Gaining Weight :(

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Ariel1774
Ariel1774 Posts: 5 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
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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  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
    edited May 2015
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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.
  • Ariel1774
    Ariel1774 Posts: 5 Member
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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.
  • strong_curves
    strong_curves Posts: 2,229 Member
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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.
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
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    Ariel1774 wrote: »
    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.
    It's not. There is no starvation mode that's going to cause you to gain weight. It doesn't exist.

    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.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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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.
  • TheLegendaryBrandonHarris
    TheLegendaryBrandonHarris Posts: 502 Member
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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.
  • annavalente
    annavalente Posts: 119 Member
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    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 :-)
  • Ariel1774
    Ariel1774 Posts: 5 Member
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    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.
  • Equus5374
    Equus5374 Posts: 462 Member
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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?
  • ManiacalLaugh
    ManiacalLaugh Posts: 1,048 Member
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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.
  • pollypocket1021
    pollypocket1021 Posts: 533 Member
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    How tall are you?
  • strong_curves
    strong_curves Posts: 2,229 Member
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    Are you eating your exercise calories back?
  • missiontofitness
    missiontofitness Posts: 4,074 Member
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    1,200/day? What do you have your weight loss set to?
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
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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.
  • lemonlionheart
    lemonlionheart Posts: 580 Member
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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!
  • Ariel1774
    Ariel1774 Posts: 5 Member
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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!
  • errollmaclean
    errollmaclean Posts: 562 Member
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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.
  • lemonlionheart
    lemonlionheart Posts: 580 Member
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    Ariel1774 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!

    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.
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
    edited May 2015
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    Ariel1774 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!

  • mccindy72
    mccindy72 Posts: 7,001 Member
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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).

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