New to counting calories & feeling hungry

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64mustangsue
64mustangsue Posts: 27 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
I have been using weight watchers on-line for 3 years with great success. I lost 40lbs in the first year and have been able to keep it off. Since I was only doing on-line (never going to a meeting) I continue to have to pay the monthly fee. I cancelled my membership and thought I would give MFP a try. My problem is I am old and short (almost 50, 5' 1/2" and 102lbs) I guess. MFP has me at 1270 calories to maintain. I eat a lot of fresh fruit which quickly dips into my total for the day. On WW fresh fruits and veggies are 0 points so they never dipped into my total. I feel hungry all the time now. Anyone else with this issue?????

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  • holliebevineau
    holliebevineau Posts: 441 Member
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    Hi. I have had success with WW in the past too. You know that You can keep using WW rules for 0 points/calories fruits and veggies if that works for You. Congrats on Your weight loss.
  • suejo34
    suejo34 Posts: 25 Member
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    Hi,

    I have tried many diets and the best one so far is watching my daily calorie and exercising daily. I hate diets that restrict what I eat so that is why I am grateful for myfitnesspal.com to help me count my calories. I can eat 100 calorie snacks of my favorite snacks or eat french fries by watching my serving size. I find that I am less hungry even after a work out when I eat small portions every 2-3 hours.

    For example, my calorie intake is 1600 calories a day. I eat 830 a.m. breakfast, 10 a.m. snack, 1130 a.m. lunch, 1 p.m. snack, 3 p.m. snack, 630 p.m. dinner, and 830 p.m. snack. My snacks are always 100 - 150 calories, and I try to stay away from fatty and salty foods. I excercise 30-45 minutes five days a week and so far I am loving it! I do not go to be hungry at all, so by the end of the day my 1600 calorie end up being 1200 or 1300 calories a day depending on calories I burn during excercise. Good Luck!
  • lporter229
    lporter229 Posts: 4,907 Member
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    I am guessing that 1270 is probably too low for you. How long have you been eating at that level? Are you losing or maintaining? How active are you? Just for reference, I am 42, 5' 0 and 98 lbs, very active and I maintain at 1900+ calories, so it's not entirely unrealistic that your TDEE may be higher than you think. Do you know what your calorie goal was on weight watchers? I would take that number, track your fruits and veggies for a week and get an average daily total for those and add it to your WW # and start from there.
  • CherrypieOmy
    CherrypieOmy Posts: 20
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    With weight watchers, they set higher points for more of the calorie dense foods in order to encourage you away from these foods, which you could burn through them quickly if you don't change the way you eat. Or you'll just be hungry and cranky all the time.

    With calorie counting, its similar to WW, you have to take some of the focus off calorie dense foods and eat more lighter and healthier foods. This way you keep a closer look at your intake rather than having a rough ballpark estimate. Plus the tracker is free.

    I finally accepted that this is the way I should be eating. For example no processed foods, because they are calorie rich, fat dense and will eat through my personal allotment quite quickly as there just isn't room to be too splurge-y.

    But you do have to be careful. Eat too little and your body will hate on you. I had to up my calories because I was starting to feel terrible (joint pains in shoulders and legs...despite being over weight I've never had that problem unless I've been cutting back too my much).
  • UmmSqueaky
    UmmSqueaky Posts: 715 Member
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    If you still have access to your weight watcher journals, I would plug a few week's worth of what you ate before into MFP. See what your total calories were per day (including all those free veggies and fruit), on average, and eat at that, since that was what was working for you before.
  • 64mustangsue
    64mustangsue Posts: 27 Member
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    Thank you all! I work at a desk for 8.5 hours a day so not much activity. Still have kids at home so not much time for Mom. I eat very little if any processed food. I am a scratch cook, I can my own veggies, buy only fresh meats from a local locker...... Been using MFP for only 3 weeks and have stayed the same weight, just feel hungry where I didn't before. The only thing I have done is cut back on my fruit to stay within the 1270 mark. Maybe it'll be OK to not count those calories. Just so afraid the weight will creep back on.

    I need to track what I eat to help keep my IBS under control. If I have a tummy flair up it is so nice to look at my food diary and see what I ate that may have set it off. Using WW allowed me to find my trigger foods and I am so thankful for that. I am off the daily meds for that now too. Added bonus :smile:
  • PJPrimrose
    PJPrimrose Posts: 916 Member
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    It does get tricky with food restrictions (celiac/gluten free 100% or else). As long as your weight doesn't go way up or spiral down you're doing it right!
  • Swiftdogs
    Swiftdogs Posts: 328 Member
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    If you have kids at home, you are probably not sedentary even with a desk job. See if MFP's lightly active setting gives you closer to the calories you were eating. Also make sure you hit your protein and fat macros - those are minimums.
  • Dnarules
    Dnarules Posts: 2,081 Member
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    If you still have access to your weight watcher journals, I would plug a few week's worth of what you ate before into MFP. See what your total calories were per day (including all those free veggies and fruit), on average, and eat at that, since that was what was working for you before.

    This is what I was thinking.
  • ottermotorcycle
    ottermotorcycle Posts: 654 Member
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    I would start by ignoring MFP and eating the way you regularly have been - but log it into MFP. See how many calories that is, and use that as your goal. MFP is just a calculator. Its word is not law, as it really doesn't know that much about you. You can also try considering yourself "lightly active." Though you may sit at a desk and not have time for exercise, cooking, cleaning and taking care of kids while you're home can really burn up some calories!

    In the meantime, eat your fruits and vegetables. No one ever got fat off of fresh fruits and vegetables, no matter what low-carb dieters may think. And drink WATER. Water is the best hunger suppressant there is, and if you've been cutting back on fruits and veggies you are probably not getting as much water as you used to since there's a lot of water in those foods. Best of luck.
  • 64mustangsue
    64mustangsue Posts: 27 Member
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    Thanks for all the encouragement. I am just going to keep doing what I had in the past and not panic.
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    A friend of mine has used WW successfully and just does it on paper.
  • shayemimi
    shayemimi Posts: 203 Member
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    What is your activity level set at, even tho you are at a desk all day, don't set it to sedentary. At least lightly active. See if that gives you a few more calories. Also, when you log exercise MFP gives you more calories, so be sure to eat some of them (sometimes the calories given are a bit too generous) as well. Since you are starting here at maintaining it may take a while to find your magic maintaining #'s, lol. But since your doing good on your own and have learned how to eat healthy from WW, just go with your 'gut' lol. If you see the pounds creeping up cut back a bit. That is what maintaining really is anyway. :) Way to go btw!
  • FitFunLosAngeles
    FitFunLosAngeles Posts: 36 Member
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    I did WW too and also came here to stop paying so much - and I haven't regretted it one bit. I feel MFP is actually easier to use and offers more than WW online. The community seems more engaged and savvy too in my opinion. I think the quality of the forums on MFP is really great. There are a lot of savvy independent thinker types on MFP; it is refreshing. I don't have to filter through too much garbage on MFP discussions the way I feel I do on most diet-oriented web sites. I hope you like it too!
    Like you, I also appreciated the way that WW encouraged better eating habits by "punishing" less nutritious foods with more points while encouraging more nutritious foods by making them "free." But I like so much more about MFP.
    I think in a way calorie-counting with MFP does much that WW does in that fruits and vegetables are naturally low-calorie and therefore just won't add to your overall MFP calorie count anyway.
    As was suggested by others, it makes sense to me to take a few weeks of your WW diaries (including all those "free" raw fruits and veggies) and see what your average calorie counts were. It might be worth noting also what your total fiber intake was (since fiber from the raw fruits and veggies is so filling).
    Even though you are 5'2", 1270 calories does not sound like a maintenance number of calories to me. I bet you were eating more at WW - let us know!
  • Momjogger
    Momjogger Posts: 750 Member
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    Fruit and veggies are great ways to combat hunger. Lean protein is also your best friend. To combat hunger, I eat veggies, fruit, and lean protein in one meal. I try to stay away from processed carbs because they make me hungrier.
  • bciloveme2014
    bciloveme2014 Posts: 213 Member
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    I did WW around the beginning of 2009, and I was allowed to eat 27 points per day, I was not logging fruits, later on I found out that just a banana counted for 3 points, I was hungry all the time and it took me three months to loose 10 pounds. I had been using MFP for 60 days and I think that 1250 calories for maintenance is too low.

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