Strange, but can a lot of exercise slow down weight loss?
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rayrayfitz wrote: »I've never taken measurements, I have some today. I didn't think I'd lost any inch wise this past 6 weeks whilst I've only lost 3lb. But I put a belt on that I was on last notch and I'm over an inch over that now. I can't get my head around losing inches but not weight!!
I actually really wish I had taken before fat photos and logged measurements.
since you are being strict with logging, then i would keep at it, you may have a big loss shortly. I had test shorts that i couldnt button up. every two weeks i would but on these shorts until one day they fell off. This was what i used to help with my scale frustration. I am useless at measuring so the shorts worked for me.0 -
I can't not keep going, it's a way of life now. I'm going to stop completing my diary as I never weigh anywhere near what it keeps telling me I will in 5 weeks. I'm also laying off the scales. I weigh myself twice a week and hate it when you don't lose for a couple of weeks. I'm just going to keep at it, log everything and something will have to give t some point!!0
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rayrayfitz wrote: »I'm really strict with my logging, I log everything even drinks and weigh everything on digital scales.. My diary is open. I can't possibly be eating to maintain as I exercise a lot and only eat 1370 cals. It must be the recent increase in cardio and adding strength training that's doing it. It seems physically impossible not to e able to lose on my ingoing and output. Stay away from the scales an keep with it I guess!
Definetly stay away from the scales, I have got rid of mine and now only weigh at the gym same time every week.
I took photos and measurements and check them once a month,
Even though I'm not losing weight I can see my shape is changing and the inches dissapering. Stick with it. X
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I swim with a HRM on and I get probably about a 400-500/hr calorie burn with drills and long sets in there. But seeing as you don't eat back your calories that's ok that it's not really accurately calculating the burn right. I was ramping up my training from sprint tri's to oly distance triathlons last summer and found that at what MFP had my calories set to (somewhere in the 1300's) I was stalled weight-loss wise and kind of hungry. I opted to up my calories myself (and scared that I was going to gain weight.) But you know what?? I actually lost some weight within a week or so of increasing my calories by about 300. I am comfortable at 1650 now and while I went off track over the holidays (and now getting back into it again) I am happy that I upped my calories. sometimes your body just needs more to burn in order to function properly. If you just started this workout regimen then you might need to increase your calories to keep up (seems odd, but it's actually worked for a lot of people)...look for the eat more, weigh less area in MFP....0
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could be water weight in your muscles. training for my first half marathon I only lost like 3 lbs. Then the first two weeks after I stopped working out so vigorously I dropped like 5 lbs without changing my diet. Take a few days off and drink a crap load of water. Might do the trick.0
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http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html/
I've been posting this article a lot lately and I think you may be seeing this with your current exercise/calorie goals.
The tl/dr version is that diet and exercise both put stress on your body. Stress increases cortisol which can, in turn, increase water retention which can mask weight loss on a scale. It doesn't mean you are not losing fat, just that you are raising your water weight up so much that it is hiding the loss on the scale. If your belt is getting smaller, something is moving in the right direction. So...the question becomes do you want to try and reduce the amount of stress you are putting your body through (decrease exercise or increase calories) and see if that helps balance out the water gain, or do you want to just keep going as you are and patiently wait for your fat loss to outpace your water gain? It is a personal choice, but eating just a few hundred calories extra per day (think like 200) may be enough to lower the cortisol production and start tipping the scale back down. Counter intuitive, yes, but just one of many factors that plays a part in why the scale won't move. So when someone says "eat more to lose" this is often the key reason it can help. In the end, there is a good balance of exercise and caloric intake that allows a person to see optimal progress toward their goal, it can just take a lot of trial, error, and frustration to figure it out.0 -
rayrayfitz wrote: »Sorry I thought it was open. I'll open it now.
I still don't see your diary. Honestly, with things like this, if 6+ weeks have past, it is probably a logging issue. You could be choosing inaccurate entries.
Also, what is your day job? You may want to lower your activity level. I have mine set to sedentary and then log each of my exercises.
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)0 -
britishbroccoli wrote: »rayrayfitz wrote: »Sorry I thought it was open. I'll open it now.
I still don't see your diary. Honestly, with things like this, if 6+ weeks have past, it is probably a logging issue. You could be choosing inaccurate entries.
Also, what is your day job? You may want to lower your activity level. I have mine set to sedentary and then log each of my exercises.
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
I've just checked and my diary is Defo open?
I have it set to lightly active. I'm a mum and student. I walk 3 miles a day to the gym and back and don't log these cals, I have a jawbone and usually do my 10k steps. I have 1370 cals on sedentary it's 1200 and with the exercise I do it's just not enough. I'd rather raise the cals slightly each day than have to be eating exercise cals back. I exercise 5 days a week and am fairly active at weekends with the kids. I swim 5x a week, badminton once, started weight training and putting a aerobic and yoga and Pilates in this week.0 -
rayrayfitz wrote: »britishbroccoli wrote: »rayrayfitz wrote: »Sorry I thought it was open. I'll open it now.
I still don't see your diary. Honestly, with things like this, if 6+ weeks have past, it is probably a logging issue. You could be choosing inaccurate entries.
Also, what is your day job? You may want to lower your activity level. I have mine set to sedentary and then log each of my exercises.
Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
I've just checked and my diary is Defo open?
I just went to the link where yours would be and got this:
This Food Diary is Private
This user is not allowing others to view his or her diary.
Back to rayrayfitz's profile
You can change your diary settings here: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/profile_privacy0 -
diary is defo NOT open...0
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I don't understand, on the privacy sharing it says public?0
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It's public now!
Here are some items that may be off:- Home Made Vegetable Lasagne , 1 serving(s): Did you enter it into the recipe generator?
- Katie's birthday cake - Home made, 0.111111 th: Did you enter it into the recipe generator? That seems like an odd serving size.
- Carte noir - Decaf coffee, skimmed milk, 1 sugar, 1 cup: how much skimmed milk? how much sugar? This looks like someone else's entry.
- Chinese Takeaway - Mixed Veg Chow Mein, 700 g
- Himalaya Bistro - Vegetables In Garlic Sauce, 1 order
- Chinese Takeaway - Salted Chilli Chicken, 1 portion
- Walls - Soft Scoop - Vanilla Light, 1 scoop
- Tetley Tea - Tea, Semi Skimmed Milk, 1 Sugar, 0.5 cup- how much milk, how much sugar?
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It's finally open. There appears to be a lot of generic/estimated foods. I'm not one to say you can't estimate some stuff but if you are disappointed in the weight loss total, that's the problem. Tighten up on logging and you should see results.
Also, someone else pointed out that the exercise calories aren't a problem since you don't eat them back. But if you decide to at any point, I did take a look at the burns and they are really off. 60 minutes of backstroke just won't burn 1000+ calories, not even close to that amount. The light/moderate of freestyle setting for MFP is way more towards the moderate end and even more towards hard. The setting below that is more accurate for a light/moderate swim. This is just based off my experience with swimming as just exercise and back when I was competitively doing it as well.0 -
In my experience, intense exercise stalls my weight loss. I have to keep my intensity to moderate--like, walking uphill at a slight incline for 45 minutes at a time.
Could it be that sometimes, the body interprets intense exercise as stress, with too little fuel to sustain it?
Perhaps cut the exercise a bit. Don't stop completely, but lower the frequency, the amount of time you work out, or the intensity of the effort. It's counterintuitive, but it never hurts to try different things.0 -
It wasn't 60 mins of back stroke it was 80 and the 1000 cals was the total for 95 mins swimming not an hour, it was combined or the two lots of swimming. I only burn 1400 cals for just over 2 hours of swimming, and I have it set at leisurely swim when calculating cals, even though back crawl is quite vigorous compared to the breast stroke. It's not like I'm having a slow gentle meander round the pool, when I do back crawl it's quite intense and I do lengths, it feels far more a work out than breast stroke and I physically push myself, I don't keep myself on easy mode.
Nothing is 'estimated' everything I eat is weighed. All the recipes are my own, weighed.
The birthday cake I made, and weighed and calculated on the recipe so (after checking everything of course), and cut it into 16 slices, each was 280 odd cals or similar and I had half of one of those slices.
The takeaway ones are all generic for Chinese New Year takeaway meals, cal on box, I couldn't find the specific meals didn't have internet for barcode so just pointed a generic meal of the same calories - that were label printed, so they are correct. The cals were the same, the meals were not.
The lasagne again is my recipe made with tortilla instead of pasta, without cheese sauce, it was made on the recipe and I ate it over 2 days.
The tea and coffee again are my entries from 'my foods' one sugar a dash of skimmed milk, I use to measure exactly a table spoon but don't bother, as I have it strong and it's rare I drink tea or coffee so if anything I over estimate the cals for it.
So there isn't really any generic/estimated foods, as you can see i even weigh cucumber.
I suppose when you make your diary, foods and recipes it only needs to make sense to me, no one else. And I know how meticulous I am about weighing and cross referencing calories.
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This is the cal burn it gives me for light leisurely swimming for 2 hours. Though I push myself and don't swim leisurely, I just do as much as I can as fast as I can.
I enter backstroke in separate as back crawl is a lot more intense and faster. I do around 65 lengths of a 35m pool an hour breast stroke and almost double that doing back crawl so it's a lot more intense and vigorous. To say I'm still around 5 stone overweight I think to be fair The back crawl calories are about right.
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You should never use MFP estimation of calories burned. It goes way over. You could probably be burning only half of what it's giving you.0
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Ok...........I'm not trying to argue with you. Just trying to help lol.
If everything is your own recipes weighed by food scale, then that's awesome.
It doesn't change the fact that the calorie burns are off though. Things like 1000 calories for 60 minutes of breast stroke just aren't right. It's not personal attack and I'm not saying you aren't working hard. I'm sure you are. MFP is just overestimated and incorrectly list calories burned for intensity levels for swimming. The math on your own numbers alone can tell you that. If you were truly burning more than 1000 in a day and not eating it back on top of the deficit you already factored in, you'd be losing upwards of 3 pounds a week.
Unless you're retaining water and heavy on sodium, there's a number issue. You're losing so you're in a deficit, just not as large as desired.
As I suggested before, it's likely water retention of new intensity in workouts which will go away...but as a friendly suggestion - just wanted to warn you about the calories burns being very off on MFP swimming estimates in the case you end up trying to eat them back in the future.0 -
You should never use MFP estimation of calories burned. It goes way over. You could probably be burning only half of what it's giving you.
But surely that's only an issue if you eat the calories back? I don't eat exercise calories back so the calories are irrelevant really and are just 'in the bank'0 -
Ok...........I'm not trying to argue with you. Just trying to help lol.
If everything is your own recipes weighed by food scale, then that's awesome.
It doesn't change the fact that the calorie burns are off though. Things like 1000 calories for 60 minutes of breast stroke just aren't right. It's not personal attack and I'm not saying you aren't working hard. I'm sure you are. MFP is just overestimated and incorrectly list calories burned for intensity levels for swimming. The math on your own numbers alone can tell you that. If you were truly burning more than 1000 in a day and not eating it back on top of the deficit you already factored in, you'd be losing upwards of 3 pounds a week.
Unless you're retaining water and heavy on sodium, there's a number issue. You're losing so you're in a deficit, just not as large as desired.
As I suggested before, it's likely water retention of new intensity in workouts which will go away...but as a friendly suggestion - just wanted to warn you about the calories burns being very off on MFP swimming estimates in the case you end up trying to eat them back in the future.
I didn't think for one moment you were arguing? Your post didn't come across that way. :-s
Breast stroke doesn't come up at 1000 cals for an hour, it's 700. I only got 1000 cal (according to MFP) when I swim for 2 hours, and I suppose calories alter depending on your weight as well?
That's the point of the post, I should be losing more or something this week, a few ppl seem to think it must be the introduction of strength training, and with it lot being linear it will suddenly drop, I'm hoping so.
I don't go over my sodium, I do drink a lot and I also have PCOS. I can't do as much 'high impact' as if like as I only have one lung so use things like swimming etc to try to build my lung capacity up.
I think some time there is no rhyme and reason why we don't lose for a couple of weeks even though we do everything right. I've done the whole cheating and kidding yourself thing when you know really there are issues why you haven't lost weight. I suppose that's why it's so frustrating when you do do everything right and try your damnest for what feels like no result.
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I just did three online swim calorie calculators, and based on my weight and laps I do and length of pool I burn 624cals an hour breaststroke, and 606 back crawl. MFP a gives me 1,400 for 2 hours as opposed to 1200 the calculators say. So it is out, but not massive let, enough to be a problem if you were eating all your exercise cals.
I suppose doing online calculators that are specific to you with the weight and exact distance swam in the time are a lot more effective than MFP a would be when it comes to calculating cals. I might start doing all my cal workout online and inputting manually in MFP0 -
I used to meet with a nutritionist and go into the bod pod every 2 weeks. I would always lose a few pounds every other** session. (once I lost 6, but the previous session I didn't lose anything, even though I followed everything to a t) my body just wanted to hold on to the weight. you could be like that too! good luck!0
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My body seems to be like that too. I basically lose a pound and then the scales will go up again a couple of days or so later and stay there for another 7-10 days and then I'll lose another pound or more below the last loss so the trend is generally going down, but unless you weigh daily and log the trend it feels like nothing is happening.
I usually burn off at between 400-800 calories through exercise each day so might be having the same problem as you.
I also weigh and measure my food religiously and usually underestimate calorie burns from exercise in case they are not accurate.0 -
Ok seriously, you eat 1370 calories, don't eat back exercise calories, even if you burn only 600 calories a day... You're surviving on 670 calories. Emphasis on 'surviving'.
This is not healthy at all.0 -
Sorry francl27 but the idea of net calories doesn't exist outside of MFP. 1370 isn't that low, if the OP is burning a lot through exercise maybe she could eat a little more but it's not unhealthy and I've never heard a doctor tell someone eating over 1200 calories and exercising that it's dangerous to their health.
So yesterday when I had a 550 calorie fast day and did some cardio I was surviving on 200 calories I suppose?0 -
Sorry francl27 but the idea of net calories doesn't exist outside of MFP. 1370 isn't that low, if the OP is burning a lot through exercise maybe she could eat a little more but it's not unhealthy and I've never heard a doctor tell someone eating over 1200 calories and exercising that it's dangerous to their health.
So yesterday when I had a 550 calorie fast day and did some cardio I was surviving on 200 calories I suppose?
There's a difference between a once in a while thing and an every day occurrence. It's not healthy to net so low.. period. Unless someone wants to lose all their muscle I guess.
Also... doctors don't know a thing about nutrition.0 -
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Well I am going to be fasting for 2 days every week from now on, and doing cardio on those days too. This is normal for people following the 5:2 diet. Doctors and scientists have studied this and shown that it is healthy and effective and a great way to lose weight, body fat and improve many other aspects of your health.0
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Ok seriously, you eat 1370 calories, don't eat back exercise calories, even if you burn only 600 calories a day... You're surviving on 670 calories. Emphasis on 'surviving'.
This is not healthy at all.
If I was just surviving why wouldn't I be losing weight at a fast rate? I'm not and have averaged a loss over a year at a 1lb a week, I hardly think that's unhealthy or surviving. I don't feel hungry often, I already state if i swim for 2 hours I eat an extra 200 odd cals as I feel hungry. I have plenty of energy, have no deficiencies. If I ate any more than I do now I would put on weight. I'm 5' tall. I hardly think I'm starving myself to death or I'm being unhealthy.
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