How much under your calorie goal, and are you including your exercise calories in that?

I've found MFP estimates of my swimming calories burned to be very very generous. So I never 'eat back' my calories.

On the other end it is very easy to under estimate portions or calories on the intake side.

I don't log/eat back the calories I burn while swimming. (30-45 minute sessions, like you). I figure it just gives me a little padding to make up for inaccurate logging of calorie intake, since doing the whole food scale/measuring everything/logging even bits of condiments would make me go obsessive in a bad way *really* quickly.

I *do* eat back my running calories, since I have a very good idea of how much I actually burn running, and also because it's usually a pretty large number and I need the fuel or risk injury. (I run a lot more than I swim.)

Something else to keep in mind is just random daily fluctuations. My weight moves up and down in a 4-8 pound range around a central point, usually. If you're female, proximity to shark week (time of the month) can also have a *big* impact. That's just water weight. You could definitely just be seeing that.

Part depends on how you enter the swim burn too. The moderate freestyle in MFP assumes 50 yards per minute. (a minute per lap.) I swim a little faster than that . I enter 1 minute per lap. 141 laps gets entered as 141 minutes.
If you are tracking your swimming just enter number of lap as minutes rather than total swim minutes.
I have to eat back some of my swim kcals. If I didn't I would have the energy to swim since I swim 4 miles a day. 10km yesterday.

Hi there! We are sort of similar in height and weight (I'm 5'4" and 156 lbs) and I don't eat back my calories at all for exercise. I've been swimming 10 years or so and and I managed to put a few pounds on in that time. I look at it a lot like chesirecatastrophe (I still love that name) does and let it give me padding for sloppier tracking and for a slightly higher calorie allowance. I don't think for most of us that swimming burns as many calories as estimated unless you are swimming like fishgutzy and some others do.

See how the not eating back the calories works for you and give it some time. It might take a while to figure out the right balance. I set my calorie limit at just under 1,400 for the day so I don't feel hungry very often but I'm also losing weight quite slowly. Good luck!

I would definitely encourage you to use measurements as well as weight to measure progress. Since the beginning of July, I've lost about 10 lbs, but I've also lost 3+ inches. 10 pounds doesn't seem like a ton, but 3 inches is super noticeable. Like, I'm shocked at how noticeably my body has changed.

Do try not eating all your exercise calories back. Like many of the others, I don't trust the calories burned that MFP estimates, so I use the "leisurely" swimming (even though my swims are anything but leisurely) and I generally input less time than I actually did. For instance, today I did 40 minutes but I put it in as 30. Then, I likely won't eat all those calories back, but even if I do it's padded so I know I won't go over what I burned in the day.

I'm also a big proponent of mixing it up. There is some research that suggests that eating the same things all the time, and the same calories every day, causes the body to learn how to use those calories most efficiently and one will stop losing. I am not a fan of eating the same thing every day anyway, so my foods and calories vary widely day to day. I have no idea if it's actually helping, but it certainly hasn't hurt!!

Also, you mentioned that you eat pre-packaged salads. Are you tracking your sodium at all? One of my biggest problems was the amount of sodium I was eating. I'm not always under/at sodium levels - in fact, I often go over - but tracking that has helped make me aware of what is going on with my food and body.

LCroissant wrote: »

Do you still log your exercise in so you see it, or not at all? I feel like seeing it helps to motivate me to keep swimming (like Dora!, but perhaps it's counterproductive if I'm not going to eat back the calories.

I set up some exercises with 1 calorie values. I set it up for my standard hour swim at "1 calorie - Swimming on my own" and then put in the actual minutes I swim, like 45 or 55 or whatever so it shows that I did it but only gives me an extra calorie.

I swim competitively and train 3 times a week, usually around 2.5-3km per hour session. I never eat back my exercise calories for two main reasons:

1 I have a small margin of error and it's too easy to overestimate exercise and underestimate food and end up screwed!

2 For me eating back exercise calories puts me in a habit of getting used to eating more which I find hard to not do on rest days so I'd rather keep a stable intake.

Also, I try to stick to food for weight loss and leave the exercise for fitness and health. Then it doesn't do my head in so much lol.

emmab0902 wrote: »

I swim competitively and train 3 times a week, usually around 2.5-3km per hour session. I never eat back my exercise calories for two main reasons:

1 I have a small margin of error and it's too easy to overestimate exercise and underestimate food and end up screwed!

2 For me eating back exercise calories puts me in a habit of getting used to eating more which I find hard to not do on rest days so I'd rather keep a stable intake.

Also, I try to stick to food for weight loss and leave the exercise for fitness and health. Then it doesn't do my head in so much lol.

This. Is. So. True.

LCroissant wrote: »

Ok, have been sticking to right around my calorie level, not taking into consideration any exercise calories (which I underestimate now, creating my own exercise)...and I lost part of the weight I'd put on since starting swimming/logging... but I'm not even back at the original weight yet. >.<

I thought it'd be easy to lose at first and THEN I'd hit a plateau.

How long have you been logging? Did you say your weight went up when you started the exercise? By how much?
But you started losing again when you didn't eat back the exercise calories? Good!

Possibly one of three things.
You may not be accurately logging your calories consumed - possibly underestimating.
Or you may need to revisit your calorie goal - perhaps it doesn't have you at deficit and you may need to lower it!
Or if you've not been at it (ie since you stopped eating back your exercise calories) long enough, then perhaps give it some time! Targeting 1 or 2 pounds loss per week?

LCroissant wrote: »

I started swimming regularly (5x a week) on July 6 for about 30 minutes. I worked my way up to 45 minutes now (and try to do 60 on Sat or Sun -- but then I'm sore all over the next day).

Only started logging calories 16 days ago.

My weight went up when I first started regularly swimming, but I wasn't logging calories, and then when I started logging, I was initially eating them back. I only stopped that a few days ago (maybe a week now?).

I know I shouldn't weight myself daily, but I have been to see what the flucutation is. I started at 67.something. Then was up to 69.1, then 68.6 for a week, 68.2 two days ago, but back at 68.5 today.

I have MFP set to lose 1lb/week (0.45kg).

I've been eating much healthier in the last weeks (healthy breakfast and salad nearly every day during the week for lunch and trying to cut down on dinner), so I don't really understand.

While it may be that I'm not accurately logging my calories, that can only be true for a few things, since I've mostly been scanning barcodes in and have been weighing most of my food. (I bring my breakfast and lunch to work)

If you look at my diary (don't judge my eating habits! Yesterday was a really weird food day! It took me a few hours to eat my super huge breakfast!), I don't think I'm eating that much... lowering my calorie goal kind of scares me! I'm already at 1200/day. It's true that I don't typically feel that hungry, though, and maybe that's the problem. (as @stephenrhinton advised)

I'm going to a wedding August 29 and was really hoping to see enough of a different to be a bit happier with pictures... That was my initial goal, at least.

On the upside, even if I am nowhere close to pulling my old pants up, I can feel a noticeable change in energy, which is excellent!

This all sounds great!

If you only stopped eating back your exercise calories a week ago, then these are early days, and I'd say give it another month at least of not eating back exercise calories, for a proper assessment of whether there is a downward trend. If the daily weigh ins are discouraging, and not helping you on the journey, then best to space them out to a week or so!

1200 cals is the minimal recommended, so I wouldn't reduce the calorie intake any lower than that!
August 29 is really close, and the MFP approach is more geared towards gradual but consistent losses that can be sustained for the long term, as opposed to quick drops.
To lose a massive amount in 9 days, you would probably just have to cut out carbs from your diet altogether. But arguably, this is not a sustainable approach, and I wouldn't recommend that as the way to go in the long term!

Increase in energy is great!
Keep swimming and reduced body dimensions will come too - especially around the hips and belly areas.
The weight will come off too!

So hang in here and stick with it - you're doing great only a few weeks in and correcting the initial errors - way to go!

Glad your not as worried now.

The way I look at it, when one struggles to lose weight it's a reminder of at least two things.

1) The breathtaking ingenuity of this created machine that is our body!
2) The power of learned and imprinted habits/ equilibriums on the body.

When NASA sends out a shuttle into space (or used to ), the shuttles are set to maintain the air pressure inside at a certain level, and I would imagine there are multiple safeguards and redundancy systems built in to the shuttles routines and sub routines and systems, just to maintain that pressure, in the event of some unexpected event or failure (eg a hole in the hull)!
So when there is a small hole in the hull and the pressure remains stable, it points to the effectiveness of the systems and redundancies, for their purpose. They are working exactly as they are supposed to.
In order to have the air pressure, either the all the systems and back ups need to fail, or you need to reprogram them so that they are set to maintain a lower pressure!

Same thing with our bodies. We have usually trained our bodies to maintain a certain weight and a certain weight trend (usually heading up).
So when you start making adjustments to diet and exercise, the body does what it is trained to do, and ingeniously uses all the tools at its disposal to try to maintain the trend that you have taught it usually over many years.
It is really very ingenious, and pretty awesome when you really think about it!
There are times for religious reasons I have gone on up to a 5 day fast, when I literally ate no solid food at all save for some soups and water. And it's amazing that often, in that 4 or 5 day period my weight hardly drops at all. It must be amazing what is going on behind the scenes, as my body confronted with this massive shock to the system uses what must be an amazing variety of systems, just to hold on and keep things going. It probably retains every drop of liquid it can get its hands on, tinkers with my digestive and waste systems, slows down my metabolism, and all sorts of other stuff just to struggle to maintain the equilibrium I have taught it.
So when your weight isn't heading down in a hurry, it means your body is extremely effective at doing exactly what you have taught it to do! It's working as it should!!!

The second thing that comes out of this is the power of imprinting and learned equilibrium on the body.
Unlike a computer or thermostat where you can probably just tweak a setting, and the systems change to a new level, the process of tweaking the body's setting to a different one can sometimes be a lengthy process of constant, relentless downwards adjustment, before the body finally adjusts to the new setting! But it's so worth it!

So keep up the adjustments, even as your body keeps doing what it should be doing. Eventually, it will reorganize itself to the new normal and work with that!

In the words of John Mayer, our bodies truly are a wonderland!