Do doctors really know anything

Doctors aren't nutritionist and she is probably hoping for you to lose the weight as fast as possible because it will improve your lab numbers. My advice go see a nutritionist they are the experts and will give you the right advice for your journey unfortunately their services aren't always covered under insurance. Your insurance might cover it if you get a referral from your primary care doc.

Like everything some doctors know about nutrition and others don't. I've been to dietitians and all they did is show me a plate of food with no advice. How many calories have MFP suggested you have? What is this based on in terms of exercise? I never add my exercise into MFP and I don't adjust for it. However I've been with MFP for 3 weeks and once I have more of an idea how it is working I must adjust what i do. This is on the advice of my personal trainer.

I dunno. They probably know some stuff As others have said, do what works best for you. The polls are pretty split on mfp regarding eating back your calories. I began by not eating mine back. I am losing weight at a comfortable rate, so I continued. Having said that, if I had started out by eating my calories back, and was losing weight, I would continue that way. Try it. Tweak it. Everyone is a little bit different. Best of luck in your journey:-)

If you're losing at a healthy rate, that's what matters. If you're hungry at 1400, you could probably even eat a bit more. There is such a thing as losing weight too fast.

Doctors typically know a little. Unfortunately, they usually don't know much, as they tend to have very brief (basically introductory) nutrition education.

Nutritionists tend to not really know much either, oddly enough. Their education seems to be based on older beliefs - not current science.

RDs tend to be the best, but there are good and bad ones there, too.

All that said, I'd say that your plan is correct, OP. Losing weight faster isn't always better. In some cases? Sure. But, if you're hungry at 1400 Cals, then you're probably less likely to stick to this. I'd recommend eating about half your exercise Calories back. See how you feel then, and after a few weeks, look and see if you've lost the amount of weight you expected to (based upon how many pounds/kgs per week you have MFP set up to lose). If so, then keep doing what you're doing. If not, then adjust as necessary.

Singlemama09 wrote: »

I exercise I up my calorie intake a little bit. She was like NOOOO keep your intake at 1400 if you work out that day great more fat will burn off

I bet your doctor doesn't work out.

There have been quite a few studies published in the last couple of years where the takeaways seem to be that exercise "does not help you lose weight" and that people who exercise may tend to overeat beyond the point of any additional exercise deficit. Your doctor may be thinking of these studies, and also misinterpreting you when you say you "eat a little bit more."

Personally, I find the way these studies have been reported -- at least in the lay press -- to be frustratingly simplistic. I know that there are a lot of people who simply refuse to count calories at all, and these people do often report issues of not losing weight when they exercise. Well -- duh! If you're not counting calories, it really is easy to think that you've earned a lot more food from a sweat session than you really have. And for me, I have never found a monitoring device that seems to accurately estimate calories burned from specific workouts. Between activity trackers and HRMs (not to mention online exercise calculators!), there's a strong tendency to overestimate calories burned, so that can hurt too.

I also have the impression anyway that many, many diet studies seem to be designed from the point of view of not counting calories. (E.g., how to get people to eat less without realizing it, essentially. Things like making people count carbs but not calories, or making people fill up on high-volume low-calorie food before letting them subsequently free feed, etc.). As if the researchers are specifically looking for answers to help the non-calorie-counting public. Which is great and all since most people do not in fact count calories every day their whole lives, but then the way these stories are reported should absolutely not give the impression that calorie-counting is taken into account in the study if it's not, or that the variables tested in the study somehow make calories themselves irrelevant, because they never do.

For whatever it's worth, I've found that while exercise may or may not be directly burning off a lot of calories for me, it's helped enormously with my weight loss in a lot of indirect ways. Yes, I also "eat a little bit more." I don't specifically eat workouts back, but I eat to fuel my overall activity level, and I feel much less deprived, which in turn has kept me on the path for a much longer time than I could have otherwise. I would totally have given up a long time ago with 200 calories less per day! Maybe my weight loss has been slower because of those 200 calories. So what? Almost 2 years in, >170 pounds down, and I'm still here: that's really all that matters. And exercising regularly has made me fitter and healthier in so many ways, which keeps me more active in general and must be helping, right? Not to mention all the great mood effects that have also contributed to helping me stay positive and on the right path.

But yeah, I eat more. It's not all about making myself suffer in the short term to get to an arbitrary finish line faster.

If its a GP, I doubt they would no much about nutrition for weight loss. I want with my friend, to support her, when she went to a gynaecologist specialising in weight loss to enable pregnancy. What he told her was fab! Eat at a deficit, reduce fatty foods and stay away from all that coke you drink!!. She drank 3 late bottles a day!!!!
The guy sounded like he had lost weight and knew what he was talking about! Unlike her GP, who told her there was no way she could get pregnant. My granny always said that doctors differ and patients die!! Well that was my granny!!!
My advise, see a nutritionist or a dietitian, they know what they talking about when it comes to weight loss. Good luck!

[quote="sympha01;32434754

For whatever it's worth, I've found that while exercise may or may not be directly burning off a lot of calories for me, it's helped enormously with my weight loss in a lot of indirect ways. Yes, I also "eat a little bit more." I don't specifically eat workouts back, but I eat to fuel my overall activity level, and I feel much less deprived, which in turn has kept me on the path for a much longer time than I could have otherwise. I would totally have given up a long time ago with 200 calories less per day! Maybe my weight loss has been slower because of those 200 calories. So what? Almost 2 years in, >170 pounds down, and I'm still here: that's really all that matters. And exercising regularly has made me fitter and healthier in so many ways, which keeps me more active in general and must be helping, right? Not to mention all the great mood effects that have also contributed to helping me stay positive and on the right path.

But yeah, I eat more. It's not all about making myself suffer in the short term to get to an arbitrary finish line faster. [/quote]

1000x this

If I'm hungry, I eat. Simple. Docs are human and have personal opinions just as everyone here does. Its your call, what works for you.