Less calories, more exercise and still no weight loss! :(

from what i understand ur net should never go under 1200 calories or ur body will go into starvation mode so maybe u need to start eating back some of ur earned calories so ur body dont hold onto fat

I've found that the caloric consumption readings off the exercise bikes are waaay off. In order to get an accurate caloric burn, you need a heart rate monitor (HRM) preferably with a chest strap transmitter.

In addition, you're forgetting a MAJOR thing... muscle weighs MORE than fat. You are burning off fat and building healthy muscle. Give it some more time,

Check out the link in my signature about getting leaner - I bet you find the information you are looking for there.

Hi everybody,

It's fantastic to read how brilliant everybody is doing in terms of their fitness and weight loss! Well done!

I'm a 30 year old female. I'm 5ft 10". I weigh 146lb but I want to weigh 133lb.

For the last 3 weeks now I've been on a daily target of 1,200 calories which this site said I should aim towards. I have roughly been eating this amount daily and everyday I've been using an exercise bike which says that I've burnt 500 calories! So I should be well below by daily intake as this nets off to about 700 calories.

I weighed myself after week 1 and I'd lost 1lb. Weighed myself today and I'm back to where I started! So in 3 weeks I've lost nothing!

Can anyone help me? What am I doing wrong?

Jackie x

Since you don't have much to lose I would suggest setting your goal to lose 0.5lbs/week, and make sure you eat all your exercise calories as well.
Your net should be closer to 1600 calories rather that 1200 or the 700 you actually had. Set reasonable goal (0.5lbs/week) and follow the program as intended (eat your exercise calories)
FYI: You are already in a healthy weight range and you should put more focus on Body Fat %, not the number on the scale.

How fast did you tell MFP you wanted to lose? For as little as you have to lose, half a pound a week would be something reasonable to shoot for as far as a healthy weight loss. Faster than that is going to be difficult for your body to maintain, because you just don't have that many calories stored in fat to burn off. So you can't have a huge deficit like you would if you had more to lose.

Try changing your settings to half a pound a week, which will raise your calorie goal, and then eat most of your exercise calories. See if that helps.

There's a big debate whether or not to eat back your exercise calories....youve got to find what works best for you, like the other person said, you should always eat your 1200, then any calories leftover from exercising you can decide if you want to eat them back or not. But your 1200 should always be reached. Make sure you drink 8 glasses of water a day as well as it may be water retention thats keeping your scale the same

You'll notice that when you plug in your exercises for the day, your allotted calories will increase. Since you are already within a healthy height/weight range, you never want your net cals to drop below 1200 for the day. If you eat back your exercise calories, those extra calories will be fuel for your workout. If I burn 500 cals at the gym, I make sure I eat 1700 for the day.

Some people will tell you differently, but I can tell you that for the 2 months I've been doing this now, there were only 2 weeks that I did not lose anything. Those 2 weeks I did not eat back my exercise cals.

As weird as it sounds, eat more.

Hi everybody,

It's fantastic to read how brilliant everybody is doing in terms of their fitness and weight loss! Well done!

I'm a 30 year old female. I'm 5ft 10". I weigh 146lb but I want to weigh 133lb.

For the last 3 weeks now I've been on a daily target of 1,200 calories which this site said I should aim towards. I have roughly been eating this amount daily and everyday I've been using an exercise bike which says that I've burnt 500 calories! So I should be well below by daily intake as this nets off to about 700 calories.

I weighed myself after week 1 and I'd lost 1lb. Weighed myself today and I'm back to where I started! So in 3 weeks I've lost nothing!

Can anyone help me? What am I doing wrong?

Jackie x

Since you don't have much to lose I would suggest setting your goal to lose 0.5lbs/week, and make sure you eat all your exercise calories as well.
Your net should be closer to 1600 calories rather that 1200 or the 700 you actually had. Set reasonable goal (0.5lbs/week) and follow the program as intended (eat your exercise calories)
FYI: You are already in a healthy weight range and you should put more focus on Body Fat %, not the number on the scale.

AGREE!!!. My goal was my "last 10 pounds". I did this and pretty much lost an average of a 1/2 pound per week. This won't be steady. Some weeks were nothing and some weeks I went down a pound.
AGREE!!! Also with the focus on bf%. I have a link in my signature for this too.

You're already at a very healthy weight for your height. At that stage, you shouldn't aim to lose more than .5 a week.

Personally, I wouldn't even necessarily TRY to lose more weight, just focus on toning. You can get might more firm and look leaner without losing anything. You might even gain. The number on the scale doesn't really much matter. It's how you feel that counts.

From what I've heard, for ** SOME ** people, eating more is more beneficial to their weight loss. I had to experiment ALOT to figure out what I needed to do... Let me suggest try eating back your exercise cals so that your NET is 1200. Do that for 2 weeks and see what happens.

I'm NOT a huge proponent of "starvation mode" as its talked about here but that doesnt' negate that eating more works for some people. Personally, I have a super, super slow metabolism which is why it took a year for me to figure out what I needed to do. I pretty much encourage everyone to do that and to try different things for no less than 2 weeks before deciding if something actually works or not.

In your case, I'd go with baseline and net that 1200 and if that doesn't work, go up first but to no more than 1400 so that if it ends up being a gain, it won't be a huge gain over that 2 week period. That should give you an idea of where to go.

Good luck!