Need Advice - Please view my diary :)

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goddessofmath
goddessofmath Posts: 39 Member
in Motivation and Support
Hi all! I'm in need of a little help. I'm been using MFP since 2/14 of this year, and I have my calories set to the "lose 2 pounds a week" setting which allows me 1380 net calories. I've been working out HARD every night on the stationary bike at the gym, and the calories burned on the bike matches fairly well with the MFP app.

The first week I lost 4.4 pounds; next week 1.6; next week 1.4. I weigh on Monday's and so far this week I haven't even lost a full pound. I know any loss is good, but I'm hoping to lose 90 pounds total and want to be done with 45 of them by the end of summer.

My fear is that my weight loss is slowing down (no not a plateau yet), and I'm hoping someone can give me some support and advice. Please look at my food diary. I've opened it up for public viewing (which makes me nervous). I'm mostly eating Smart Ones to help with portion control, and when I do cook I check labels and WEIGH everything I add to my recipe to be accurate. If I don't know the calories in a food, it never passes my lips.

Main questions:
1. Am I exercising too much? (I'm also working to get more fit for a Disney World Trip in June, and the treadmill causes some issues with a foot injury I have which is why I'm doing the bike.)
2. Am I eating enough? I know I'm not meeting my net calories.
3. Should I ignore net calories and just try to meet the 1400 or so mark on what I consume? I know I should eat my exercise calories, but I can't eat that much! I eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full!

Any advice would be great! I'm new to calorie counting. Have tried South Beach (got great results but couldn't maintain the low to no carbs). Did Weight Watchers, but I hated calculating points. Dr. Phil worked for a while too but was totally impractical. I have great hope that this will work. As I'm about to hit my one month mark, I feel like this is maintainable.

Thanks in advance!

Replies

  • Cmuchoa
    Cmuchoa Posts: 161 Member
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    Hi - I am by no means an expert on this and have the same problem with slow weight loss. I do know this much though, eating too many frozen dinners is a no no. Too much sodium and preservatives. Perhaps you can incorporate some healthy home cooked foods. I try to shop only the perimeter of the supermarket and stay away from any frozen / processed foods. I don't think you can exercise too much unless you hurt yourself. I am very interested in reading any comments you may get on this post. Good Luck!
  • LG61820
    LG61820 Posts: 372 Member
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    I'm certainly no expert on these matters, but I took a look at your food diary. I couldn't see past your sodium intake. It has moved me along to cut my sodium intake back. I tried using the frozen diet dinners and found some good ones but I always wanted to have two of them which kinda defeated the purpose. Cooking stuff myself allows me to control what goes into it. There are some great recipes in the recipe section here.

    Besides that, if you've lost 7 pounds in under a month you've done very well! It helps me to think of how long it took me to put the weight on. As long as it's coming off a little faster than it went on I'm satisfied.
  • myukniewicz
    myukniewicz Posts: 906 Member
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    you are going super overboard on your sodium! i think that you are eating to many processed, pre-packaged foods. you have a frozen meal for breakfast every morning... and it looks like very frequently for lunch as well.
    i also don't see many fruits or vegetables. i think maybe you should start incorporating more fresh fruits and fresh (or frozen) vegetables. NO canned vegetables because the canning process practically sucks all the nutrients out of the vegetable and loads it up with sodium.

    congratulations on your weight loss so far!!!! :)

    EDIT :: I just looked back at your food diary.... how much water are you drinking a day??? you should be drinking at least 8 cups a day. water helps you flush out your body and helps keep you full.
  • bayles1
    bayles1 Posts: 408 Member
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    Hi,

    Dont worry about your diary being viewed,we are all in this together.

    I think most of what I have seen had already been mentioned.I think the water is a very relevant point,I always have a bottle with me.
    You also do have some quite large calorific deficits at the end of the day.Now Im not going to get into the eat back/not to eat back debate,but with the high exercise figures that you are achieving,your body must be running a little low on fuel to burn on occasions.
    Finally,you seem to lack fresh fruit in your diet,maybe you could swap some of the processed food for a few items during the day it would certainly bring down your sodium levels.

    Good Luck going forward.
    Best Wishes.
  • kmunis
    kmunis Posts: 48 Member
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    Agree with the other posters about the sodium. Definitely try to get more fresh foods into your diet.

    But you also might want to double check the calculations on your calories burned. I find that MFP can be way off on the calories burned numbers. There are lots of sites on the web where you can estimate the calories you've burned. You might want to plug in your numbers into a few of them and just make sure you've not overestimateing the calories you are burning.

    Not an expert, but just some advise :o)
  • dnsrmr
    dnsrmr Posts: 99 Member
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    You're doing an excellent job so far. I think number one, you are being too hard on yourself, and impatient like most of us - which is normal.
    Second, remember when you first start losing weight, the first thing we lose is water.
    If you have been working out every single day of the week, you need to give your body at least one day off for recovery.
    An example may be people who work out every other day and eat right lose weight because they give their bodies a day in between to rest. This rest your body needs is much needed.
    If you have a foot injury or any type of injury, you need to adjust your workouts as not to strain the injury more, or you will land up working out less because of it.
    You're wanting to lose an awful lot of weight in such a short amount of time, which can be done, but it may come back once you lose it unless you are very disciplined which many are.
    There is the Atkins Low Carb eating plan that will take several pounds off in little time, especially the first part of it called the Induction.
    Many people have lost much weight on this in little time and are very pleased with it but you must cut out many carbs, not count caloried, and only count carbs. It's simple, and keeps you feeling full throughout the day.
    People on this are amazed that they are eating so much and keep eating, and can't eat any more because it keeps a person so full. You can go online to www.atkins.com instead of buying it OR go to your local library and check out the book. It's an interestingly knowledgeable book with a twist of humor, and many true stories.
    Another thing - you may be gaining muscle if you're working out alot. Muscle is heavy and brings nice definition to a body but it also gives people the wrong impression when they step on a scale and see they weigh more or the same. Go by the way your clothes fit, and don't depend so much on a scale. It can be deceiving.
    If you're eating right, counting calories, working out hard, and have only been working out since February, and being it's only March - you need to continue what you're doing OR change your workout around to trick your body.
    If your doing the same workout day in and day out, your body already expects it - so you need to change it so you're body will be "tricked", and work harder to bring on the muscle, and lose fat/weight.
    P90X is a wonderful example of muscle confusion. If you have a chance, there are several info-commercials on tv you can get an idea of what it's about or you can log on to www.teambeachbody.com to watch online.
    I'm uncertain what your workout intensity is, but another good DVD you can try that is an hour long and is wonderfully challenging is Jillian Michaels-Ultimate Body Makeover - No More Touble Zones.
    Continue to drink water when you first wake up, a few hours before you go to sleep, and a glass or two before each meal. If you're eating 3 meals a day, drink 2 glasses before each meal Or one before and one after to continue to flush your body and kidneys out. Get at least 8 glasses of water a day, and plenty of rest.
    Again, try not to be so hard on yourself. It sounds like you're very frustrated. We are all on this site for the same thing, to look and feel better.
    We are all each other's support so count on us like you did when you posted this.
    I hope this helps.
    Good luck with your goal, and God bless you always.
  • goddessofmath
    goddessofmath Posts: 39 Member
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    you are going super overboard on your sodium! i think that you are eating to many processed, pre-packaged foods. you have a frozen meal for breakfast every morning... and it looks like very frequently for lunch as well.
    i also don't see many fruits or vegetables. i think maybe you should start incorporating more fresh fruits and fresh (or frozen) vegetables. NO canned vegetables because the canning process practically sucks all the nutrients out of the vegetable and loads it up with sodium.

    congratulations on your weight loss so far!!!! :)

    EDIT :: I just looked back at your food diary.... how much water are you drinking a day??? you should be drinking at least 8 cups a day. water helps you flush out your body and helps keep you full.

    Re: Your edit
    I'm drinking at least 8 cups a day, but I'm bad at keeping track of it. I usually go over 8 even. By the end of my workouts I'm chugging water and desperate to refill my bottle!

    Thanks for the other suggestions.
  • goddessofmath
    goddessofmath Posts: 39 Member
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    Thanks all! I really appreciate the support! Here's a few things in response to what I've been reading (not arguing just answering questions brought up.) :)

    My foot injury is a bone spur on the top of my foot. The treadmill/running aggravates it, but the bike does not.

    I am awful about entering my water consumption. It's typically 8 or more cups a day. I'm always chugging water and nothing else (no juice, diet soda, etc).

    I have checked my calories burned in various online sites and my bike tells me calories according to my weight. They all match up fairly well (which I was shocked about). :)

    I try to trick my body by changing intensity levels daily. Meaning one day I'll do a shorter workout and stick to the same intensity level, the next I'll go longer and up the resistance every 5 minutes until cool down, and others I'll up the resistance until I hit my max, stay on it as long as I can, and then slowly work back down. If you were graphing my resistance it would vary: some days a horizontal line, some days a mountain going up and down steadily, and others would be a steady upward mountain with a cliff at the end. Does that make sense?

    I eat processed food so much for the ease of it. I was eating fast food daily for one or two meals. I'm a high school teacher in my "busy season" and it's hard to find time to cook and workout. Obviously I need to make the time to cook. I had some tilapia fillets last night on the George Foreman and those were great, so I need to do that more often. As for Atkins or other low carb diets, I can't maintain them.

    I'm not wanting super fast results, just wanting to be consistently losing at a steady rate and not slow down.

    Thanks for the encouragement. The biggest fear I was having was what bayles1 mentioned about the big end of day calorie deficits. I'm wondering if I need to cut back on the exercise a bit because of that.
  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,239 Member
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    All the advice about what you are eating is very good. I suggest you seek to follow it. One tip I will give you to get you off the frozen meals from the store is that you may want to consider making your own. Make a big healthy casserole and divide it up into servings and freeze them. Then you control the contents and can lean them toward what you want and limit the sodium.

    Secondly, the more research I read the less I think steady state cardio exercises for long periods of time have any substantial benefit for fat burning. I would suggest looking into Interval Training. You can do it on your bike, but it is a substantially shorter workout but it will burn much more fat. You can also do it with bodyweight exercises or with light dumbells. A good place to look is http://www.intervaltraining.net/ or to find some body weigh exercises you can look here http://bodyweightculture.com/

    An example body weight Interval workout would be one where you take some body weight exercises you like (preferably ones that use most of your body like squats, pushups, and the like (isolation exercises like crunches are not good for this you want to use as many muscles as you can.) Then for your intervals where you are working as hard as you can, you do one exercise as many times as you can with good form, when you are in the lower intensity portion do something that keeps you moving like walking briskly in place, then next interval do the next exercise, then march in place, then do the next and so on until you have done all the intervals. It might be 20 minutes of working out, but if you work as hard as you can during the intervals you will find it is a great workout. In an of itself the workout will burn less calories than sitting on the bike for 40 minutes or so, but it will keep burning calories long after you stop as well. Best of all it will burn fat, and since you are using body weight resistance to exercise, it will spare your muscles.

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