What am I doing wrong? (I would love a second set of eyes!)

You're food looks on point. I think you are probably just overestimating your calorie burn. With warm up and cool down times, I probably wouldn't log more than 400-500 calories/hour for a spin class. Strength training is great and you should keep that up, but once again I probably wouldn't log more than 200 calories/hour for a session. Also, if you are using an elliptical the actual burn is only about 65% of the readout on the display. The one piece of equipment that is closest "true to actual burn" is the treadmill - unfortunately most people despise it. You might want to try it for a week to figure out how your calorie burn compares to your perceived exertion then when you transition back to spin class you can figure out whether you think you are working harder or easier than when you were on the treadmill (and get a better idea if your calorie burn estimate is accurate).

Hi Elise
I am in the same boat as you. I am 5''11" and weigh the same as you. I have started Nutrisystem 11 weeks ago and in the first few weeks I was very sedentary. During those weeks I lost 10 pounds. However, I started doing P90x3 and staying within my calories and I have in fact gained weight. I did a lot of research about this and what I was reminded is that muscle weighs more than fat, which I am sure you know. I was told not to focus on the scale at all. It is very hard not to when that is our measurement tool. I also read that muscles become swollen after working out, which holds onto water. This can have an impact on the scale as well. As far as measurements, I would only check measurements once per month. I have gone by how my clothes feel and nothing else at this point.
Years ago I dropped 40 pounds on Jenny Craig. At that time I was exercising minimally. When I increased my exercise I did not drop another pound. I think that's you should go by how you feel while you exercise. If you look in the mirror and you feel better about yourself then that should be your measurement. I am interested to hear other people's thoughts as well.

I feel that the input I am giving you is the same as other people's responses on other forums. However, I am learning that it's not the scale that matters.

The last bit of advice if you want to see a change in the scale is maybe drop the exercise for a week and then weigh again. Maybe your body needs a chance to recover. That has worked for me in the past as well.

I personally don't believe in eating more to lose weight. There are a lot of bad things that can happen if you don't eat enough, not losing weight is not one of them.

I know the "starvation mode" idea sounds interesting but we both know it's silly to imagine that you will not lose weight because you are eating too little. Flip it around and try to say with a straight face that you would tell a skinny kid to eat less to pack on the pounds...

I eat between 1700-1900 calories most days and ride my bike for exercise a few hours a day. My general rule is to eat if I am hungry or low on energy. Most the time if I plan things out well I avoid both of those problems though. If I ate back even a portion of my estimated exercise calories I would be scarfing down an extra 10,000 - 15,000 calories a week.

Most likely you are just running into problems counting the calories you are eating and maybe not factoring in the fact that all the new exercise is going to cause some water retention as you get used to things. If you are weighing and measuring stuff then just make sure you are doing it right and stick with it. I've had weeks with no scale movement and then drop a few pounds, it's the way the body works.

Good luck!

The only thing I really don't have is a food scale, but I'm good about breaking things into portions (I.e., if sliced ham is supposed to have 8 2oz servings, then I will bag it into 8 equal separate containers, or count out portions in a bag Of frozen chicken to make sure the ounces should be right per piece). I will get a food scale soon though, just to be sure that my calculations are right.

Aha! This may very well be the problem. Lots of folks have found that once they got the scale their estimations were WAY off. It may not be the case for you but the $20 investment for a digital food scale at the local discount store is well worth it.

Yeah I missed that, my bad. It's really odd. Have you seen a doctor? Are you on some meds? If you're actually eating 2000 calories it's probably still way too little, but you should be losing. I mean you'd probably need to eat 4000 calories to maintain with all that exercise, so I highly doubt you're underestimating your food that much.

My only guess is that your body is shutting off because you're eating way too little. I know that starvation mode is a myth etc, but I've also seen a LOT of people come on MFP and not losing weight because they were eating way too little. Frankly I'm surprised you even have the energy to workout so much.

So for what it's worth, personally I'd 1) buy a food scale, 2) eat half your exercise calories back... then see from there.

Did you adjust your stats on the HRM properly? I do agree that it seems like a lot of calories burned.

And it's true that when you start a new exercise regimen, you often don't lose weight the first month. So, there's that.

Thanks for the tips! Is there anyway to ensure my HRM's accuracy?

Weellllll, I don't know. I'm not saying YOUR HRM is inaccurate, I'm saying HRMs, no matter how good, are not necessarily super accurate at estimating calorie burn. To be honest, I don't have an HRM myself for that reason. Bear in mind they don't MEASURE your calorie burn. They make an educated guess about your calorie burn based on your personal body stats you input (esp. your age, weight and gender) plus your measured heart rate. It doesn't seem entirely logical to me that two different exercises necessarily burn the same calories just because your heart rate averaged the same for the same period of time. Or for that matter, that MY calorie burn would be the same as another woman's of the same age and weight if our heart rates averaged the same during exercise. If you have poor VO2 max, exertion will require your heart to beat much faster than if you have excellent VO2 max, but you're still burning calories. Many mid-range and above HRMs allow you to enter a personal VO2 max, but I think unless you're a pretty serious athlete OR you've a medical condition that requires special testing, most people don't use this and the HRMs just guess, or you do some sort of simplified fitness test to help it make another educated guess.

I dunno. I'm by no means an expert and I'd be open to correction if a doctor or professional researcher in the area of physical fitness had real information for me, but probably not from another fitness enthusiast I met on the internet. :-P

Heart rate monitors are probably great for targeting a specific exertion level during serious athletic training or assessing progress over time. And if you're a long-time exerciser who's been tracking their own diet and progress for many many months I suspect you'd get a pretty good sense of your personal burn rate from them. The best advice I've ever gotten about assessing your own burn rate is simply to exercise consistently over time, and monitor your progress and work the math backwards from there.

Wow, your pic doesn't look like 200+ pounds.

I have kinda turned into a myopic LCHF person, so when I look at your diary and see the fruit, rice, bread, potatoes - typically 200+g carbs per day, I assume you develop hunger between meals so you eat all those "healthy fruits and whole grains" as snacks.

It doesn't work. All the carbs count to increase blood sugar and increase insulin which crushes blood sugar and drives hunger later. All carbs increase blood sugar and can increase systemic inflammation. So cutting sugars and carbs may improve your RA.

Also your diet in the past week tends to be low-fat. You need fat and protein to satisfy appetite and suppress later hunger so you can stop snacking. I'd eat more deli-meats (no sugar cures!) and less protein-shake.

Drinking lots of water is good too. I never touch the stuff myself.

Maybe you should write to all the professional sportsmen and women in the world and tell them they are all wrong.

Perhaps you could become a coach with all your insights about how their diets are unhealthy for them with all those awful carbs.

OP is probably burning 1500-1800 a day on those three hour sessions. She could easily inhale 400g on top of her 1500 calories and still lose fat.

She is probably on a plateau with her fat cells and muscles holding on to water. I always get them on a cut for the first few weeks, I trust my numbers and eventually it whooshes off.

If you are going to do that much exercise you MUST be accurate with your measuring and burn numbers. Weight gain can happen if one overestimates exercise calories and is sloppy with food weighing and injury and lean body catabolism (muscle get burned for fuel) can happen if you do the opposite.

Also, hunger is normal. Get over it.

Hi,
I don't know what you are eating, but I do know what works for me. Vegetables, vegetables, vegetables! I start my day with a smoothie made up of a leafy green (spinach, kale, collards...), another vegetable (cucumber, carrot, celery...) and fruits (which I keep to 2 or 3 because of the sugar). I switch it up between berries, citrus, pineapple etc. I also use New Zealand Whey Protein powder and hemp hearts or flax seeds to make a whole meal.

Have you thought of checking out the glycemic index of your foods? Some foods break down quickly while others keep you feeling full longer.

Don't worry about the "ranting" if you have ever had a weight problem you know how frustrating things can be.

I am a 55yr old Scottish mum who lives is Australia. HELLO!! (GDAY MATE!) I have always had to watch what goes "down the shute" as my mother-in-law would say. I have religiousy excercised regularly and tried to keep the "munchies" at bay. I have stayed within a few pounds of my ideal weight ( give or take a FEW blow-outs) for over 30 years so Hopefully I might be able to shed some light on what you are going thru.
You need to CALM down and stop stressing. If you are excercising for up to 2- 3 hours a day it sounds like you are obviously trying very hard. Have you ever heard of INTERVAL TRAINING?? Check this out online. The idea is you work for short bursts at a VERY HIGH intensity. If you try this then you would only have to spend a fraction of your time in the gym. doing 1 hour a day intense exercise should be more than enough. If the weather is lovely go for a brisk walk at lunch-time. Great for the spirits. Your weight will start to come off. You just have to keep plodding on. Remember muscle does weigh more than fat so as your body adjusts to your new GOOD habits then you will see results. Don't be so impatient. Think about how long it took to pile on the pounds. AND REMEMBER IT IS NOT LIKE THE TV SHOWS.........WHERE ALL THEY ARE DOING IS SPENDING TIME EXERCISING ALL DAY TO PUT ON CAMERA. Most of us have a life and a job and family.

KEEP GOING AND DON'T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF

P.S. IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR FOOD GO AND SEE A NUTRITIONIST. AT LEAST THEY ARE TRAINED AND KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT FOOD............GOOD LUCK X
Crissie:flowerforyou: :flowerforyou: :happy: ::flowerforyou:

"So the issue has to either be 1) I'm eating too much and don't know it, 2) my body is in a plateau from the new routine..."

It's #2. I'd bet anything.

You lost a lot of weight quickly and then hit the gym HARD. Your body is probably retaining a lot of water and there is probably a giant whoosh of weight loss right around the corner.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html

I lost 40 lbs. on WW once and then decided to take up exercise, daily. I plateaued for a couple months. Then I dropped like 5 lbs. Then 5 more.

Are you in WW meetings or online? If you're paying them, you should ask their advice, too.

Good luck!

<snip> "starvation mode: myth or fact?" <snip> On one hand, it makes sense. Your body needs calories to operate. On the others, even people with eating disorders or who are actually starving DO lose weight.

Hmm look at it this way. Yes, your body needs CALORIES to operate. You burn more CALORIES by exercising. You have calories in bodyfat as well as in food. So by eating some food and metabolizing bodyfat as needed, your system is getting all the CALORIES it needs to operate. The number of calories you're getting is not really an issue for health.

You get NUTRIENTS (macronutrients and micronutrients) mostly from food. Don't eat enough food, risk not getting enough NUTRIENTS. Your body has minimum nutrient needs that aren't really about calories, and regardless of the amount of exercise you're getting. This is the real justification for all the talk about people eating at least 1200 calories a day: it's not because that's a magic number, it's because that number, with a proper macro ratio, tends to help people meet those minimum nutrient requirements. From the research I have seen, lots of exercise (particularly cardio) does not SUBSTANTIALLY increase your body's need for specific micronutrients except maybe electrolytes (which don't have to be attached to calories). There is a VERY MODERATE demand for increased macros (carbohydrates and protein to sustain blood sugar and muscle retention), but not on a burn 1 calorie :: 1 eat one calorie ratio.

In theory, burning more calories with cardio exercise does not create a need for a ton more food, as if there were a ratio of calories ingested / calories burned to sustain weightloss for some magical reason. While it is a VERY GOOD IDEA to eat a bit more food -- particularly more nutrient dense food -- when adding more exercise (more protein and maybe more carbs though I'm sure I'll get yelled at by a low carb zealot for saying so) there's no particular need to match your increased caloric intake 1::1 with your increased caloric burn. A lot of people just eat back about half of their estimated burn and call it a day. Some people, less than that.

That all being said, your nutrition looks okay. 1500 calories is not a lot for someone at your weight (I weigh a bit more, FWIW), nor is it dangerously too little for someone exercising a lot. It will have no effect on your progress aside from contributing to the size of your caloric deficit. If your mouth and appetite seem happy at 1500 calories, there's no reason not to stick to that. If you were eating many fewer calories I would recommend more for nutrition for someone your height and weight, but not for "starvation mode." If you're happy at that level, it's not so low that you shouldn't stick with it.

The reason you are not losing a lot is NOT related to your eating too little and entering "starvation mode." It's probably the other reasons that have been posted in this thread. Also, check out my ticker :-) When I was about 3 months in I had similar questions and issues ("OMG the math! According to the math my calorie deficit should have translated to X pounds lost but no. Am I eating too little? Am derailing my progress?"), but just staying the course was enough to break through. I think my body was reacting to all the new exercise after a previously sedentary lifestyle with some inflammation / water retention but that settled down and WHOOSH. Full disclosure: I'm about your size and I do eat more than you, at 1900 cal / day, and like you I exercise quite a lot (one hour a day low intensity i.e. walking; one hour a day varying moderate to high intensity: swimming intervals, resistance cardio, and strength training). But then I'm STILL losing at an average of about 2 lbs a week. But that's me, not you.