Advice please from someone who has lost weight and kept it off.

stacerenea27 wrote: »

I do not weigh my food , and I know that is one of the first things people say to do. I do portion out as best I can. If I get a food scale and measure everything my husband will really think I am losing my mind.

There's your problem. Saying your husband will judge you is an excuse. If you are legitimately concerned about how your husband will view your actions, consider having a conversation with him about how frustrated you are gaining and losing the same 30-50 lbs. I'm sure he'll be supportive if you explain how helpful a tool it will be.

You will also need to be more accurate logging the correct entry on MFP. For example, you log creamer for coffee as one entry, then coffee with half and half as another entry. You used half and half and creamer? The coffee entry has the half and half already added, but you don't know how much half and half that is.

You trainer friend probably had you losing at a lower rate than 2lbs/week. You say you have not lost a lot of weight in 2 months- how much have you lost?

1. set appropraite goals, most people who are given the 1200 calorie goal have a rate loss too aggressive for their goal. Yes, 2 lbs a week is considered healthy if you are very obease, but when you need to lose less you have less room to create a deficit. On your profile it says you want to lose about 30 more pounds? You should be shooting for about 1 lb a week.
2. To give you a little bit of perspective: I am a 200lb female, fairly active, and I lose about 1.5 lbs/week eating 1600 + part of my exercise calories. 900 calories a day is way too restrictive, may cause all sorts of health problems, and is just not sustainable.
3. Make a plan you can keep up with forever. Don't cut out things you can't say goodbye to for the rest of your life. If you like chocolate (or donuts, or ice cream, or whatever) thats fine, learn to eat it in a moderate portions and fit it into your normal routine.
4. Looking at your diary I am seeing days that (I really really hope) are only partially logged. To really have success calorie counting you have to count every thing every day. If you don't know what you are eating you can't have accurate expectations for progress.
5. I know the foodscale seems so annoying, but it really does make a big difference, especially for calorie dense foods (peanut butter and cheese were eye openers for me). You will learn to incorperate it into you routine like its nothing, and it will only seem like a big deal to others if you make a big deal out of it. My husband thinks the weighing is a little strange but other than that he doesn't care. It's been part of the routine that has been successful for me. If I am happy he is happy

If you have not read these threads, there are all sorts of useful tips in there for setting up a reliable plan and logging accurately.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide#latest

stacerenea27 wrote: »

I also count things so when it says x number of pretzels, I really did count them.

I used to do that too, I found some items there was quite a bit of descrepancy between the counted serving and the weighed serving. It wasn't always bad either, sometimes you find you can have more (one of my favorite cookies ended up this way, that was a win!)

stacerenea27 wrote: »

Ok, here are some specific questions that I have. Do you eat your excercise calories back? I only log half of my excercise. Do you always eat breakfast?

Yes at least half of them when I was using the NEAT Method and yes I always eat breakfast but you don't have to it's about staying in goal meal timing is of no consequence

P.S. Counting & estimating worked great until I turned 46. Before that I had heavy travel, demanding job, always on feet, presenting, etc. I actually exercise more now (added ST), but otherwise I'm pretty sedentary. As my activity level went down, I needed more accuracy. It really does work!

get the scale, be sure you have plenty of measuring cups too. if your husband says something about it, tell him you are getting serious about your health and maybe he should too.

Ditto the others, you HAVE to weigh your food. If you don't know how much is going in, you won't be able to create that deficit. And with around 30 pounds to lose, at most you should try for one pound a week.

It helps to have preportioned snacks ready to go (I have bags of weighed carrots, fruit, pretzels; containers of yogurt, etc) so when you're hungry you're not tempted to skip the scale and just eat a "handful" of something.

As others have said, the portion size on a package isn't necessarily accurate. My bag of prunes says 5 prunes is 100 calories, if I weigh 5 prunes, they're really 125 calories. My oatmeal says 1/2 a cup is 150 calories, if I weigh half a cup of oatmeal, it's 200 calories. You get the picture.

You've gotten some good advice already. I just wanted to note that unless you are measuring your coffee creamer/half and half, you are taking in a whole bunch of calories that you don't even realize. A serving of coffee creamer is very small and the calories add up very quickly. You could easily be drinking a couple hundred calories a day in creamer and not realize it.