weight loss for dummies

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  • hurricanekaty
    hurricanekaty Posts: 33
    I think you are misunderstanding the concept of eating less than your burn - it's not eat less than what you burn in exercise, it's eat less than what your body burns all day long, in a 24 hour period, sleeping, walking around your home, brushing your teeth, sitting on the couch, working, etc. Our bodies are constantly burning calories, even at rest.

    That's why we were saying you were starving yourself by eating 1000 cals and burning 1200 in exercise which leaves you with basically nothing - your body burned those exercise cals in addition to whatever you normally burn all day long (your BMR or basal metabolic rate). If you were in a coma, the hospital would feed you your BMR. You are not in a coma, so you should be eating more that whatever your BMR is. MFP figures that out for you and gives you a daily goal - it's simple.

    Example - my BMR is around 1400 cals, and my body burns about 2100 cals a day when I'm active. I eat 1800-2000 calories a day, less than what I burn all day, so I lose weight. :smile:

    You're exactly right! I had no clue what the eat less than you burn thing meant. I assumed it meant that if you want to lose weight you're gonna have to exercise to burn the calories you eat that day. Especially because I have a desk job where I sit all day long. So I assumed my body only naturally burns maybe a couple hundred a day? I never knee all the other stuff! I know I sound so ignorant but, hey, I'm new here!. Lol
  • hurricanekaty
    hurricanekaty Posts: 33
    I'll post this here too since I don't know which of the two threads you posted today you are paying attention to.

    Okay, so I looked up Strava. It looks like most people are saying that it has a 50% margin of error. That's huge. So you're probably overestimating your cals burned by up to 50%.

    That's only part of the issue though, since even without exercise, you still only think you're eating 1200 calories. So you use a digital scale and weight everything you eat?

    My continued impression is that you're overestimating calories burned, underestimating calories eaten and that you don't have a metabolic issue. It's entirely possible just highly unlikely.

    Get checked out just in case but when the results come back, just know that you're going to have to be accurate with your food logging (to the gram) and you're probably going to have to estimate your calories burned by half.

    Well I know that I have definitely measured everything out correctly and if I don't have any way of weighing, I just high ball it. (Ex. I may eat a grilled chicken strip and I can't find that in mfp so I will just say "5oz of chicken" even though I know that's too high I would rather be safe than sorry) and I have definitely been wondering if Strava is inaccurate because 1000 calories just seemed to go to be true. I think I need to invest in an accurate heart rate monitor for tracking calories. And the more I though about it the more I reakized that true since I have been dieting I have lost at least 2lbs per week but when I FIRST started dieting I was losing MUCH more. (Probably just water weight) So since in the beginning it was just falling off, now its slowing down. HOWEVER, I have noticed that my weight will be lower at the end of a day that I didn't work out opposed to the end of a day that I did work out. Any ideas on why that would be? By the way I truly appreciate you're help and support!!
  • Splashlove
    Splashlove Posts: 23
    Weighing yourself is definitely appealing and it's hard not to but an accurate way to determine if you are losing weight is to measure yourself. Muscle weighs more than fat so you may see some increases or be disappointed because you didn't lose as many pounds that you thought you had. For me the scales say I've lost around 5 pounds but I can tell that my thighs and calves are so much more toned from the walking I've been doing and my cankles are disappearing. :smile:
  • sloth3toes
    sloth3toes Posts: 2,212 Member
    Check out this thread if you like.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1161976-adopt-a-noob-official-mfp-thread

    The Adopt-A-Noob program, is for noobies, such as yourself, to find a qualified mentor from the 9 pages of qualified MFP's offering their services. Please read the first post in the thread, and follow the instructions. Don't post in the thread. Read through the 9 pages of mentors offering services, and choose a few who you think would best suit you. Then, PM them, and offer any info about yourself that you think would make you and the mentor a good fit. Many of the mentors offering services on the first pages may be full up. But, there are alot of mentors who have posted fairly recently, on the last couple of pages of the thread. Who, I'd think, would more likely be available.

    If you can find the right mentor, they will probably gladly answer all your questions, one on one.
  • hurricanekaty
    hurricanekaty Posts: 33
    Check out this thread if you like.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1161976-adopt-a-noob-official-mfp-thread

    The Adopt-A-Noob program, is for noobies, such as yourself, to find a qualified mentor from the 9 pages of qualified MFP's offering their services. Please read the first post in the thread, and follow the instructions. Don't post in the thread. Read through the 9 pages of mentors offering services, and choose a few who you think would best suit you. Then, PM them, and offer any info about yourself that you think would make you and the mentor a good fit. Many of the mentors offering services on the first pages may be full up. But, there are alot of mentors who have posted fairly recently, on the last couple of pages of the thread. Who, I'd think, would more likely be available.

    If you can find the right mentor, they will probably gladly answer all your questions, one on one.

    This is SO awesome! Thank you soo much!
  • Totalbodyhealthsolutions
    Totalbodyhealthsolutions Posts: 1
    There's so much that goes into weight loss. Might I recommend some books to help you out? My fav is "the slow down diet" by Marc David and my own book (shameless self promotion) "the weight loss shift: be more, weigh less" by Michelle Hastie.
  • ChrisM8971
    ChrisM8971 Posts: 1,067 Member
    There's so much that goes into weight loss. Might I recommend some books to help you out? My fav is "the slow down diet" by Marc David and my own book (shameless self promotion) "the weight loss shift: be more, weigh less" by Michelle Hastie.

    Actually to lose weight by definition there is less that goes into weight loss :wink:

    Hope your book is free otherwise your post may well be outside the rules of this site
  • psych101
    psych101 Posts: 1,842 Member
    There's so much that goes into weight loss. Might I recommend some books to help you out? My fav is "the slow down diet" by Marc David and my own book (shameless self promotion) "the weight loss shift: be more, weigh less" by Michelle Hastie.

    Solid first post.....

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