Daily Exercise + Under Daily Calories = No Weight Loss!

I'm guessing you are eating more than you believe, and probably also retaining water from all the exercise.

mandimahoney5 wrote: »

Have you measured your self lately ?
I had a similar problem a few months back. Ate under my calories, exercised ect.. But no weight loss for weeks. Every 4 weeks I do my measurements. It ended up that my measurements were smaller by 1/2 a 1 inch in places. So I was loosing weight, but the scale wasn't reflecting it because I was putting on muscle.

Not putting on muscle unless you are somehow experiencing newbie gains, but yeah. You can definitely lose inches without really losing scale weight. Especially since you have to consider normal fluctuations. I haven't lost all that much weight but I have been losing a bit of size.

DanielNotDan wrote: »

Thanks for your input on my ongoing saga. I'll share my diary to see if others can make sense of it. I'm exercising enough; it HAS to be my food/intake.

I rarely "need" to measure as i usually have, say, "2 eggs," "1 tomato," "1/2 avocado," etc. Some foods I never measure, like lettuce or cucumbers — you couldn't eat enough of those to gain weight if you HAD to.

I'll measure my "handful of nuts" to see how big my hand actually is

RE: calorie deficit: I disagree. If 1000 calories of Doritos/Oreos were equal to 1000 calories of chicken/broccoli we'd see nutritionists, body builders, and "fitness" gurus touting the "Doritos and Oreos Diet" — I mean, a calorie is a calorie, right? Instead, we scientifically know that these foods affect our bodies differently. Otherwise, we could consume our daily calorie quota of Coca-Cola and eat french fries and lose weight. Is that what you're saying would happen? I don't think so, but I would be happy to review credible research that indicates otherwise.

Thanks, again, for your input!

1 tomato means nothing. I can eat 1 cherry tomato and one garden tomato. These are two different things. I can eat 2 garden tomatoes and they will also be different because they do not weigh the same. One avocado can be huge, another can be small.

Without even looking at your diary yet, you've already exposed your inaccurate logging. If I eat 2-3 small cucumbers, that's still 40-50 calories. same with lettuce, it all adds up.

Eating 1000 calories of ANY food will yield weight loss for everyone. The only difference macros and micros make in dieting/food intake are a) improving satiety, b) benefiting your specific body composition or endurance goals, c) ensuring proper nutrition, d) accommodating your specific medical issues (e.g. diabetes). I've lost over 25lbs eating junk food while tracking my macros for proper fat and protein intake and lifting weights.

Yes, you can eat only fries and pop and lose weight, if this means being at a caloric deficit. You can eat "healthy" foods only and NOT lose weight because you aren't at a caloric deficit. Exercise doesn't make you lose weight, it helps with health and enables your TDEE/energy needs to be higher so you can eat more food.

CICO.

Other issues with your logging:

1) you are not logging daily. So you really have no idea if you are at a deficit every day.

2) As mentioned, you aren't weighing your food. Your pork chops are not always 4oz cooked, sorry to burst your bubble.

3) Of the very few days you are logging, you dont' always log to your goal. This combined with lack of daily logging means you can't properly notice trends to determine if your goal is high or low enough. If you want to only eat back 50% of your exercise calories (I had to eat back 100% and still lost too quickly, but YMMV - I do better on TDEE method anyways), then only log half the time you worked out so you can eat your full goal and then eat back all of those logged calories.

4) Some of your entries are likely off. I noted you used a "fried egg" entry. Why? Just log the oil you used and the number of eggs you used. 2 large eggs should only be ~145 calories - so are you sure you only used about 40 calories worth of oil/butter for your fried eggs? Generic bread entry, seriously just log the brand that you actually ate because no two brands will be identical.

5) I'm guessing some of your recipes are from the database. How do you eat 0.35 of a pie, or is this based on you weighing the entire pie and then weighing your individual slice and figuring out the decimal serving size (which i doubt since you don't weigh anything else)? What about your bowl of mixed fruit, how do you know that's even close to being accurate (Fruit - Mixed Fruit, 30 g (half a cup) ) to the fruit and amount of fruit you actually used?