August 13, 2014
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julieworley376
Posts: 444 Member
Morning!
A discussion last night with my friend who had gastric bypass surgery got me thinking about a topic today. We both agreed that if we dieted, weighed, measured, counted points, calories, whatever, neither of us were losing weight on the recommended calorie level. It seems that if your body gets to a certain point it needs a LOT less calories to lose weight consistently OR more exercise which at this weight is impossible for me.
So.. what calorie level are you on and what are you losing or not losing on that? If you are not losing why do you think that is?
A discussion last night with my friend who had gastric bypass surgery got me thinking about a topic today. We both agreed that if we dieted, weighed, measured, counted points, calories, whatever, neither of us were losing weight on the recommended calorie level. It seems that if your body gets to a certain point it needs a LOT less calories to lose weight consistently OR more exercise which at this weight is impossible for me.
So.. what calorie level are you on and what are you losing or not losing on that? If you are not losing why do you think that is?
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I eat somewhere between 1,370 and 2,000 depending on how much exercise I get in a day. I use my FitBit to automatically adjust the goal on MFP, but I try to only eat back about half of the exercise calories in case the estimate is off. Of course, some days I end up eating more than half, and I try not to sweat it. I've been losing consistently, but I've only been doing this since late April and this is basically the first time in my life I've been serious about getting healthier (as opposed to eating stupidly low calorie and not exercising at all).
I had been running and doing weight lifting, but I've had a cold (that I'm assuming has since transitioned into a sinus infection) that's kept me from going to the gym. For the past couple of weeks, I've just been walking, but walking a LOT. I've been getting 20,000 steps most days, a lot of which is just pacing around my apartment while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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I really question the premise that our bodies do not need the predicted number of calories. That is what I told myself when I joined MFP in October 2013. I believed the years of yo-yo dieting and my Type 2 diabetes had 'ruined' my metabolism. I started with the MFP recommended calorie goal and per my doctor's instructions did not eat back any of my exercise calories. I lost weight, and I lost more than the 2lbs per week that I'd set MFP to.
Fast forward to January 2014. I really had the calories in part of the equation down. I was weighing and measuring everything. But I didn't feel I knew the calories out part - I really didn't trust the MFP calorie burns for exercise. So I got both a FitBit and a heart rate monitor. By February I had 2 months of solid data. I knew my calories in, my calories out and how much I'd lost. I calculated my TDEE using my personal data. Just for grins I plugged my vitals and exercise level into several of the TDEE calculators, and I was amazed to find that my actual TDEE was in the same range as the various calculators. My metabolism wasn't abnormal or damaged at all.
At that point MFP had me down to about 1300 calories per day and my calculated TDEE was over 2800. No wonder I was tired and couldn't recover from my exercise. So I slowly began to increase my calorie intake by 100 calories per week until I hit 1700 calories. I reached 1700 in late March and I've been there ever since.
I have steadily lost at 1700 calories, which for me is a liveable amount. As I have continued to lose, my TDEE has dropped, it is now down to about 2300, so I'm losing more slowly, but I'm ok with that. I'm also not exercising quite so much, so that also accounts for the slow down. I'm still losing an average of 1.5 lb per week.0 -
Hi scubasuenc,
For your TDEE was the 2800 already calculating the percentage off your calorie intake or was that before you removed the percentage of calories you wanted to be in deficit for weight loss?
For anyone who hasn't looked at TDEE, i would just say it's good to know that MFP and TDEE use different calculations to determine your daily calorie allowance. One big difference is TDEE is already calculating in what you need to eat back based on how much you exercise each day. Where as with MFP, it doesn't guess at your exercise limit and you eat back those calorie once you log. They both work, one just sometime works better for different people.
You do make a good point that if you really want to be accurate with your calorie burn for exercise you need to use the proper tools for each exercise so you have the metrics that relate to your activity. MFP's calculations are off, but thats not it's fault, and is to be expected as it can't gather all the information it needs to calculate an accurate calorie burn. It can only use basic averages. Heart rate monitor is great for that. On my bike I would need a HR monitor plus speed and cadence monitor to calculate my power output. So if you don;t like what MFP is telling you, get the proper tools for your activity.
Julie, I'm not certain about the "needing a lot less calories." Your body needs the calories it needs to just function, plus if it's carrying around a lot of extra weight it needs more. it's easy to think that if your limit isn't working then you have to go down even further or exercise more. If MFP's suggestions aren't working then I might try TDEE if you have the necessary information to fill it out. Also when you exercise more you increase the chance of eating more both to recover and because of increased hunger) and being sedentary between big workout. I might enjoy really long bike rides but in reality I would probably loose just as much if not more doing only 30min a day.0 -
I will be the first to admit that the whole TDEE thing still confuses me a bit. I am really confused by the activity level choices. I am a stay at home mom who is hardly ever at home and I do move alot and I get daily exercise in but I always pick sedentary because I really have no idea. According to MFP I should only be eating 1200 net calories a day to lose 1.5 lb a week. I tried that for a few weeks and my loss really slowed down...some days my exercise calories were really high. I have kind of switched over to a set calorie goal per day and not eating back exercise calories. I am aiming for about 1700 calories a day and I have no idea if that is accurate or low or high. I basically took an average of all the calculators that I checked. Most days that seems like plenty but other days no where near enough...usually depending if it is a long bike ride day.
RatPat13...does that mean that just by wearing my heart rate monitor while biking I am not getting an accurate calorie burn number?
For those of you that lift weights how did you get started? We have a pretty substantial weight collection at home but I have no idea where to begin. Thanks0 -
i am at 1600. some times a little more or less. If I am not hungry I don't eat. If i am starving, I eat vegatables. Lost 6 lbs in 2 weeks, nothing this 3rd week.I am ok with that,common pattern for me. My blood sugar is UNDER my target of 130 am and 180 after 2 hr post meal. I have even hit the 120 before bedtime.My energy level is increasing. I am happy.One (of the many wt loss program said 11 calories per lb current wt (251) so 2761. about 2.3 lbs/week. I don't subtract exercise and I still enjoy a scotch or 2 after work
Achievement-- I can now roll over in my waterbed with out a major effort 0 -
I am being lazy and pasting in my answer to another post below. Basically from now on I am aiming to eat around 1400 - 1600 calories a day because i lost 8 stone in 8 months on that calorie intake in past. I am following a different plan this time but will see how it goes. I am doing a Ketogenic eating plan this time for another medical reason unrelated to my wieght. I have been doing it 3.5 weeks so far. I lost loads first two weeks and 1lb in last 1.5 weeks. I initially was concentrating on detoxing and getting my head around ketogenic eating. Once i got that sorted I have been increasing my veg intake and bringing my calories up to where i want them. I think my wieght loss has stalled for now but based on my past experience I am not going to worry about it. I am counting on my body to let go of extra fat when it knows best to.
below was my earlier post
I am not a scientist, nutritionist or biologist. I can only share my personal experiences of having lost a lot of wieght in past. Yes I gained it all back plus some because once nearer to goal i slipped back in to my old ways. However I did lose 8 stone/ 112 lb in 8 months in a supervised whole food healthy eating way. I started at 295lb and got down to 183lb. So i was very big at start and not small at the end. Someone starting much smaller would clearly lose less and more slowly.
anyway the interesting bit is that for the whole 8 months i was on the same food plan which worked out as from 1400 to 1600 calories a day depending on meat choice or veg choice. My food intake was not increased or decreased at any time, everthing i ate was put on digital scales and logged in a book. It worked out as about 50% calories from healthy fats, 25% calories from protien, 25% calories from carbs. My activity level probably slightly increased along the way but not by much. I got about an hours walking every day going to and from work or shopping. sometimes an extra hours walk or 30min swim before or after work. I had a monthly wiegh in so was not seeing day to day or weekly lb's lost etc. I was facinated though by the way i lost wieght
month 1, lost 28 lb - a lot was fluid I asume
month 2, lost 7 lb
month 3, lost 20lb
month 4, lost 6 lb
month 5, lost 18 lb
month 6, lost 8 lb
month 7, lost 19 lb
month 8, lost 6lb
I repeat my food intake was set and the same whole 8 months. My energy output was also quite stable whole 8 months. I had a pattern though of losing almost 3 times as much on alternate months. On the months that i lost less lb's i noticed I toned up and lost more inches. What this taught me is to trust the body, it knows what it is doing. The scales are not the best measure of short term sucess. If you eat less then the lb's will go down but even if that is slow the inches may be coming off.0 -
I will be the first to admit that the whole TDEE thing still confuses me a bit. I am really confused by the activity level choices. I am a stay at home mom who is hardly ever at home and I do move alot and I get daily exercise in but I always pick sedentary because I really have no idea. According to MFP I should only be eating 1200 net calories a day to lose 1.5 lb a week. I tried that for a few weeks and my loss really slowed down...some days my exercise calories were really high. I have kind of switched over to a set calorie goal per day and not eating back exercise calories. I am aiming for about 1700 calories a day and I have no idea if that is accurate or low or high. I basically took an average of all the calculators that I checked. Most days that seems like plenty but other days no where near enough...usually depending if it is a long bike ride day.
RatPat13...does that mean that just by wearing my heart rate monitor while biking I am not getting an accurate calorie burn number?
For those of you that lift weights how did you get started? We have a pretty substantial weight collection at home but I have no idea where to begin. Thanks
Hi wennim,
I might have mispoken. You can use a hear rate monitor on a bike but calculating calorie burns is usually based on the energy you expending and as long as your pedaling your expending energy (so your hr can be low but your still burning some calories). So you usually need to know both your speed, slope, and distance along with your physical attributes to calculate. I bike computer with a power meter can do this. At the moment I use my iphone and the app Cyclemeter. It will record my distance, speed and slope. Then it uploads to Strava and they do a rough conversion to energy output (and posts it to MFP) which has been giving me better estimations on calorie burns (again only an estimation since the phone isn't perfect).0 -
Hello to all!
My name is George. I am 59, have struggled with my weight all my life. My high mark (documented) was 486 lbs. I am 6' 0" tall, so my BMI was 64%. My weight now, as of June 30, 2014 is 273 lbs. My BMI is now about 33% and I am still a work in progress, my goal is 190 or there abouts, it depends on my exercise and muscle building program success.
Keeping a diet journal and watching what I was eating was essential part of success, but by itself was never enough.
Let me share a little of what I have learned about my weight management over many decades;
1. Grossly and Morbidly obese people have a metabolism that is not normal. My careful calorie counting showed that I was burning no more that 7 or 8 calories per pound of body mass. This was so even when I was exercising. Covert Baily, "Fit or Fat", taught me that fat people actually get hungry after exercise.
2. Nutrition experts had the food pyramid upside down for decades, and told us to eat the wrong foods.
3. Medical doctors insisted that overweight issues were simply a matter of calorie intake, i.e., "calorie in / calorie out", this too is wrong. What foods we eat AND in combination with other foods is critically important, i.e., protein and complex carbohydrates together.
I was taking up to 400 units of insulin every day just to get by on about 3000 calories. Now I take no insulin, don't count calories, eat the right foods, and still pull by belt tighter every month. My waist size has gone from 68" to 46" over the last 14 months. I still have 8 or 10" to go, but now I know how to succeed.
My roux en y gastric bypass in June 2013 completely change my metabolism. The surgery did, of course, change my plumbing, but it was the change in metabolism that is the real reason for my success. Now, I eat what I should, protein and complex carbs together, eat a little, get full and then eat a little later when I am hungry. I no longer need insulin, and my last A1c blood test was 6.0, which is almost normal. I know my continued success completely depends on my food choices and combinations, as well as my continued exercise program.
I know there is a lot of confusing information out there, but don't give up. If you are morbidly obese, finding the right solution for you could save your life. My solution is working for me, and I know it added some years to my life!0 -
I found TDEE and FMP's BMR confusing at first, especially if you start to obsess and wonder if you should be doing something different. But since I am loosing consistently MFP's numbers are working for me.
A very simplified way of thinking about it is:
- MFP takes your BMR and your estimated daily activity (none-exercise) and give you a calorie limit. Then you subtract a certain amount of calories based on how much you want to lose a week (your deficit. For example 1,000cal deficit a day for 2lbs a week). Thats it. Your daily activity level for MFP is purely based on the amount you move day to day to get your work done. If you exercise, you log that separately, and since that puts you in an even further deficit, your suppose to eat those calories back. If you don't then you run the risk of eating well below your BMR. We say eat back a percentage of your exercise calories because the calculations are general and can be off.
One difficulty with MFP's way of calculating your daily calorie limit (besides the generalized nature of the calculation) is being consistent in your daily activity amount. I have a desk job so mine is set to sedentary, but some days I can be even lazier and on others I am out and about with clients all day. That can throw the number of calories I need way off. To help with that I use the fitbit flex. It knows that I have set my activity level to sedentary and it measures if I really reach that number. Depending on how active I am it adjusts my daily limit.
- TDEE offers a bit more customization, and less one size fits all. It also uses more information to calculate your MBR. Unlike MFP, TDEE takes into account both how much you move day to day for working but also how much you exercise each day. So with TDEE you don't eat back exercise calories because they have already been allotted to you in your daily calorie limit. To loose weight with TDEE you then subtract a percentage based on how much you want to loose in a week.
They both work. Sometimes one works better then other for different people.0 -
Hi George,
Welcome to the group. Great work, it's always nice to have someone in the group who is having great success.0 -
Hi scubasuenc,
For your TDEE was the 2800 already calculating the percentage off your calorie intake or was that before you removed the percentage of calories you wanted to be in deficit for weight loss?
For anyone who hasn't looked at TDEE, i would just say it's good to know that MFP and TDEE use different calculations to determine your daily calorie allowance. One big difference is TDEE is already calculating in what you need to eat back based on how much you exercise each day. Where as with MFP, it doesn't guess at your exercise limit and you eat back those calorie once you log. They both work, one just sometime works better for different people.
You do make a good point that if you really want to be accurate with your calorie burn for exercise you need to use the proper tools for each exercise so you have the metrics that relate to your activity. MFP's calculations are off, but thats not it's fault, and is to be expected as it can't gather all the information it needs to calculate an accurate calorie burn. It can only use basic averages. Heart rate monitor is great for that. On my bike I would need a HR monitor plus speed and cadence monitor to calculate my power output. So if you don;t like what MFP is telling you, get the proper tools for your activity.
Julie, I'm not certain about the "needing a lot less calories." Your body needs the calories it needs to just function, plus if it's carrying around a lot of extra weight it needs more. it's easy to think that if your limit isn't working then you have to go down even further or exercise more. If MFP's suggestions aren't working then I might try TDEE if you have the necessary information to fill it out. Also when you exercise more you increase the chance of eating more both to recover and because of increased hunger) and being sedentary between big workout. I might enjoy really long bike rides but in reality I would probably loose just as much if not more doing only 30min a day.
My TDEE calculation was my total calories burned before I factored in a cut. I took (weight lost * 3500) + calories in = TDEE. I regularly calculate 14, 21 and 28 day average TDEE. At the time I calculated 2800 for my TDEE I was eating between 1300 and 1400 calories. That's less than half what my body needed. I was tired and wasn't recovering from my workouts. Because I wanted about a 2lb per week loss, I then cut 1000 per day from 2800 to get a goal of 1800. I started to slowly raise to 1800 and decided to stop at 1700. My TDEE has since fallen to about 2300-2400 so I'm still losing at a good pace.
Personally I prefer the TDEE method. You eat the same calorie goal each day whether or not you exercise. Essentially your exercise calories are averaged out over the week. I am a Type 2 Diabetic and I find it much easier to plan my meals and manage my blood sugar with a consistent calorie goal from day to day. With the MFP method where I should eat back a portion of my exercise calories I would see a swing from day to day of almost 1000 calories from a day with no exercise to a day with multiple work-outs. And since I didn't want to eat the exercise calories until I earn them that would put me with lots of calories at the end of the day.
I think TDEE vs MFP (NEAT + exercise) is a personal choice. You can be successful with either method since they are just two different ways to calculate calories in vs calories out to create a deficit.0 -
I'm not currently using a calorie goal. The financial stress and everything in my life right now is just too much for me to handle. I always try to make the "better" decision when face with one, but I'm not weighing or tracking. I'm getting active as much as I can. But when I was, I used MFP's numbers, verified with many calculators, and also my doc said the numbers were a good ballpark (he is my endocrinologist). At that time, I think my calories were around 1500 for base, set at sedentary, with exercise calories added back in. I lost around a pound a week. But that wasn't maintainable for me. Looking to start weights soon, so excited to change things up... Just too overwhelmed to do much... So doing what I can without losing sanity... Gonna come back to this one for all the great info on calculations. I just haven't accumulated that much data.
Actually, on a somewhat related conversation, I'm in a position to be able to get an HRM under medical reimbursement due to my blood pressure and such, but I'm having some problems figuring out what would be the best medically justified option as far as tracking exertion and all that...do any of y'all have suggestions?0
