please help me speed up weight loss
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leanne_townsend wrote: »thank you all! You make it sound much easier (although it's not easy eating 1200 calories when you're not used to it but I will get used to it. That's what MFP says I should be consuming).
You can eat more if it's right stuff. Please don't starve yourself, some of the advice on here to just eat less so you're in deficit is plain bad advice. Your body needs fuel so train well and eat well it's that simple. Start with healthy fat breakfast, eggs/smoked salmon/avocado etc. Focus on higher protein and reduced carbs throughout the day, apart from after your workout when you should increase you carb intake for that meal.
Fat has got 9kcal energy/gram, carbs 4kcal. What does that tell you - don't be scared of the right fats they help to shift it!
You're really cherry picking and changing the context.0 -
doylejohnpaul787 wrote: »leanne_townsend wrote: »doylejohnpaul wow that is a FAST weight loss! How many calories is it allowing you per day?
It surprised me also. MFP put me on 1200 calories per day initially. I am male, 6'1", 47 years old and weighed 200 lbs 6 weeks ago. My job is completely sedentary, but I do have to look after a 4 year old boy. I have seen many people saying that 1200 kcals leaves them really hungry, but I have found it surprisingly easy to do.
@doylejohnpaul787 OMG. That's a glitch, you should not be eating less than 1600 and at your height and weight considerably more
Please go to the website, not app, and reset your settings
You need to eat more
I'd also throw in doylejohnpaul787 started at just outside a normal weight and shouldn't be trying to lose 2lbs per week. Especially if they've been losing at 2lbs per week the passed 6 weeks, because they would be within a healthy weight range.
@RGv2 if you check his later post he's doing it on purpose...he has manually overwritten the MFP calorie with 1200
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doylejohnpaul787 wrote: »leanne_townsend wrote: »doylejohnpaul wow that is a FAST weight loss! How many calories is it allowing you per day?
It surprised me also. MFP put me on 1200 calories per day initially. I am male, 6'1", 47 years old and weighed 200 lbs 6 weeks ago. My job is completely sedentary, but I do have to look after a 4 year old boy. I have seen many people saying that 1200 kcals leaves them really hungry, but I have found it surprisingly easy to do.
@doylejohnpaul787 OMG. That's a glitch, you should not be eating less than 1600 and at your height and weight considerably more
Please go to the website, not app, and reset your settings
You need to eat more
I'd also throw in doylejohnpaul787 started at just outside a normal weight and shouldn't be trying to lose 2lbs per week. Especially if they've been losing at 2lbs per week the passed 6 weeks, because they would be within a healthy weight range.
@RGv2 if you check his later post he's doing it on purpose...he has manually overwritten the MFP calorie with 1200
OK, I still don't see it or I'm reading something wrong, but I'll take your word.
Either way, still not a good idea.0 -
leanne_townsend wrote: »thank you all! You make it sound much easier (although it's not easy eating 1200 calories when you're not used to it but I will get used to it. That's what MFP says I should be consuming).
You can eat more if it's right stuff. Please don't starve yourself, some of the advice on here to just eat less so you're in deficit is plain bad advice. Your body needs fuel so train well and eat well it's that simple. Start with healthy fat breakfast, eggs/smoked salmon/avocado etc. Focus on higher protein and reduced carbs throughout the day, apart from after your workout when you should increase you carb intake for that meal.
Fat has got 9kcal energy/gram, carbs 4kcal. What does that tell you - don't be scared of the right fats they help to shift it!
You're really cherry picking and changing the context.
Not really. Just advocating the fact that you can eat more and still lose weight, rather than giving people impression you can't, that's all.0 -
leanne_townsend wrote: »thank you all! You make it sound much easier (although it's not easy eating 1200 calories when you're not used to it but I will get used to it. That's what MFP says I should be consuming).
You can eat more if it's right stuff. Please don't starve yourself, some of the advice on here to just eat less so you're in deficit is plain bad advice. Your body needs fuel so train well and eat well it's that simple. Start with healthy fat breakfast, eggs/smoked salmon/avocado etc. Focus on higher protein and reduced carbs throughout the day, apart from after your workout when you should increase you carb intake for that meal.
Fat has got 9kcal energy/gram, carbs 4kcal. What does that tell you - don't be scared of the right fats they help to shift it!
You're really cherry picking and changing the context.
Not really. Just advocating the fact that you can eat more and still lose weight, rather than giving people impression you can't, that's all.
That's not what anyone is saying, but you keep going with it.0 -
I read an interesting article about a top athletics coach who recommended people who lose weight to do lower intensity exercise because the body burns fat while exercising that way. It goes against everything I've ever learned as you burn way fewer calories that way and it's all about calories in vs. calories out. Well, not according to him. He says that if you are doing high intensity exercise you burn off carbohydrates which the body can replenish really easily, while low intensity exercise burns fat, which the body doesn't replenish easily.
Anyway, I've looked back at my training logs and found that when I've done a lot of running I've gained weight or at least not lost any, while when I've been doing a lot of walking the pounds have come off. So I quit my running program on May 1st (I was doing 20 miles a week) and have replaced it with 1-2 hour walks every day except every 3rd day I do half an hour of running. I'm losing about 2 pounds a week now.
That's interesting, but the facts can be slightly misleading...
A higher percentage of your calorie burn is from fat at low intensity.
But your calorie burn is much higher at high intensity.
For example
if you workout at 50% of your max heart rate (low intensity)
you burn 7 calories per minute
90% of those calories are fat
So a 60 minute workout = 378 calories from fat
if you workout at 75% of your mhr (high intensity)
you burn 14 cal/min
60% of those are fat
So a 60 minute workout = 504 calories from fat
or you could do a 45 min high intensity workout to get the same fat burn 1 hrs @ low intensity.
Glad you have found an exercise program that works for you though!
@Ty_Floyd I'm pretty sure that fat burning hr zones were debunked years ago ...like 2009.. It's a marketing myth from the machine manufacturers that simply won't die
Yes, I believe we are in agreement, wasn't it the machine manufacturers who promoted the 50% max heart rate as being the 'fat burning zone'.0 -
Hi OP! So many things. I hope you can wade through the whole post
Obviously you're all over the place; but, you have finally recognized it, which is good!
Regardless of what happens with THIS holiday, you have the next holiday, and the one after that, and the one after the one after that, and the rest of your life. Will you reach your goal in 6 weeks? Probably not; BUT, you WILL finally gain some understanding of what is going on with your body; and that is empowering!
Most of us will not succeed in our long term weight loss goals; but, if we understand MFP and the concept of Calories In vs Calories Out, we at the very least have A CHANCE to succeed!
If you want to continue to record your weight every day, and especially as a woman who also has to deal with hormonal changes during the month, I strongly recommend that you record your weight using weightgrapher.com (allows manual importing), or trendweight.com, (happy scale on the iphone), or use a spreadsheet that creates a trendline out of your daily weight ins (http://scoobysworkshop.com/measuring-progress/ the link is halfway down the page or you can direct link: http://d16kc6rd0714uz.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ProgressChart.xls)
The trend lines allow you to focus on your actual longer term weight movement as opposed to getting caught up in single day salt or exercise change induced water gains, or TOM fluctuations.
WARNING: you have been low carbing. When you re-introduce carbs back into your life you WILL be gaining back water weight.
When you first started on your low-carb diet you initially "lost" a lot of weight. That weight was, unfortunately, not all fat. An appreciable amount of that weight loss was water, released from your body as your ready reserves of energy were being used up. When you reintroduce carbs, you will regain this water weight.
There is nothing wrong with clean eating for health or nutrition purposes; but, if you are trying to lose weight, I think you should do your clean eating only if you enjoy it, if it is filling, and if it is calorically appropriate for your goals.
Healthy nuts and healthy oils are NOT calorically thrifty. Neither are some fruits, or other healthy items. If you want to lose weight and eat at a deficit you MAY have to moderate them so that they fit within your budget.
And Mars or Snickers bars (favourite examples here), are not calorically thrifty. But sometimes they make you happy enough that you may be willing to pay the caloric price.
The key here is to be willing to evaluate the cost-benefit of EVERYTHING you eat so as to arrive on what is appropriate for you at each particular moment of time. You are always looking for a "caloric bargain"
And the cost-benefit equation CHANGES--all the time. The cost-benefit of ice-cream first thing in the morning, is NOT the same as the cost-benefit of ice-cream after 1,000 calories worth of exercise assuming you've met your protein goal!
You also mentioned some diet where people lose weight while eating unlimited somethings. Most of these "diets" are predicated or relatively low calories overall and an "unlimited" relatively low calorie item that still comes with some built in limitations!
Examples: unlimited cabbage soup, unlimited veggies, unlimited fruits <-- you can still overeat on these items especially if you make the wrong choices and chose calorically denser items, but most people will self limit either due to boredom, due jaw-ache (have you tried chewing on celery for a few hours?), due to bloat (more celery?), or due to diarrhea from eating too much fiber or what have you (try eating a whole watermelon)!
The mantra of eat less (reduced Calories In) and move more (increase calories out) is true.
Especially in the beginning, if you haven't been very active, you can easily see results from even "low level" exercise such as purposeful walking. Get up a bit earlier and walk for a half hour in the morning before heading to work. Go for a 40-60 minute walk during your lunch. Go for another half hour walk as soon as you get back home. And, hey, if you're a keener, throw in another walk after dinner! Yes: all this will cut down on your other down-time. But for most people, it CAN be done.
Anyway: my personal viewpoint is that losing weight is the easy part. Maintaining the weight loss the difficult one.
As such, I see little to no point in doing things to lose weight that I am not willing to continue doing during the next five to ten years! And all the stuff you've been doing during the past few months does not sound like something you can keep doing for the next five to ten years!
So, take a deep breath and try to find a path that you can follow for more than just a few weeks, or months!
So much great advice in here that I have no qualms in quoting the WHOLE post again!
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@RGv2 if you check his later post he's doing it on purpose...he has manually overwritten the MFP calorie with 1200
I did not overwrite the MFP calorie goal. I used the wizard and it came up with that number. I was just explaining the calculations that the wizard used to come up with that figure.
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doylejohnpaul787 wrote: »
@RGv2 if you check his later post he's doing it on purpose...he has manually overwritten the MFP calorie with 1200
I did not overwrite the MFP calorie goal. I used the wizard and it came up with that number. I was just explaining the calculations that the wizard used to come up with that figure.
You should double check your profile; MFP only allows the 1200 calorie level for females. The minimum for males is 1500.
Your profile is likely set to female if your calorie goal is that low.0 -
MakePeasNotWar wrote: »You should double check your profile; MFP only allows the 1200 calorie level for females. The minimum for males is 1500.
Your profile is likely set to female if your calorie goal is that low.
I just checked again. My profile is male and male is selected in the guided wizard. If I put in my current weight and the rest of my statistics, set my activity level to sedentary and choose to lose 1 kg/week, it sets 1200 calories per day.
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doylejohnpaul787 wrote: »MakePeasNotWar wrote: »You should double check your profile; MFP only allows the 1200 calorie level for females. The minimum for males is 1500.
Your profile is likely set to female if your calorie goal is that low.
I just checked again. My profile is male and male is selected in the guided wizard. If I put in my current weight and the rest of my statistics, set my activity level to sedentary and choose to lose 1 kg/week, it sets 1200 calories per day.
Weird. They claimed to have increased the male minimum on a recent update, but maybe it isn't implemented across the board yet. It might be worth contacting them, just to check if it's a glitch.
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Oh I thought when you said this it meant you overwrote itdoylejohnpaul787 wrote: »It is not a glitch as such. I wanted to lose some weight and read on the NHS site that you could safely lose 2 lbs a week, so when I came to MFP I input my data and it calculated a TDEE of 2200. It subtracted 1000 from that and told me I needed to consume 1200 kcals/day. Despite being largely sedentary, my TDEE is evidently a bit higher than 2200 (based on how much weight I have lost so far).
The thing is that it has not been much of a struggle at all to achieve the goal. I am finding that I am only hungry just before meals.
It's an error ...go and reset your settings on the PC switch it to a lb a week then back to 2lbs a week
No male should consume 1200 and 2lbs a week is probably too high anyway
https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1375583-a-message-about-myfitnesspal-s-updated-nutrition-goals
"The National Institutes of Health indicates that eating plans of 1,500 calories for men, and 1,200 calories for women, are safe and effective in achieving weight loss. To align with these guidelines myfitnesspal has implemented a separate calorie minimum for males of 1,500 calories per day. Previously, the minimum was 1,200 calories for both men and women."
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Oh I thought when you said this it meant you overwrote itdoylejohnpaul787 wrote: »It is not a glitch as such. I wanted to lose some weight and read on the NHS site that you could safely lose 2 lbs a week, so when I came to MFP I input my data and it calculated a TDEE of 2200. It subtracted 1000 from that and told me I needed to consume 1200 kcals/day. Despite being largely sedentary, my TDEE is evidently a bit higher than 2200 (based on how much weight I have lost so far).
The thing is that it has not been much of a struggle at all to achieve the goal. I am finding that I am only hungry just before meals.
It's an error ...go and reset your settings on the PC switch it to a lb a week then back to 2lbs a week
No male should consume 1200
That's what i thought too...
I'm 140lbs and I feel like withering away and dying on 1200 calories. I can not do it.
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mads that's interesting about gentle exercise. I will go mad if I start going down to route of trying to understand these things in intricate detail so I am thinking perhaps I can do exercise every day but mix it up with weights in the gym one day, swim or walk another. Like I say I ride my horse a lot but he seems to do most of the work
if I ride him purposefully and do a lot of rising trot and canter that can burn more calories, but I have the vet coming to see him today as I am worried he's not 100% sound.
Pav8888 thank you, great ideas. Yes you're right I should find an approach that works in the long term but I really can't imagine calorie counting forever, that makes me depressed. But nothing else works! I'm waiting for the water weight but so far dropped off 3 lb in two days so seems I am still losing water?? Anyhow I will try out that weight tracker tool thank you.
Bpetrotsky thanks - yes I do firmly believe there is value in clean eating. If nothing else it sorted out digestion problems I was having before that could be quite painful. Maybe that's more about not having so much wheat though, who knows. I'll set my profile to friends only - so far one person has friended me!
jacklfc88 - thanks, I think you mean eat more food which is nutritious and a good calorie trade off so as not to feel deprived? I don't understand the bit about fat vs carbs though - looks like carbs are less calories?
doylejohnpaul hope you can figure out what's going on.
Christine, 140lb is my target weight, how tall are you? 1200 seems like nowhere near enough for someone slim like that?0 -
Leanne I'm 5"8. I eat closer to 2000 calories most days. I tried 1200 for a very brief amount of time, but it's not something i could handle doing day in day out.0
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Christine are you at target weight yet? You must be at least a size 12 if not a 10? I guess everyone has different goals. I think I look and feel right at a size 12 but I have a broad-ish frame I think. Maybe if I were slighter I'd want to take it further.0
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leanne_townsend wrote: »Christine are you at target weight yet? You must be at least a size 12 if not a 10? I guess everyone has different goals. I think I look and feel right at a size 12 but I have a broad-ish frame I think. Maybe if I were slighter I'd want to take it further.
yes i am pretty much at my target weight, wouldn't mind losing a few more kgs, just to get rid of the pot belly.
I'm size 8 ( Australian sizes), not sure how that translates to American/British.
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leanne_townsend wrote: »jacklfc88 - thanks, I think you mean eat more food which is nutritious and a good calorie trade off so as not to feel deprived? I don't understand the bit about fat vs carbs though - looks like carbs are less calories?
Yeh that's right. How much more likely are you to stay motivated if you're enjoying what you're eating!
And you're right. Fat 9kcal carbs 4kcal. Studies show good fats in morning program your metabolism to break down fat throughout the day so have healthy fats in morning, then monitor fat intake for remainder of day. Breakfast should be largest meal of day and highest fat intake. Reduce fat for lunch and dinner and focus on proteins. Unless you're training before any of them meals, in which case your macro breakdown should be higher carbs post workout.
It's not difficult to do and I feel absolutely great for doing it. I only switched from a carb heavy breakfast of oats (which I thought was giving me energy for the day) to a healthy fat one of poached eggs smoked salmon avocado fairly recently and it's worked wonders for me. I was training well thinking my diet was great but that change to breakfast has benefited me so well. And I haven't felt any less energetic at all in fact as I said, I feel great.
Listen to your body and find what works for you0 -
christinev297 wrote: »leanne_townsend wrote: »Christine are you at target weight yet? You must be at least a size 12 if not a 10? I guess everyone has different goals. I think I look and feel right at a size 12 but I have a broad-ish frame I think. Maybe if I were slighter I'd want to take it further.
yes i am pretty much at my target weight, wouldn't mind losing a few more kgs, just to get rid of the pot belly.
I'm size 8 ( Australian sizes), not sure how that translates to American/British.
well done Christine Not sure what an 8 is... if it's like the US, then that would be a UK 12 I think, I have belly issues from having babies, but I've learnt to love my belly and buy bikini bottoms that are a bit higher
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leanne_townsend wrote: »jacklfc88 - thanks, I think you mean eat more food which is nutritious and a good calorie trade off so as not to feel deprived? I don't understand the bit about fat vs carbs though - looks like carbs are less calories?
Yeh that's right. How much more likely are you to stay motivated if you're enjoying what you're eating!
And you're right. Fat 9kcal carbs 4kcal. Studies show good fats in morning program your metabolism to break down fat throughout the day so have healthy fats in morning, then monitor fat intake for remainder of day. Breakfast should be largest meal of day and highest fat intake. Reduce fat for lunch and dinner and focus on proteins. Unless you're training before any of them meals, in which case your macro breakdown should be higher carbs post workout.
It's not difficult to do and I feel absolutely great for doing it. I only switched from a carb heavy breakfast of oats (which I thought was giving me energy for the day) to a healthy fat one of poached eggs smoked salmon avocado fairly recently and it's worked wonders for me. I was training well thinking my diet was great but that change to breakfast has benefited me so well. And I haven't felt any less energetic at all in fact as I said, I feel great.
Listen to your body and find what works for you
thanks jack, sounds like it's working great for you. funnily enough I have just had a poached egg, smoked salmon and spinach! Not bad coming in at 189 cals. I would love to add in avocado to that but it would give me less cals for the rest of the day. I have been trying to breakfast like a queen, lunch like a princess, dinner like a pauper (when I was clean eating)... but I just can't do it. I need a bigger meal in the evening it seems. Last night I had two sumac chicken thighs with cumin and carrot puree (with a tsp butter), chilli roast broccoli and a small baked potato. Later I had my treat of a green and blacks miniature with a roibush tea while catching up on Game of Thrones. Went to bed happy
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