Not Eating Enough Calories to Lose Weight
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You are not losing weight, because you are eating too much, not too little. If you were indeed eating 1400, being active and not losing, it would have been weird. But your loggings so most days no exercise or slow paced walking and that you are eating closer to 1700 or more calories, which especially if you are not overweight or very tall, it is probably around maintenace for a lightly active woman.
I'm not sure how you think I'm eating too much. I usually cross-train almost every day, something I've been doing since before I started my profile here but I've been ill the past week and haven't been doing it. I walk about an hour every day in all regardless. When cross training my weight started to go up, not sure if it was building muscle and not losing fat, or if my muscles were retaining water. Still there's been no change in my weight in the last month. I log pretty much everything I eat here too.
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Do you have a way to calculate body fat and muscle mass? Your body might be changing without your weight changing. try keeping some other measurements and use those. I still say increase your protein intake. If your body is recompositioning you want to get more protein so you don't break it down from your muscle.0
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You can't lose weight by eating more calories. At best, eating too much will make you sick and your body will purge from one or both ends, so that some of those calories go undigested. But there's no guarantee of that and even if there were, it isn't a healthy way to lose weight. If you aren't losing weight, you're either eating more than you realize, exercising less than you realize, or both.0
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Maybe I've missed something but at 5ft 11 and 10st 10lbs you sound like you are an ideal weight already - why do you want to lose any?0
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electricmoogaloo wrote: »I'm by no means overweight but last year I was on SSID's which pushed my weight up past what I'm comfortable with. I'm trying to loose it now, but my weight will not budge and I think it's because I don't eat enough calories, on a normal day I usually only eat about 1,400. Can anyone suggest ways increasing my calorie intake (like foods I should be eating for example) or suggest anything I could be doing to stop my body being in starvation mode?
Thanks!
Where does this come from?
No. Really.
Why is this bit of tripe so prevalent out there? It's almost universal. How does it spread? Why does it stay alive?
I.
Give.
Up.
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I think you might have two problems.
1) I could be wrong because I know some people do diary entries in an exact way that does look like they aren't weighing food (I tend to do this lol), but it appears you have some things you aren't weighing. When you aren't losing, that's the first thing you should make sure is 100% accurate.
2) I think your exercise calories are off. 30 minutes yielding a 450 calorie burn is likely an overestimate for you. This is not to say you aren't working hard. It's just likely burning less calories than you think. We all tend to overestimate. That's why many only eat back half the exercise calories. You appear to be eating back those calories completely. It would definitely have an effect on weight loss. On top of that, I'd stop logging the walking. It's to and from work. More than likely, you've got another overestimation problem there. I'd just consider that part of more normal activity for the day. At the very least, I'd strongly suggest you stop logging those walks. Even if you are using an app or tracker that is telling you that you're walking at a pace of 3.5, MFP overestimates the amount of calories for that anyway. You're just eating back more than what you actually burned.0 -
electricmoogaloo wrote: »You are not losing weight, because you are eating too much, not too little. If you were indeed eating 1400, being active and not losing, it would have been weird. But your loggings so most days no exercise or slow paced walking and that you are eating closer to 1700 or more calories, which especially if you are not overweight or very tall, it is probably around maintenace for a lightly active woman.
I'm not sure how you think I'm eating too much. I usually cross-train almost every day, something I've been doing since before I started my profile here but I've been ill the past week and haven't been doing it. I walk about an hour every day in all regardless. When cross training my weight started to go up, not sure if it was building muscle and not losing fat, or if my muscles were retaining water. Still there's been no change in my weight in the last month. I log pretty much everything I eat here too.
You ARE eating at maintenance if you're not losing weight. You are overestimating the calorie burn you get from exercise and eating all the calories from that, creating a situation where you're consuming enough calories to be at maintenance.
Stop counting your incidental walking calories and cut the burns from your workouts in half, and then maybe you will see the scale move again.
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Starvation mode doesn't exist. If you're not losing, you're not in a deficit.0
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Try taking one day and eating 2800 calories. Your weight will probably swing up but disregard the scale for a few days. Your calories are a bit low and this 'spike' day should get you moving. If you are going to maintain 1400 calories, do this spike day once a week. If this doesn't work, please message me and I will help.
If she's not losing at 1400, all doubling her calories one day of the week would do is increase her daily average to 1600. She wouldn't lose on that either if nothing about her diet/exercise was changed other than adding those extra 1400 on one day. That's not a "fueling the body" solution...it's literally just piling in more calories one day a week.0 -
Try taking one day and eating 2800 calories. Your weight will probably swing up but disregard the scale for a few days. Your calories are a bit low and this 'spike' day should get you moving. If you are going to maintain 1400 calories, do this spike day once a week. If this doesn't work, please message me and I will help.
If she's not losing at 1400, all doubling her calories one day of the week would do is increase her daily average to 1600. She wouldn't lose on that either if nothing about her diet/exercise was changed other than adding those extra 1400 on one day. That's not a "fueling the body" solution...it's literally just piling in more calories one day a week.
I wouldn't recommend something if I didn't think it would work. I have helped dozens and dozens of people through the years lose weight, many of which had a similar issue. The body is not a calculator...it just doesn't work that way. We have taken the human body, an extremely complicated miracle, and reduced it to simple math problem. Sometimes the math works. Sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I try to find the solution.0 -
Try taking one day and eating 2800 calories. Your weight will probably swing up but disregard the scale for a few days. Your calories are a bit low and this 'spike' day should get you moving. If you are going to maintain 1400 calories, do this spike day once a week. If this doesn't work, please message me and I will help.
If she's not losing at 1400, all doubling her calories one day of the week would do is increase her daily average to 1600. She wouldn't lose on that either if nothing about her diet/exercise was changed other than adding those extra 1400 on one day. That's not a "fueling the body" solution...it's literally just piling in more calories one day a week.
I wouldn't recommend something if I didn't think it would work. I have helped dozens and dozens of people through the years lose weight, many of which had a similar issue. The body is not a calculator...it just doesn't work that way. We have taken the human body, an extremely complicated miracle, and reduced it to simple math problem. Sometimes the math works. Sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I try to find the solution.
^^what he said. our bodies are very efficient. it will learn to work with whatever we're giving it. if you can make your body think it's getting enough, it will stop saving so much. Just try varying your calories day by day, too. like- have 1800 and 2000 calorie days occasionally and still have low days, too.0 -
Try taking one day and eating 2800 calories. Your weight will probably swing up but disregard the scale for a few days. Your calories are a bit low and this 'spike' day should get you moving. If you are going to maintain 1400 calories, do this spike day once a week. If this doesn't work, please message me and I will help.
If she's not losing at 1400, all doubling her calories one day of the week would do is increase her daily average to 1600. She wouldn't lose on that either if nothing about her diet/exercise was changed other than adding those extra 1400 on one day. That's not a "fueling the body" solution...it's literally just piling in more calories one day a week.
I wouldn't recommend something if I didn't think it would work. I have helped dozens and dozens of people through the years lose weight, many of which had a similar issue. The body is not a calculator...it just doesn't work that way. We have taken the human body, an extremely complicated miracle, and reduced it to simple math problem. Sometimes the math works. Sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I try to find the solution.
The problem is that the more complicated math that shows what is actually happening in the human body doesn't support your simple concept of just eating more.0 -
Try taking one day and eating 2800 calories. Your weight will probably swing up but disregard the scale for a few days. Your calories are a bit low and this 'spike' day should get you moving. If you are going to maintain 1400 calories, do this spike day once a week. If this doesn't work, please message me and I will help.
If she's not losing at 1400, all doubling her calories one day of the week would do is increase her daily average to 1600. She wouldn't lose on that either if nothing about her diet/exercise was changed other than adding those extra 1400 on one day. That's not a "fueling the body" solution...it's literally just piling in more calories one day a week.
I wouldn't recommend something if I didn't think it would work. I have helped dozens and dozens of people through the years lose weight, many of which had a similar issue. The body is not a calculator...it just doesn't work that way. We have taken the human body, an extremely complicated miracle, and reduced it to simple math problem. Sometimes the math works. Sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I try to find the solution.
^^what he said. our bodies are very efficient. it will learn to work with whatever we're giving it. if you can make your body think it's getting enough, it will stop saving so much. Just try varying your calories day by day, too. like- have 1800 and 2000 calorie days occasionally and still have low days, too.
That's not applicable to someone who isn't losing weight with the amount of calories they're currently eating. The person is either eating more than they think or burning less than they think. Adding in some calories isn't addressing the issue at hand.0 -
I hear that the University of Broscience has a wicked party scene.0
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Look into carb cycling maybe. I am thin and active and eat very clean. I have a diverse training program as well. I messed around with carb cycling and upped my water intake. I am finally leaning out. It has been a slow process, but with carb cycling I am losing scale numbers again. I'm also more of a "how your clothes fit" goal seeker as opposed to the scale number. Muscle weighs more than body fat. Try taking measurements with a fabric measuring tape and see if those numbers change even if the scale doesn't.0
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Try taking one day and eating 2800 calories. Your weight will probably swing up but disregard the scale for a few days. Your calories are a bit low and this 'spike' day should get you moving. If you are going to maintain 1400 calories, do this spike day once a week. If this doesn't work, please message me and I will help.
If she's not losing at 1400, all doubling her calories one day of the week would do is increase her daily average to 1600. She wouldn't lose on that either if nothing about her diet/exercise was changed other than adding those extra 1400 on one day. That's not a "fueling the body" solution...it's literally just piling in more calories one day a week.
I wouldn't recommend something if I didn't think it would work. I have helped dozens and dozens of people through the years lose weight, many of which had a similar issue. The body is not a calculator...it just doesn't work that way. We have taken the human body, an extremely complicated miracle, and reduced it to simple math problem. Sometimes the math works. Sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I try to find the solution.
^^what he said. our bodies are very efficient. it will learn to work with whatever we're giving it. if you can make your body think it's getting enough, it will stop saving so much. Just try varying your calories day by day, too. like- have 1800 and 2000 calorie days occasionally and still have low days, too.
Is this how it works for anorexics or people in concentration camps? I wonder how they get so skinny, then.0 -
I've seen it all in this thread wow....
Eat at a deficit to lose weight...if you aren't losing you aren't in a deficit. Check your logging, ensure you are logging accurately and correctly by weighing solids and measuring liquids..not measuring solids...doesn't work well.
AS for eating more to lose...really? I know our bodies can get stressed from too much exercise and it will cause water retention due to the stress and if this goes on long enough you get adaptive thermogenesis but that in itself takes a while...
OP you are eating more than you think and/or not burning as much as you think
It really is simple math CICO...and no the types of food and when you consume them is rubbish as well...messing with macros, eating clean...psh.0 -
I think you need to re-evaluate your calorie burn. MFP is notorious for overestimating calorie burn - 340 calories from 30 minutes on the elliptical?! Seriously? I let MFP record the calorie burn per itself but if I do eat back, I count only 50% of calories burned towards my allowance.0
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I zig zag my calories..seems to work0
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