metadata, and trust it to be as accurate as possible. I rarely eat 100% of my calories back from cardio since a slightly greater deficit won't hurt me, but a HRM is about the best you can do.

All that said, the HRM may not be to blame here, given that the OP doesn't actually have a food scale yet. Buying a food scale is probably the best thing you can do to increase your accuracy in logging what you eat.

The key to success is to get everything as accurate as you can, and then adjust according to observed results.

The part that everyone forgets is adjust according to observed results.

It's pretty easy to be accurate with food logging. Get a scale and some measuring cups, use them religiously, and log everything.

If your observed results don't at least somewhat closely match 1 pound lost per 3500 calorie deficit over two month period, then it's pretty obvious that you can point to your calorie burn. It's only when you are not consistent with logging that it becomes a mystery.

Last year when summer rolled around, I had a stall. Because I logged my food accurately, I could look back on my exercise diary and see what changed. I had started swimming. Because I had my kids with me in the pool, I couldn't consistently swim laps. I had tried to adjust down for this, but when I was honest with myself it was apparent I didn't adjust down enough. I fixed it and BOOM - the weight started falling off again.

It's not rocket science - but it is science.

I agree, but that doesn't mean HRM's are necessarily inaccurate as you seem to suggest above. In my experience, it's the opposite and a HRM is the best way to get an estimate your burn.

If you are doing steady state cardio, sure.

But many people use HRMs for things like weight training, or even just wear them all day. That's what causes the problem.

Again, agree entirely. Unfortunately, outside of steady state cardio, it's pretty hard to get an accurate picture of your caloric burn.

Generally I just ballpark weight training these days at ~400 calories/90 minutes, which I'm sure is inaccurate, but I usually eat those calories back anyways. I figure that even if I burned 0 calories lifting weights (not likely), I'd still be at a caloric deficit and if I'm at slightly less of a deficit on lifting days, that's probably a good thing. You can definitely can learn a lot about your body though by tracking your own data/progress over time.

Bolded part is key. By consistently and accurately logging, regardless of specific methodology for some estimates, you can eventually find a solution* that works. This is true even if it works for the wrong reasons. Let's say your 90 minutes is actually only 200 calories. (Doubtful, but let's assume for the sake of my illustration.) So you eat back those 200 calories which actually results in a bigger deficit than you expected. Over time, you would then lose more weight than you expected. To compensate for this, you would/should increase your calories in by some amount. Let's pretend like we're in a vacuum and there are no other variables...so you'd increase your calories in by the 200 deficit. Awesome. Now you'll get the results you expect *even though both the burn and resulting TDEE calculation are actually "wrong"...but it doesn't matter, because with consistent tracking and subsequent adjustments, *over time* these things smooth out.

Obviously, if your exercise habits are sporadic, it becomes more difficult to make up for the discrepancy consistently, but that's just inherent in the system. And since there are many potential measurement errors, the math seldom...okay, never works exactly right, but subsequent adjustments should get you a little closer to reality...(and if a particular adjustment is ultimately bogus, it shows up in a later evaluation).

All of this is why I beat the drum of consistent and accurate logging (with emphasis on consistent) followed by periodic evaluation of actual results vs. expected. It isn't hard, but it is (usually) necessary.



Edit: "Solution" is better than "method"...but still not exactly the word I wanted. Oh well, close enough.

Oay im going to go eat bacon and be fat now.

I am a 26 year old woman who has gone from 280 lbs to an alternating 180-185. I am successful in my goals. I am simply changing up my regimens and having trouble. I'm not asking for a miracle.

You are the one with a bad attitude.
[/quote]

You don't get fat eating bacon, it's actually really delicious. I eat it often enough and whaddaya know, I'm losing weight. Must be the bacon.

There are a lot of thread on MFP where this post is absolutely applicable (although not particularly polite/in accordance w/ the CG (all hail))...

...however, I don't think this is one of them. OP seems willing to accept that there are things she needs to do...and there are plenty of respondents who have misread/misunderstood/mis-assumed what OP said, so a lot of the exchange was necessary to clarify.



Now if OP doesn't shell out the $10-$30 for a scale soon, then I'll grab a torch or pitchfork and join you.

*rabble* *rabble* *rabble* *rabble*

Uhm no, that is VERY wrong. your body processes different foods in different ways. If your eating processed crap and what have you, your body isnt going to burn it efficiently when you work out. You can work out as much as you want, and if you think "oh ill just take the single patty instead of the big mac" your not going to lose anything because the minute you put a real meal in your mouth, youre body is going to store it because you havent been feeding it properly. Lets say you eat cheeseburgers all day and your calorie intake is 1200, but you burn 1600 in workouts. The next day when you go and eat your cheeseburgers again, your just going to gain the weight right back because your body is starving for HEALTHY food and better nutrition. It cant run on processed crap, and your certainly NOT going to see results. Itll just be a weight teeter-totter..

Says the person who joined no more than 10 days ago and has less than 5 posts on the forums thus far. I suggest you peruse the forums first before spouting nonsense.

Yeah, do what so many others on MFP do...

...peruse the forums for a while and *then* spout nonsense.

:drinker:

Bahahaha, yeah, that's true. I guess I find it incredible that someone with ten days of experience on MFP has the gall to offer up advice so quickly.

i can tell you that many years ago i was walking 5 miles a day, swimming laps one hour a day and 800 calories a day....and i was gaining! the doctor finally told me that i was putting my body in starvation mode and that everything was being horded and stored. i bumped up to 1200 calories a day, laid off salt and kept going. lost 40 pounds. (now that i am older and my metabolism is slower i am trying to lose this weight again. this will be a battle that i have fought all my life and i WILL win. one day, one meal, one craving at a time!) you sound like you are very motivated and strong. also muscle weighs more than fat. measure....you may be gaining muscle mass which is smaller but heavier. keep it up. there is nothing that anyone can ever give you or you give to anyone else better than a healthy you

i can tell you that many years ago i was walking 5 miles a day, swimming laps one hour a day and 800 calories a day....and i was gaining! the doctor finally told me that i was putting my body in starvation mode and that everything was being horded and stored. i bumped up to 1200 calories a day, laid off salt and kept going. lost 40 pounds. (now that i am older and my metabolism is slower i am trying to lose this weight again. this will be a battle that i have fought all my life and i WILL win. one day, one meal, one craving at a time!) you sound like you are very motivated and strong. also muscle weighs more than fat. measure....you may be gaining muscle mass which is smaller but heavier. keep it up. there is nothing that anyone can ever give you or you give to anyone else better than a healthy you

[rolls eyes]

And yet another newbie willing to give out poor advice.

i can tell you that many years ago i was walking 5 miles a day, swimming laps one hour a day and 800 calories a day....and i was gaining! the doctor finally told me that i was putting my body in starvation mode and that everything was being horded and stored. i bumped up to 1200 calories a day, laid off salt and kept going. lost 40 pounds. (now that i am older and my metabolism is slower i am trying to lose this weight again. this will be a battle that i have fought all my life and i WILL win. one day, one meal, one craving at a time!) you sound like you are very motivated and strong. also muscle weighs more than fat. measure....you may be gaining muscle mass which is smaller but heavier. keep it up. there is nothing that anyone can ever give you or you give to anyone else better than a healthy you

What was actually happening was that your body was producing high amounts of cortisol because you were putting it under too much stress with a high demand for energy at a gross calorie deficit. Cortisol causes the body to burn calories more efficiently, and therefore, your body was reducing the demand for energy to meet your caloric intake.

i can tell you that many years ago i was walking 5 miles a day, swimming laps one hour a day and 800 calories a day....and i was gaining! the doctor finally told me that i was putting my body in starvation mode and that everything was being horded and stored. i bumped up to 1200 calories a day, laid off salt and kept going. lost 40 pounds. (now that i am older and my metabolism is slower i am trying to lose this weight again. this will be a battle that i have fought all my life and i WILL win. one day, one meal, one craving at a time!) you sound like you are very motivated and strong. also muscle weighs more than fat. measure....you may be gaining muscle mass which is smaller but heavier. keep it up. there is nothing that anyone can ever give you or you give to anyone else better than a healthy you

What was actually happening was that your body was producing high amounts of cortisol because you were putting it under too much stress with a high demand for energy at a gross calorie deficit. Cortisol causes the body to burn calories more efficiently, and therefore, your body was reducing the demand for energy to meet your caloric intake.

even if that were true burning cals more efficiently just means her deficit would be smaller than she thinks it is and end up losing weight slower, not gaining.

Invest in a HRM! It will save your life. I just got one this week, and I'm already logging my calories burned so much more accurately.

Perhaps you accidentally posted this comment on the wrong thread...

...because...

...well, because it makes zero sense given what OP has told us.



Unless, of course, you are suggesting that she wear TWO HRMs...

...which wouldn't be the craziest thing I've read on the MFP forums.

I would say she just randomly posted a comment without reading through the whole thread. Seems to happen a lot. maybe she should get another HRM and wear both, see if they match numbers!