After only 3 weeks, I've dropped an entire pound!!! Woo Hoo!!

purelyprimitives wrote: »

Didn't realize the video was so long but will make an attempt to get through it over time. Its odd that it only got a 5.6 out of 10 review??

Here is just the most important part of the episode, 3:32 minutes. And the rating really doesn't matter when the information is correct and proves the point that people eat way more than they realise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA9AdlhB18o

Sorry you're finding this so frustrating. I'd like to add two things ...

1) I've been friends with @rabbitjb for a while ... she knows her stuff, and she's straight-up/no-nonsense with her advice, which comes largely from her own experience, learning and success (both at weight loss, and maintenance).

2) Short version of how I succeeded ... I set my calories in accordance with sedentary levels; I measured (food weight, liquids by volume) carefully, and recorded meticulously; I did not take any calorie credit for strength work, for something like your log shifting, I would have treated that like walking ... and I would have only eaten back half of those calories.

As other posters have said, in effect, there are more calories in our food servings than we realise, and we burn fewer calories in our activities than we think. One adage I've frequently seen is "you can't out-exercise a bad diet". Another is "weight loss is 80% intake, 20% activity". From the advice I've seen, and from my own experience, getting a precise handle on your caloric intake is the top priority when it comes to weight loss.

Best of luck!

When it comes to exercise everyone's body is so completely different that it's hard to use exercise calories at all. I have a Fitbit with hr monitor and a polar heart rate monitor both show me burning 1,000 calories a run and my Fitbit says I burn 5500-6000 calories a day at work. Even thou I argued with people on this site at first, I've learned neither are even remotely close. If your not losing weight there's only a few explanations why. Improper food logging, your burning less calories than you think, water retention (which would only be short term), weighing incorrectly (if you weigh right after eating or drinking it throws off the scale by allot. I literally went to bed last night at 213 pounds just woke up and am 208), or you have an actual medical condition which in that case you need to see a doctor. It's a hard reality and it took me a long time myself to come to terms with it but your not special, there is no "calorie counting doesn't work for me" it does, it's simple science, there are just variables in cico that may be skewing your results.

What's the actual status of your getting and using a food scale? A digital one can be had for as low as 10 bucks. Do you have any actual plans to do this?

Yes, you could be under estimating your calories eaten by 800+ bucks. All the reasons posted above, plus don't forget condiments. I used to think some were low cal so I would dip and slather them without second though. Come to find out that recipes vary and two table spoons of some condiments could be 250 cals. Also, Olive oil for example has a reputition of being this super healthy oil. So people use it or other oils at will without much regard for the calories. Especially since you weren't really able to measure what your wife was preparing, you could be way off on that

It also appears you're mixing and matching methods. MFP standard has you plugging your stats into MFP and then logging exercise calories and eating whatever portion of that you want. With your stats, your base MFP calories would be more like 1700 for a sedentary male. If you use an external site such as scooby, your activity is taken into account t up front and then you forget about adding on exercise calories after the fact...

Here's one more link on the how to's of accurate logging:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1296011/calorie-counting-101/p1

purelyprimitives wrote: »

yirara wrote: »

So, lets lift up your boxes then:

E=m*g*h (or energy=weight[kg]*9.81*height[m].
40lbs = 18.14kg
lifting height: 1m?
E = 18.14*9.81*1 = 177.95J = 0.04 kcal
This 25 times = 0.6kcal.

Congratulations! You burned less than 1kcal

Take a bit less than twice this amount to account for putting the wood down again, and add something for transporting it over the distance.

Actually, it was 52 times not 25 so wouldn't the total be 1.248 kcals or 1248 calories? And as you say, it doesn't even account for the carrying distance or placement. So it sounds like I was actually pretty close.

Oh, sorry. Some countries use a point, others a coma as decimal separator. 1 1/4kcal (1 and a quarter). If you're talking about 1000 calories, you're in fact are talking about kilocalories. Check the nutritional info in food. It should say kcal; that's the unit for food next to kJ. Thus lifting those 52 boxes up and having them magically vanish into thin air accounts for a tiny part of your 1000kcal, about 1/800 of it Thus if you do the same 52 boxes 800 times more and do the vanishing trick you get your 1000 calories (or more precisely 1000kcal).

WBB55 wrote: »

Those 30 years are gonna pass anyway (god willing). Most people gain 10 lbs per year. I'd rather lose 10 a year.

That's a very good way of putting it. It's something my mom would say that i knew was true, but would hate to hear.

Here's my favorite sites to check the accuracy of calories by weight. Even things with labels, I often check against what the USDA says:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/
http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search

For daily activity, I also recommend a FitBit. Not only does it help motivate me to simply be more active overall, it comes really close to calculating my daily TDEE. I find the only activities I need to add manually are bicycling and swimming. All other activities it does an ok job guesstimating. I find it's accurate to within +/-70 calories per day over the longterm when compared to my actual rate of loss.

purelyprimitives wrote: »

Thanks for the links! According to the first site, my TDEE is 2552!! I select the lowest activity level. I'll check the foods I eat against their charts to see any differences.

That TDEE number seems high to me, based on other calculators I have used.
I think you're going to be disappointed with your results if you follow that one.
If you go back to page 2 of this thread, you'll see what numbers I got for you via a different calculator.

Regardless, the net is, set a target, weigh/measure/record meticulously, and based on results after 3-4 weeks, make adjustments.

purelyprimitives wrote: »

Thanks for the links! According to the first site, my TDEE is 2552!!

That's almost definitely too high. You can't use generic calculators with that much weight to lose. Knock off about 300 calories and start from there.

purelyprimitives wrote: »

flatlndr wrote: »

That TDEE number seems high to me, based on other calculators I have used.
I think you're going to be disappointed with your results if you follow that one.
If you go back to page 2 of this thread, you'll see what numbers I got for you via a different calculator.

Regardless, the net is, set a target, weigh/measure/record meticulously, and based on results after 3-4 weeks, make adjustments.

I have a question then. For lunch today I had a BLT. The bread is easy because the calories/slice is listed on the label. I assume I can use this. The lettuce is fresh lettuce and I have no idea other than to take the default setting for lettuce. Same for 2 slices of tomato. I can measure 1 TBSP of mayo. The problem is the bacon. Raw, its 90 cals/piece. Cooked its ?? My wife bakes it in the oven on a corregated aluminum foil sheet which captures the melted fat and after she dabs it with a paper towel. So after its cooked I have no idea what the calories are.
How do I know how many calories I ate?

Firstly. The fact that Debbie Chazen didn't lose any weight after finding out she didn't have a slow metabolism, she was just eating to much, proves my point. People overestimate what they burn and underestimate what they eat.

Secondly, for the bacon, you should weigh it and log the weight. For me, 2 slices of bacon is a serving, it's meant to be 60g, but normally it's closer to 80g, which can be another 100 or so calories. So I would log 1.3 servings, or 80g if they have it on the database.

Oh, and where you said, "The problem is the bacon. Raw, its 90 cals/piece. Cooked its ??", cooked its 90 calories a piece, unless you added oil or something.

For the bacon, I would have used the raw cals, and ignored the "removed fat" calories.

mayo is tricky ... i found out the hard way (via peanut butter) that it's better to weigh mayo than use tbsp units, because a) you're probably using a measuring spoon, b) you're probably getting a bit of a rounded spoonful than a flat spoonful.
Get a digital scale, zero it out with the spoon on it, weigh it with the mayo, and then you'll know how much you're really getting.

PS -- in my case, my 1 tbsp of peanut butter was closer to 2.5 ... that's a lot of extra cals. Mayo can pack quite a few cals in a small space as well.

Edited to fix a typo