Gaining Weight :(
Ariel1774
Posts: 5 Member
Hello Myfitnesspal community! I am really frustrated! I have been using MFP for over 500 days. I started over a year ago because I wanted to get back to my prebaby weight. I was 150 and after using MFP it only took me three months to get to my goal weight of 125. I stayed at my calorie count and did not change to "maintaining" because the problem is my weight fluctuates so much! I have not changed what I do. I still exercise 6 - 7 days a week and I stay within or below my calorie count each day. I don't understand why I weigh ten pounds more this year than last year when I have been religiously exercising and tracking my calories. I used to get on the scale and get excited about losing weight and now I just get depressed because it seems like the scale keeps rising. I don't want to go back into my old habits - I'm a recovering anorexic. MFP taught me that I had to eat to lose but now it's not working and I don't know what to do. Help!
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Replies
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With a gain of 10 pounds over that time scale, you're eating more than you think, exercising less than you think, or have a medical issue. Just 96 extra calories a day would be enough to do that.0
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I'm actually exercising more this year than last year. Most days I am struggling just to eat enough. Most days after I factor in exercise I am left with 600 - 800 calories! I'm thinking maybe I'm exercising too much and my body may be going into starvation mode again. I am under my calorie goal everyday! I exercise in the evenings and I like to exercise because it helps me to feel good and release stress. Sometimes at the end of the day I am below my calories in food and then I still exercise on top of it because I want to and then I am really below my calories. So, even if the calories in MFP were not calculated correctly my exercise minutes should cancel it all out.0
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If you have a feeling your body is going into starvation mode again, you should talk to your Dr. The Dr who helped you with your anorexia.0
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It's not. There is no starvation mode that's going to cause you to gain weight. It doesn't exist.I'm actually exercising more this year than last year. Most days I am struggling just to eat enough. Most days after I factor in exercise I am left with 600 - 800 calories! I'm thinking maybe I'm exercising too much and my body may be going into starvation mode again.
If you're gaining weight, you're eating more than you're burning.
If you're really netting 600-800 calories for a year, you might want to talk to a professional about that.
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You aren't going into starvation mode. You lose weight in starvation mode. It may be more slowing because your body is shutting down and you aren't doing much, but you lose weight. The only way you gain weight is by eating more than you burn.0
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How many calories are you consuming in a day?
Not netting, but actually eating?
You may just be overestimating how many calories you're burning as you exercise.0 -
I think it would make more sense for you to speak to the medical professionals who helped you overcome your anorexia ...I agree with the posts above that your are either over estimating your calories burned or you are eating more than you think! Starvation mode does not exist and if you are truly eating that little you should not be gaining weight.
Hope you find whats the cause of it though :-)0 -
Hmmmm...I think I explained wrong. First, I did not have a doctor to get over anorexia - I just decided to do it myself by researching healthy eating and exercise on the internet. I was doing well for many years until I became pregnant. I had a hard time losing the baby weight so I found MFP through a trainer. MFP gives me 1200 calories a day. Most days after I plug in all my food and exercise for the day the system tells me I have between 600 - 800 calories left to consume. On any given day I burn between 500 and 1000 calories through exercise. When it's 11 pm at night I'm not going to consume the 600 -800 calories it says I have left and then go to bed! I measure all my food and I'm very careful to read labels and stick with the serving size of each. After my pregnancy my husband hooked me up with a friend who is a certified personal trainer. He convinced me to use MFP to track my calories. He was concerned about my past history and was worried that I would not eat enough calories in a day. HE is the one who told me about "starvation mode" and that the body would store calories if I was not eating enough. It's also the same thing that MFP tells me when I click "done" for the day - I get the pop up message that tells me I am not consuming enough calories etc. etc.0
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What in the world do you do to burn 1000 calories?? I can't even manage that on a 10-mile run. How are you measuring your exercise calories?0
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If you're exercising more, are you sure that's not muscle weight? Just trying to find a possible upside. I know when I'm doing a lot of weights, the scale climbs, but it's a good kind of increase.0
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How tall are you?0
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Are you eating your exercise calories back?0
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1,200/day? What do you have your weight loss set to?0
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It doesn't matter how you explain it. If you gained ten pounds over a year, you're eating more than you're burning.0
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You've said that you 'measure' and 'stick to serving sizes', but do you actually weigh your food with a scale? It sounds like you could easily be overestimating calories in, plus unless you're doing hard cardio for 2 hours you're probably not burning 1000 calories either. I'm probably a bit heavier than you and I have to go hard on the elliptical with a heartrate of 150+ for 2 hours to burn that many calories!0
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Thank you to all of you who are trying to help me figure this out. I know you keep saying it must be I'm eating more but that is my frustration. I'm doing the same thing with MFP now as I was when I started and as I was when I was losing weight consistently. I haven't changed how I eat. If anything I work out more now than I did last year! Guess my next step is a good food scale and heart rate monitor to make sure that I'm accurate with everything. But again my frustration because I haven't changed how I eat!0
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*absolutely get a food scale!!! That is usually the problem in these cases. That or over estimating exercise calories. Once you take care of those 2 tricky variables you should be set.0
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Thank you to all of you who are trying to help me figure this out. I know you keep saying it must be I'm eating more but that is my frustration. I'm doing the same thing with MFP now as I was when I started and as I was when I was losing weight consistently. I haven't changed how I eat. If anything I work out more now than I did last year! Guess my next step is a good food scale and heart rate monitor to make sure that I'm accurate with everything. But again my frustration because I haven't changed how I eat!
Would you consider opening your diary? Even if you think you are eating the same, if you are not using a scale you really have no way of knowing. I bet that if I stopped using a scale, after a month or two my estimation of a portion size would start to creep up a bit! If you open your diary, more experienced users on here will be able to do some basic troubleshooting for where you might be going wrong. There truly is no other explanation for weight gain, unless you have some kind of medical condition that wasn't affecting you before.0 -
Thank you to all of you who are trying to help me figure this out. I know you keep saying it must be I'm eating more but that is my frustration. I'm doing the same thing with MFP now as I was when I started and as I was when I was losing weight consistently. I haven't changed how I eat. If anything I work out more now than I did last year! Guess my next step is a good food scale and heart rate monitor to make sure that I'm accurate with everything. But again my frustration because I haven't changed how I eat!
at one point you dont lose weight anymore with the same calorie amount because your deficit is gone
When you weigh less your deficit is getting smaller and smaller
Now you lost weight with MEASURING! your foods and going by serving sizes before. But because you dont have a deficit anymore you eat probably in a small Surplus so gain weight
Gaining weight is always when you eat to much.
Now for the measuring part and serving sizes
You dont eat at 1200 calories! you eat more than you think when you dont use a food scale for ALL your food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVjWPclrWVY
Really try weighing your food
I was tricked a couple times with serving sizes like a taco for 81 calories per serving of 56 gram which was really 98 calories when i weighed it.
Cheese cake 1 serving 46 gram ( 1 piece) when i did weigh it, it was not 46 gram and instead of the 210 calories per serving i ended up with 253 calories.
And it is not much the differences but do that over the day with a couple of foods and you can end up very easily with a couple hundred more than you know.
On the other hand i had some serving sizes weighing less too
Weigh your food!
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The food scale is definitely a must. Measuring foods is inaccurate. You can be off by hundreds of calories a day by measuring. One good example: If you measure just a 1/2 cup of oatmeal, and then weigh it, it will be approximately 50 calories more than the recommended weight serving. That's just one item. Multiply that by all your foods throughout the day, and you can definitely be way off.
As far as exercising, machines are notorious for overcalculating calorie burns. A good HRM is the way to go. (with a chest strap).0 -
Nice VidTheOwlhouseDesigns wrote: »Thank you to all of you who are trying to help me figure this out. I know you keep saying it must be I'm eating more but that is my frustration. I'm doing the same thing with MFP now as I was when I started and as I was when I was losing weight consistently. I haven't changed how I eat. If anything I work out more now than I did last year! Guess my next step is a good food scale and heart rate monitor to make sure that I'm accurate with everything. But again my frustration because I haven't changed how I eat!
at one point you dont lose weight anymore with the same calorie amount because your deficit is gone
When you weigh less your deficit is getting smaller and smaller
Now you lost weight with MEASURING! your foods and going by serving sizes before. But because you dont have a deficit anymore you eat probably in a small Surplus so gain weight
Gaining weight is always when you eat to much.
Now for the measuring part and serving sizes
You dont eat at 1200 calories! you eat more than you think when you dont use a food scale for ALL your food.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVjWPclrWVY
Really try weighing your food
I was tricked a couple times with serving sizes like a taco for 81 calories per serving of 56 gram which was really 98 calories when i weighed it.
Cheese cake 1 serving 46 gram ( 1 piece) when i did weigh it, it was not 46 gram and instead of the 210 calories per serving i ended up with 253 calories.
And it is not much the differences but do that over the day with a couple of foods and you can end up very easily with a couple hundred more than you know.
On the other hand i had some serving sizes weighing less too
Weigh your food!
I ordered me a food scale about 3 days ago .. i've been using measure cups and spoons all this time
Now i see they can be very inaccurate at times.
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I never use measuring cups for solid foods. The calorie difference would depend on how much you stuff into that cup!
some folks will lightly place food in, others will squish and stuff as much as they can in. There's far too much room for error, just using those 2 points as an example. 0 -
Food scale and heart rate monitor. I will try it. Thank you!
Just wondering - if you weigh all your food do you never go out to eat?0 -
I guesstimate when i go out. Or try and find something in the data base that resembles my meals as closely as possible.0
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I put on weight but continued to lose waist. If you exercising lots then are you gaining muscle mass? Try skin calipers to help you measure %body fat. They aren't perfect but better than impedance based fat measurement and a lot cheaper0
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I'd say I weigh 90% of my food. Sometimes I don't have the time / energy / ingredients to prepare food for the whole day so I have to get something from the dining hall at college which I guesstimate and then put into MFP. I am lucky that my dining hall has a lot of healthy and fresh options to choose from. Going out for a meal every once in a while and not knowing the exact calories for that meal won't ruin all progress when you weigh all other foods you consume during the rest of the day.0
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glenelliott5872 wrote: »I put on weight but continued to lose waist. If you exercising lots then are you gaining muscle mass? Try skin calipers to help you measure %body fat. They aren't perfect but better than impedance based fat measurement and a lot cheaper
You cannot build up significant muscle (if any) while in a calorie deficit.
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Do you notice the weight gain with your clothing as well?? As mentioned, muscle mass weighs up as well0
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Do you notice the weight gain with your clothing as well?? As mentioned, muscle mass weighs up as well
Yes, but also as mentioned, it is pretty much impossible to build up a significant amount of muscle mass whilst eating at a deficit so it is highly doubtful that it is this.
I'm also a recovered anorexic OP, so I totally understand what you mean about slipping into bad habits again; it was along time before I let those slide, and even now I have my 'bad days' where it feels like starving is the only way to lose weight. But it really, really isn't, as I am glad to see you are trying to live by
Firstly, I imagine you have worked out your TDEE and so know how many calories you burn a day, and how many you should eat to stay below that?
Secondly, do you weigh and log all of your food accurately? I would recommend getting a little digital scale, a few quid (or dollars) off of ebay. It is a life changer, you really realize how misleading cups/spoons/packet guidelines can be once you start measuring. And log EVERYTHING, even low-calorie drinks, as you will be surprised at how quickly it all adds up!
Thirdly, how do you log your exercise; do you go by what the machines tell you, or what MFP tells you you have burned? Machines can quite often be a bit off, and MFP can greatly overestimate the calories burned. In fact, most people take what MFP has told them they have burned through exercise and half it, just to be on the safe side. The best advice I can give though is to get some sort of 'monitor'; I have a fitbit zip, pretty cheap and is fairly accurate. Again, a bit of a surprise when you use it and realize just how off the machines can be with how many calories you have burned.
Fourthly, be patient! Weight loss is not supposed to be a quick process, not matter what ideas you have in your head from previous bad habits. I have found (as have a lot of people) that i'll lose 2lbs one week, nothing for two or three weeks, then lose another 2/3lbs the next week. So don't get discouraged, stick with it.
This all sounds like really simple advice, but you have to be doing it accurately and honestly. It really is amazing how just not recording all the soda you drinks, dressings on your salad, or by estimating wrong how many calories you have burned can really ruin all your hard work. Stick with it, I promise it is worth it 0 -
Also to remember- if you lost 25lbs your calories required will go down too. So if you are eating the same number of cals as at the higher weight you may want to re-calulate.0
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