Losing Weight is NOT that simple..imo..

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  • barbecuesauce
    barbecuesauce Posts: 1,779 Member
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    shell1005 wrote: »
    grnice39 wrote: »
    barbecuesauce wrote: »
    The rough estimates of what you burn and what you eat are enough. I did an experiment and found that I lost a little too quickly eating back 50% of exercise calories and a little too slowly eating them all. (4+ weeks each time)

    I

    I've never heard of anyone complaining they were losing weight too quickly!

    If you don't want to limit the amount of muscle you lose you do.

    +1

    But that's really a message that the OP needs to absorb. 900 calories a day and we're just feeding his threads.
  • mccindy72
    mccindy72 Posts: 7,001 Member
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    yellowantphil wrote: »
    mccindy72 wrote: »
    Which is exactly what I said.

    All I said is that your calorie count may not be accurate, no matter how well you log it.

    If you are weighing all of your food at home, and eating most of your meals there, you're going to be pretty accurate. Some people actually take a food scale out to eat with them, and weigh food at the restaurant. It's possible to be really accurate. Even with the occasional meal out, if you are using a food scale, you are going to be accurate.
  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
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    Your calorie intake is 900 calories a day. smh
  • Serah87
    Serah87 Posts: 5,481 Member
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    Once I got a digital food scale, that's when the weight came off more easier. Only time I estimate is when we go out and I've done fairly well with that.

    If you make it harder it will be harder.
  • SuggaD
    SuggaD Posts: 1,369 Member
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    It is simple. Figuring out the input and output really isn't that hard. Yes, they are estimates, but if you are honest with your exercise effort and with your food intake, you will lose as the online calculators and nutrition labels aren't all that off. The rate at which you lose may not be steady, but you will lose. Why do people like to make it more complicated than it is? I've lost around 70 lbs without ever using a food scale, ever feeling hungry or deprived, eating out on a regular basis, and having a good time getting involved in various sports.

    Yes, patience is required. With that I agree. But saying its complicated doesn't help others.
  • ogmomma2012
    ogmomma2012 Posts: 1,520 Member
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    danieltsmoke wrote: »
    @ogmomma2012 I agree. Awesome job on the 75lbs down. I think that weightloss is simple in theory, but very much more complicated in practice. Would you agree?

    Complicated would be different for everyone. It's complicated for someone like me who has binge issues. But until I get closer to my goal weight, losing weight is only hard because I am standing in my own way (which, BTW, is why I have a fat picture in my icon, because it's motivation to never go back to that) and it's not the fault of the food I choose to put in my mouth, or the exercise I have chosen not to do. :/
  • yellowantphil
    yellowantphil Posts: 787 Member
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    mccindy72 wrote: »
    yellowantphil wrote: »
    mccindy72 wrote: »
    Which is exactly what I said.

    All I said is that your calorie count may not be accurate, no matter how well you log it.

    If you are weighing all of your food at home, and eating most of your meals there, you're going to be pretty accurate. Some people actually take a food scale out to eat with them, and weigh food at the restaurant. It's possible to be really accurate. Even with the occasional meal out, if you are using a food scale, you are going to be accurate.

    Accurate enough, sure. And I imagine that many of the errors I quoted average out eventually.
  • Serah87
    Serah87 Posts: 5,481 Member
    edited July 2015
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    OP why are you eating only 900 calories??

    That's is never a good ideal for a man, you should at least be eating 1600.
  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
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    Listened to your rant, but found it wanting so disagree with you. Its straightforward if you take the time to learn about weight loss, its more difficult to carry it out in practice.
    1. How much you are burning. Exercise is really about fitness/health and calorie burns are secondary. You cna estimate burns reasonably, but its an estimate an nothing to get overly concerned about. MFP figures at 50% and adjust seems to work for many people.
    2. Hard to estimate food calories? not if you weigh using scales.

    Take responsibility, do it properly and you can get a pretty decent figure as most people seem to have managed who lose weight. Blaming other people is lame. So I think your rant is a poor one and does not have much foundation if any. Understanding basci cicio and using some common sense means patience and adjusting is all part of anyones journey, which isnt exactly some startling revelation.

  • catt952
    catt952 Posts: 190 Member
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    In the end it does still teach you about eating too much. Even if inaccurate, in the end you should lose weight if you UNDERSTAND that eating too much will cause weight gain.
  • davert123
    davert123 Posts: 1,568 Member
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    My advice - use MFP to the best of your ability. After a month or two look at the results. If you have been on what you think is a 1000 a day deficit and you have been losing at a rate of 750 a day (1.5 lb per week) then you know your best guess is out by 250 so just compensate. Just keep doing this monitoring/feedback and you will make sure you are always in the deficit you want to be.
  • 970Mikaela1
    970Mikaela1 Posts: 2,013 Member
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    After losing 40 pounds you have enough data that it really shouldn't be guesswork anymore. Accurately tracking your data points should all but eliminate the guesswork.
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
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    I'm finding it very simple. Input your stats into MFP and it gives you an ESTIMATE on how much you should eat to lose weight. Try for a few weeks. If you don't lose, adjust down. That's not complicated. It doesn't really matter if MFP's estimate was too high, or the food label was too low. You don't need to have your metabolism tested or send all your food to a lab in order to lose weight.
  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
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    Serah87 wrote: »
    OP why are you eating only 900 calories??

    That's is never a good ideal for a man, you should at least be eating 1600.

    Yeah, I gotta ask: is your diary anywhere close to accurate?
  • whmscll
    whmscll Posts: 2,254 Member
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    Complicated was what I was doing before: No grain-based carbs whatsoever. No dairy except for nonfat milk in my morning coffee because I could not give that up. No sweets of any sort except one square of dark chocolate for dessert. Green coffee bean extract 1 hour before breakfast and dinner. A Tbsp of apple cider vinegar mixed in 1/4 cup of low-sugar fruit juice drunk with each meal (chugged, followed by a mouth rinse to get the vinegar off my teeth followed by a quick bite of whatever I was eating because it tasted so nasty).

    MFP is way easier. Now that I've upped my protein macro and slightly lowered my carb macro (30-30-40 protein-fats-carbs) I am almost never hungry, even on 1200 calories. And I can eat bread, which makes me incredibly happy.
  • AspenDan
    AspenDan Posts: 703 Member
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    I dont eat 900 calories every day...some days I eat 2000, some days I eat 900. Please don't start this debate, lol, I've been through it enough.
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
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    danieltsmoke wrote: »
    I dont eat 900 calories every day...some days I eat 2000, some days I eat 900. Please don't start this debate, lol, I've been through it enough.

    Only option for that is closing your diary
    And your average is very very low for a young male.

    When you post in a public form people check you out :) And some recognize you from earlier threads. Nothing can be done about it

    But also inconsistency in logging can make things harder. So they all try to explain and help you.
    Don't always see things as critic or negatives
  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
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    danieltsmoke wrote: »
    I dont eat 900 calories every day...some days I eat 2000, some days I eat 900. Please don't start this debate, lol, I've been through it enough.

    When was your last 2000 calorie day? The highest I found in the last month was 1715 and you still ran a deficit of 900+ calories (on top of whatever deficit you have built into MFP's calorie setting).
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,658 Member
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    danieltsmoke wrote: »
    I've lost 40lbs about, so what I'm doing is working for me, I'm not complaining. But I get frustrated when I see a forums response like "Just eat less calories than you're burning...are you sure you're weighing accurately?" This seems patronizing, and also is flawed in a couple ways.
    First, it's really difficult to just know how many calories you're burning..I don't have a butt stamp indicating that number, or even an owners manual, so the best I've got is taking blood tests and running fitness experiments (which simply isn't practical for an average person), OR using an online calculator/guestimator, which let's be honest, has a HUGE margin of error. Some sites I have a 2500 TDE, some say 3500..
    Secondly, its really difficult to just know how many calories you're eating..Have you googled "food label accuracy"? That stuff can often be 20%-40% wrong..not even to mention that some things just cant be calculated accurately..ie. one steak from a package could be hugely more caloric-ly dense simply due to a higher fat content.
    My point is, even if you follow all the right steps, you could easily have an over estimated TDE (by no fault of your own), and eat far underestimated calories (by no fault of your own), and simply not lose weight. Thus "just eat less than you burn" is fairly useless.
    If I had any advice to offer to people struggling, I'd say it's all about trial and error, which can be frustratingly slow. You gotta try something, whether its working out more, or trying to stay under a certain amount-ish of calories, and see how that goes for a few weeks. If that doesn't work, change it up, and try again. Patience has been my biggest struggle but probably my greatest ally during the last few months, and I know that once you find your groove you're gonna kick your fitness goals right in the somewhat large *kitten*. Rant over..
    First, you're not going to find your calorie burn in an online calculator. You'll find a starting point, but you'll have to refine it according to you and your exercise.

    Second, even if the labels can be that far off, they almost never are. And stuff like steaks will even out over time.

    Yes, it takes patience sometimes.

    Really, I think the flaw is your premise that it takes some preternatural amount of accuracy to lose weight. Maybe if you're competing at an elite level, it does. You aren't. It doesn't.

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