Need help hit a Plateau

How long has it been since you stopped losing weight? Can you open your diary?

Do you weigh your food using a scale? You may not be maintaining the deficit you think you are. Do you follow an exercise program? I saw no movement in the scale about 5 weeks after I got back to tracking calories, probably due to exercise water retention and the like.

The usual culprit is underestimating the calories consumed and possibly eating back too many exercise calories, as they’re generally overestimated.

If you don’t mind opening your diary, we might be able to help spot any weaknesses in your logging. And I only track in grams, actually. You just need to find the entries in the database that aren’t in cups.

Also ^

It depends on your activity level, age, gender weekly goal for weight loss...which should be about 1/2lb a week for you and remember you are to record exercise calories and eat them back...

this might help with logging
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1234699-logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide?hl=Logging+accurately

Fitlifestyle4life wrote: »

How do I open my diary and it doesn't give me the option to put in in grams. It says cups so I got 200 grams and that's almost 230 calories. This is so confusing man

Then the entry is a user entered one...don't use it.

Click that link I gave you to see how to log in MFP...you can change entries or find USDA entries or make your own.

Fitlifestyle4life wrote: »

Thanks brah I made my Diary open.

you ate 10 cups of veggies?

Read that link it will help with the logging and choosing entries.

If you know your TDEE and what you want your macros to be set custom goals....goals...custom etc...

Your calorie goal is 1960 BEFORE exercise. Log your exercise under Cardio (even if it's a strength exercise) and it will give you more calories you can eat.

And make sure that you set up your goals correctly. With 10 lbs to lose, it should be set to 0.5 lb per week. And you need to make sure you picked the right lifestyle setting -- sedentary, lightly active, etc. Again, that will influence your calories.

Do try to find the best entries in the database that you can. There should be options that use grams. And make sure the entries match -- for example, did you weigh your veggies before cooking or after? If you weighed them after, then you need a "cooked" entry. And don't forget to log things you cook with, like oil or butter.

I doubt you ate 1000 calories of veggies for breakfast, so I'd redo that entry. Example: I typed "vegetables" into the database and scrolled around and found this entry: "Vegetables - mixed, frozen, unprepared." Now, it would only work if you weighed them raw and frozen. But just as a comparison for ballpark... 100g would be 64 calories. YOUR entry says "10 cups 90g" (which makes no sense, as 10 cups would weigh more than 90g) and somehow comes out to 1049 calories (probably because it input 10 cups).

If I look up your entry, the default serving is 2/3 of a cup, equivalent 90g. Which is 70 calories btw. Maybe you took the decimal point out by mistake? (1.0 got changed to 10, so TEN servings instead of 1)

If you see weird stuff like this, just double check it, try other entries, that sort of thing. Or ask someone on the forums, because sometimes it's hard to see our own mistakes.

For the olive oil, add it separately:

Oil - olive and then choose your serving.

Always weigh or carefully measure your oil, because oil is calorie dense, so small differences change the calories very quickly.

For the veggies, that looks more reasonable to me. The margin of error on something like veggies won't be too bad. Like if it's really 221 or 244, and not 236, you'll be okay. You'll get better at this the more foods you have to log anyway.

Did you get your veggies from a La Fe package? Do you still have the package? Because you can actually create your own entry using the package and entering grams.

If you bought veggies and cooked them, in future, use individual entries. Like if you did broccoli and cauliflower, weigh each, and use an entry for each. You'll get more accurate results.

By the way: For any meal that you are going to eat regularly (at least once a week), once you get it logged correctly, with the entries you think are the best, and all components (including oil, etc), go to:

Quick Tools > Remember Meal.

Or if you are on mobile, click on the "... More" and choose Save Meal.

Next time you eat it, you can go to add your foods as usual, but instead of choosing all the foods, you can add the whole meal in one click. THEN just edit the portions. I do this with my breakfast -- I have the whole thing saved, so it gets added all at once. Then I just weigh each thing (because it'll be a bit different every day) and change the weights. So if it says 200g yoghurt from the saved meal but today it was 187, I click on the yoghurt entry, and change 200 to 187.

Saves time on finding all your entries again, for everything, every time.