No progress on cut

It's been 2 weeks and all that's happened is my bloat went away and at first, I went down 3 lbs pretty quickly but now I'm one lb heavier than before I started. I set my fitbit food plan to 250 cals less than I burn and sometimes it let's me eat up to 2100 but on some of those days I only eat 1900, is that too much of a deficit? I also haven't seen much change in my measurements after the first week. Is it too soon to see results? I'm just a little frustrated.

Replies

  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    So the Fitbit food plan has no bearing on the math done on MFP for it's food plan - which one are you really using?

    So from that TDEE range of 2150 - 2350, the 250 cal deficit is 11 - 12%, so not unreasonable at all.
    That does mean 2 weeks to see a 1 lb loss of fat.

    Of course, are you correcting the Fitbit burn with manually entered workouts that are NOT step based?

    Because lifting, spin, row, swimming, elliptical, ect - all will be vastly underestimated, and if your TDEE is actually higher, then your deficit is much bigger than 11-12%, and may be unreasonable.

    Then again, with only 250 deficit, accuracy is of importance on eating side.

    Weighing all foods that enter the mouth. Could easily wipe on a couple days deficit with one badly estimated eating out meal.

    And for a woman, your BMR literally changes through the month, so yes too short a time too, but confirm above while you wait.

    Also only using valid weigh-in days, because just a minor expected water weight fluctuation will wipe out any real loss.
    Morning after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout.
  • sweetxsour35
    sweetxsour35 Posts: 177
    I do add in exercise, but I'm not entirely confident about my food logging, so I make a bigger deficit on purpose in case I'm not accurate. Also if my muscles are still sore even two days after is it bad to weigh myself?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    It's not bad even though it's not valid, unless the fact that you are holding extra water weight is going to discourage and stress you.

    Careful of the food logging though.
    If you do any packaged items, at least get calculator and confirm what they are, total weight in package divided by how much you eat per serving in grams. "About 2" can be 1.75 from soups and cottage cheese to 2.45 on some calorie dense things I've had.

    Most your foods could go one direction or the other, either creating more deficit or wiping it out.
  • sweetxsour35
    sweetxsour35 Posts: 177
    I just figured that since it was after a rest day it should have been fine, but I weighed first thing in the morning before I could tell I was still sore. I'll definitely be more careful with calorie dense foods though.
  • CoachXthea
    CoachXthea Posts: 75 Member
    I'm a month into cut, and I'm in the same boat. But Im in this for the long run. I've packed my scale away, and my body fat calculator. Just going to ride out July and not weight in until August. I still do have confusion too about the fitbit, Scooby's, MFP, addng back exercise too. Can't see to get a completely clear answer. I'm a very active mom, so My fit bit is estimating an average burn of 2800 calories. That is ALOT, and I only burn about 350/workout. But running after a two year old on the baseball parks burns a lot of calories.

    What I am doing this week is cleaning up my act. I'm only eating what I KNOW the measurements of. No more guestimating. I'm pretty much sticking to protein, brown rice, sweet potatoes, and a green veggie. I will keep you posted on my progress. P.S. I sent you a friend request! Let's hang in there.
  • KaterinaTerese
    KaterinaTerese Posts: 345 Member
    Hey there,
    I would suggest either PMing one of the mods from this group, or posting to the EM2WL site. I realize what a sticky situation you are in (I was in it myself!), but they are probably the most supportive/kind people I've encountered on this site.

    Sending you a FR
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    I'm a month into cut, and I'm in the same boat. But Im in this for the long run. I've packed my scale away, and my body fat calculator. Just going to ride out July and not weight in until August. I still do have confusion too about the fitbit, Scooby's, MFP, addng back exercise too. Can't see to get a completely clear answer. I'm a very active mom, so My fit bit is estimating an average burn of 2800 calories. That is ALOT, and I only burn about 350/workout. But running after a two year old on the baseball parks burns a lot of calories.

    What I am doing this week is cleaning up my act. I'm only eating what I KNOW the measurements of. No more guestimating. I'm pretty much sticking to protein, brown rice, sweet potatoes, and a green veggie. I will keep you posted on my progress. P.S. I sent you a friend request! Let's hang in there.

    MFP is estimating non-exercise maintenance (or non-exercise TDEE) from daily activity level you selected. You had to be honest.
    Take off deficit you selected, whether reasonable or not was your selection.
    If you exercised and logged it, that obviously increased your maintenance and now TDEE included exercise.
    Take same deficit off, up to you to meet that goal.

    Scooby is estimating exercise included maintenance or TDEE by your selection of activity level for the week, averaged out to daily level. You had to be honest.
    Take off a 15% deficit, however many calories that is.
    Eat that daily.

    Those 2 method can add up, on average for the week - almost exactly the same - if you were honest and selected reasonable weight loss goal on MFP.
    Just depends on if daily number is easier, you like changing number, you want same deficit amount daily by different number, you will do workout, workout is consistent, ect.
    Pluses and minuses to both.

    Fitbit is taking the MFP concept of daily activity level - but instead of you guessing correctly for non-exercise and logging exercise correctly for calorie burn, it supplies MFP with what you appear to have actually burned daily, then MFP increases it's daily maintenance and takes the deficit off.
    So changing goal just like MFP does.

    But you still need to log non-step based activity it's not doing correctly.
    And you would still need to take a reasonable goal loss amount.
    So 2800 x 15% = 420 deficit. So you could take the 1 lb weekly loss goal, and be less than 15% on big exercise busy days, and more than 15% on slower rest days.

    So basically instead of you guessing between 5 rough TDEE levels - it is giving you daily infinite levels based on actual activity.

    Did you guess your TDEE level to be near the 2800 it actually appears to be?
    Because if you guessed lower, and then took 15% off - you are actually causing a greater than 15% deficit - right?
  • sweetxsour35 - sounds like too much of a cut to be honest - if you have a fitbit just use that average over the last month - and minus a 10% or 15% cut and then use that figure every day - exercise or not :) but keep at it and if you can steer away from scales as they are only telling a small part of the story but they can bum us out so much!! Don't forget so much can effect the scales

    coachXthea - ditching scales is a great idea keep consistent and see how you go - yes so much long term that you kind of have to stop worrying and just go with the flow - I concentrate on how amazing I feel and know that the weight comes off eventually!!

    And yes I have to second KaterinaTeres - pop over here http://forums.eatmore2weighless.com/index.php and maybe start a journal its a fab way of tracking your progress - plus getting some help along the way! YOu can read and how everyone else is doing and also what ups and downs we also had!
  • sweetxsour35
    sweetxsour35 Posts: 177
    Thanks for the link! I'll definitely check it out