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  • airborne18th
    airborne18th Posts: 57 Member
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    dkhuff1 wrote: »
    i've been doing my fitness pal for four weeks now with no loss even though I am being religious with my diary and staying within my calorie allowance. I am working out five days a week for about 60 minutes or so each workout. I lift weights about three times a week using a program that was successful for me when I lost weight before. I do cardio the other days. My cardio usually consists of intervals where I get my heart rate up into 90% of my max for about 1 minute followed by two minutes at a an easier pace. I do that for 30 minutes with warm up. Other cardio days consist of 45 minute steady workouts with a few intervals. s with recovery alsoI have successfully used in the past to lose 30 pounds. I am 5'4", 203#, about 35-40% body fat. MFP has my calorie goal at 1390 to lose 1.5# per week. I wear a polar Ft7 HRM for every workout. I eat back my exercise calories. The only thing different, is in the pass I had a polar F6 heart rate monitor and I have noticed a huge difference in the calorie burn between the two heart rate monitors for the same relative work out. The new heart rate monitor shows about half as many calories burned as my old did. Normally when I start dieting and working out like I have been I quickly lose weight and inches. I am just not seeing that now and I'm really confused as to why.

    The issue seems to be with the measurement of your workouts. First, doing 1 min at 90% and then slowing down is problematic. it is exercise, but you need to sustain the 90% rate with effort for enough time to get into the fat burning zone. but lets say your goal is not to get into the fat burning zone.. I think it is still problematic for calculating that you do 1 min burst of 90% then ease of for the next 2 mins..
  • dkhuff1
    dkhuff1 Posts: 67 Member
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    After 1 minute at 90% of my max, the next 2 minutes my heart rate starts to drop but still stays high like In the 150s. The first 30 seconds after the big effort , I'm in the 160s, so I'm not just easy cruising. This is a hard and intense workout. By the 8th or 9th interval I am completely wiped out.
  • dkhuff1
    dkhuff1 Posts: 67 Member
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    sushiandtea wrote: »
    I was really frustrated last year (2-3 months of no loss!), quit over Christmas then returned in January with a few changes.

    I don't stick solidly to MFPs recommended intake any more. MFP has me down for 1200 cal, but I now stick between my BMR and TDEE (1300 and 1600 for me, roughly). I gave a try after seeing someone on tumblr post their success with it. Since I started this I've been losing weight, even if it is fairly slowly. It might be worth a try... work out your TDEE and allow yourself to eat anywhere between MFPs goal and that. 1200 used to work for me 3 years ago but I find these days my metabolism just slows right down; by mixing it up it's sped up again.

    I talked to the trainer at the gym today and showed her my food diary and workout diary. She has seen my workouts too so she knows how hard I push at the gym. She says to give it at least two more weeks-- i likely have glycogen in muscles with water retention due to weight training program. She also said 1390 net calories per day is way too low and suggested I increase my daily calories by at least 250 and try to focus on getting my carbs at breakfast and lunch and not at dinner.
  • airborne18th
    airborne18th Posts: 57 Member
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    dkhuff1 wrote: »
    After 1 minute at 90% of my max, the next 2 minutes my heart rate starts to drop but still stays high like In the 150s. The first 30 seconds after the big effort , I'm in the 160s, so I'm not just easy cruising. This is a hard and intense workout. By the 8th or 9th interval I am completely wiped out.

    I am just saying this type of interval workout might be problematic for the calorie calculation on your HRM. working out in the 50-80% zone is a much different burn than 90%. and the intense interval might be skewing the numbers. one HRM might deal with this better than others.

    There are people who do the short high intense burst of sprint and then go to complete rest and then do the burst again.. apparently this technique works well, but it is impossible to do an accurate burn count as well..

    Since you are eating back the calories you are depending on accuracy you may not be able to achieve.
  • zoezoekende
    zoezoekende Posts: 27 Member
    edited February 2015
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    Hi there, there is a community here how 2lose weight and eat more. They have lots of advice how to calculate and how much to eat. Good luck

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/3817-eat-more-2-weigh-less


    Im losing weight just by eating the right foods, sometimes I go wheeling for excercise but most days I am house bound . I lost more than 6 kg starting januari 2nd this year.
  • lemon629
    lemon629 Posts: 501 Member
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    It really isn't mysterious at all. There is something wrong with either your logging, your entry choices (some of the food entries in the FP database are wildly incorrect), your BMR or TDEE calculation, or your exercise burn calculations. Or a mixture of those factors. You should go back and calculate what your total deficit supposedly was over the past month or two and compare with what you lost. This will tell you how much your calculations are incorrect.

    For example, if the total deficit was supposedly 21,000 calories, then you would have lost six pounds. However, if the loss was only one pound, then your deficit was only 3,500, not 21,000. So drop your estimates to correspond with what actually happened. (As an aside, I did this calculation for myself a few weeks ago when my deficit wasn't matching reality. I realized I was over-estimating my TDEE, so I reduced it by 100. Now my deficit is matching what is happening on my scale and I am back to losing one pound per week.)

    I suspect your calorie burns from exercise are less than you think. Stop eating your calories back unless you are truly hungry. Don't eat just because you're concerned your net calories are too low because clearly they aren't.
  • DebzNuDa
    DebzNuDa Posts: 252 Member
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    1) Muscle weight's more than fat, 2) accuracy may be wrong both in food and exercise, 3) is there a decrease of size?, 4) hormones/thyroid - visit your Dr. and check both.

    I'm no way a doctor or scientist both if these things are out of whack. Good luck.
  • kellycasey5
    kellycasey5 Posts: 486 Member
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    I really only trust my polar heartrate monitor for steady state cardio (like my long uphill walking on the treadmill) It gives me a high calorie read for my weight sessions, and I know that I very likely did not burn 400+ calories lifting for 30 minutes or doing my crunches and lunges. I maybe burn that with 45 minutes of constant kickboxing, or a hour of bootcamp class where my heartrate is consistently elevated, but not on my routine weight circuit. This would mean DISASTER to my weight loss if I ate back my exercise calories based on it.

    I can't see your diary or your feed to see how many "exercise calories" you are eating, but my money is on that being your problem. An overestimated calorie burn and then over-consumption of calories based on that number. However many calories you are eating now is maintenance for your current weight and activity.
  • blankiefinder
    blankiefinder Posts: 3,599 Member
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    lemon629 wrote: »
    It really isn't mysterious at all. There is something wrong with either your logging, your entry choices (some of the food entries in the FP database are wildly incorrect), your BMR or TDEE calculation, or your exercise burn calculations. Or a mixture of those factors. You should go back and calculate what your total deficit supposedly was over the past month or two and compare with what you lost. This will tell you how much your calculations are incorrect.

    For example, if the total deficit was supposedly 21,000 calories, then you would have lost six pounds. However, if the loss was only one pound, then your deficit was only 3,500, not 21,000. So drop your estimates to correspond with what actually happened. (As an aside, I did this calculation for myself a few weeks ago when my deficit wasn't matching reality. I realized I was over-estimating my TDEE, so I reduced it by 100. Now my deficit is matching what is happening on my scale and I am back to losing one pound per week.)

    I suspect your calorie burns from exercise are less than you think. Stop eating your calories back unless you are truly hungry. Don't eat just because you're concerned your net calories are too low because clearly they aren't.

    This advice from @lemon629‌ is spot on. I would guess that some of it is definitely the exercise calories, as a hrm only works on steady state cardio. Intervals really throw them off. I would never eat back 100% unless trying to lean bulk.

    If you're too hungry, make different food choices. For example, I love peanut m&m's but I know that I can eat like a pound of strawberries for the same calories as like 10 of them. Obviously the strawberries are a whole lot more filling. Same goes for a serving of cottage cheese over one piece of bread.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    Can you open your diary?
  • blankiefinder
    blankiefinder Posts: 3,599 Member
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    Meant to mention too, that it would be worth taking measurements, you may be doing an inadvertently lean bulk and losing fat.

    If all else fails, get your thyroid checked.
  • lemon629
    lemon629 Posts: 501 Member
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    dkhuff1 wrote: »
    sushiandtea wrote: »
    I was really frustrated last year (2-3 months of no loss!), quit over Christmas then returned in January with a few changes.

    I don't stick solidly to MFPs recommended intake any more. MFP has me down for 1200 cal, but I now stick between my BMR and TDEE (1300 and 1600 for me, roughly). I gave a try after seeing someone on tumblr post their success with it. Since I started this I've been losing weight, even if it is fairly slowly. It might be worth a try... work out your TDEE and allow yourself to eat anywhere between MFPs goal and that. 1200 used to work for me 3 years ago but I find these days my metabolism just slows right down; by mixing it up it's sped up again.

    I talked to the trainer at the gym today and showed her my food diary and workout diary. She has seen my workouts too so she knows how hard I push at the gym. She says to give it at least two more weeks-- i likely have glycogen in muscles with water retention due to weight training program. She also said 1390 net calories per day is way too low and suggested I increase my daily calories by at least 250 and try to focus on getting my carbs at breakfast and lunch and not at dinner.

    I think your trainer gave you bad advice so far as your diet goes. If you increase your calories by 250/day, a total of an additional 1750 calories per week, and make no other changes, you will not start to lise weight. In fact, you might gain weight if you do this. And eating carbs at lunch vs. dinner does not matter. There is nothing magical about carb timing.

    You need to adjust your calculations to match reality, then create a deficit based on the correct calculations. You are making this more complicated than it needs to be and relying too much on technology instead of paying attention to what your body is telling you.

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