You have the right principle down - eat less than you burn by a reasonable amount.

Which means you of course need a clue to both sides of the equation.

If you have kept a constant weight for last 5 years - then you can easily find out your true TDEE for your current activity level.

Merely log exactly what you eat for a couple weeks, but do NOT change your diet or activity level yet.

Whatever that amount eaten is your TDEE.

Then ONLY change one variable at a time.

Like if you want to exercise more to change the body - keep eating exactly the same and add exercise.

If you do change the eating - make it an equal calorie swap.

Where people get into trouble is making massive wholesale changes to both - they eat a whole lot less and exercise a whole lot more - bad combo giving an unreasonable deficit.

Little less of one and little more of the other is all that's needed. Or just more good exercise.

Now - with Fitbit you have opportunity to see how accurate it is during the 2 weeks of accurate food logging.
Log food by weight, not volume measurements. Figure out the serving size from there.
For instance, you weigh a bag of chips prior to eating some, subtract the end after eating whatever you'd normally eat - there's your grams eaten. Grams eaten / grams per serving = servings eaten.
Log it with that many servings.

If you eat out often - get ready for inaccuracy. If fast food - actually better than restaurants for accuracy.

Home cooked meals - weight of everything thrown in the recipe - figure out servings later.
Weigh the pot/dish prior to finished cooked weight of meal in the pot/dish.
Now you know how many calories total in that whole dish, and can figure out if you ate 200 g of it how many calories that would be.

Regarding what those numbers mean.
1979 was your base eating goal with your selected activity level of Sedentary and no exercise accounted for.
MFP added 307 after getting daily burn estimate from Fitbit - either exercise or you aren't sedentary or combo.
So you get 1979 + 307 = 2286 to eat now.
You ate 740 so far, so 2286 - 740 = 1546 left to eat, to keep whatever deficit amount you selected.

Again - suggest you put MFP to maintain so there is no deficit, keep at sedentary if you are.
Let Fitbit sync with MFP.
But 2 weeks is only logging of food.

You can't really do the average TDEE method you described while using the Fitbit synced - but why guess from among 5 rough levels when you have a device telling you infinite levels that MFP will use and adjust from?
So when it comes time to it, you'd merely take a reasonable deficit on MFP that matches the 15% of your average TDEE that Fitbit says you have.
Your weekly Fitbit emails will show this figure.

maukst wrote: »

I just joined this group, and am confused as to where you are all finding out what kind of foods to eat. I know we are supposed to eat more food, but is there a book on maybe some menu examples. And is this also for maybe low-carb or low gluten, or is it just eating healthy, but more of it? Thanks for all you help,

I build my meals around protein. We hunt so lots of wild game because its available. I eat foods i enjoy eating up to the amount of calories eaten and the grams of protein i am aiming for. Most days my meals are healthy but occasionally they are not

Increasing slowly with only weeks adding 100 extra daily should give you the chance to figure out where to add them.

With smaller stomach - you will need more meals daily. Suggest you keep them balanced with carbs/protein/fat so no small meal drops blood sugar and makes you hungrier than you need to be.

Might have to get off the Saxenda slowly since you need appetite.

And protein shake at night is just fine, gives body something to repair with during best time of repair.

All carbs (except insoluble fiber) become blood sugar really, the difference is in the speed and what other nutrients are with them. The speed can be effected by health issues of course.
Excess protein not needed also is converted to sugar, slower though once body has no need of it, or you don't eat all the essential amino acids and right ratios and so some are unavailable to use so turned to carbs you might say.

Eating protein can release glucagon which is opposite effect to insulin, increasing blood sugar levels.
But it doesn't really prevent what was going to happen.

Hi! I read read and read EM2WL and am trying to up my cals atleast to my maintainence that is 1500..... I'm 5'7 and weight 77 kgs 34 years F. I do 30 day shred L 3 and 45 mins cardio for the rest can anyone help me with my workouts? I want to lose weight i'm in a stall since two months of working out and dieting but now convinced to increase my cals as suffered fr back ach while working out! Help

Just suggest you increase slowly while you focus more on workouts that are stronger resistance, less cardio focus. So if you have a choice between workouts, the one that leaves your muscles tired rather than breathing hard the whole time.

At the least while increasing calories - though you may like the improvements to the body enough to keep that focus.[/quote]


Ok! So this means that i can carry on with my workouts and add more strength training while increasing my cals.... I hope it would help me with weight loss too. Can u plz tell me how long should your workouts be if you strength train for weight loss?

Can not eating enough carbs affect fat loss? I average about 10-15 net carbs a day eating about 1900-2000 calories a day. I lift 3 days a week and do HIIT 2 days a week.

Candicem99 wrote: »

Can not eating enough carbs affect fat loss? I average about 10-15 net carbs a day eating about 1900-2000 calories a day. I lift 3 days a week and do HIIT 2 days a week.

Well, only in the sense if it creates extra stress on the body. And I'll bet it is.

How many of the diets with very low card actually prescribe an exercise routine like you are trying to do that is high carb burning? Shoot, even Paleo and similar talk of killer and chronic cardio - and that is lower carb burning than what you are doing. Though it is for longer usually, which makes it worse.

The fact you don't eat much of them, and body burns a tad more fat at rest (not feeding brain glucose) - doesn't change the fact that when intensity and effort go up enough, your ratio of fuel source starts going towards glucose more than fat until you reach anaerobic and 100% glucose.

The fact your body isn't storying many of them, being in greatly depleted state compared to not very low carb - means it is a stress.

Now, I'm sure your body has adjusted what you can actually accomplish in your routine - and unless you could compare to not doing it low carb - you have no idea how well your body could perform. I'm sure it feels like giving it your all.
But try giving it your all on pushups or jumping jacks - holding your breath, compared to breathing normal.

Pretty sure I know which one is going to feel harder.
Pretty sure I know which one you can accomplish more with though.

Same thing with your workouts that are anaerobic and almost total carb burn during the hard part.

Now - if you eat a lot more protein to make up for the low carbs - then your body is getting carbs - it's making glucose from the excess protein it can't do anything with - and actually with those workouts, it's probably taking some anyway from what could be used. If eating at/near maintenance - the effect shouldn't be as bad.

But that's still stressful on the body, as that process is not fast and it takes a lot of energy - hence the potential for low carbs to work so well.

Now - if you eat more fat to make up for carbs - then just plain stressful as body attempts to get some glucose to store for next workout.

I'd be curious if you can find any references in Atkins or similar very low carb that speak of what types of exercise to do if you do some.
Primal and Paleo say do some sprints and lifting, and walking - but more of the latter and not much of the former.
In fact they modify their diets for those that just want to do endurance cardio against their initial advice - because they recognize many want to also.

Ok! I've increased my cals to 16-1700 (1870 tdee at sedentary) and i'm eating back half of my workout cals.... Started strength training thrice a week alternating with Hiit.... Lost 1lb after 12 days.... I'm confused about my macros.... I've set them at C45 F20 P35...... Is it ok if want to lose or should it be 40 30 30??

Since the last twelve days i've been struggling to increase my cals and now i'm fix at 1800 with 40/30/30. To remind you i'm 5'7, housewife and workout 3-4 days strength with 10 and 20 lbs. rest days HIIT 25 mins....while increasing cals i went down to 76 kgs but today i'm 78! The weight keeps fluctuating between 77-78

3-4 x how many minutes of strength training?
3 x 25 min of HIIT on other days - hardly rest day by the way, HIIT is not rest, but if done correctly as close to lifting as you can get doing cardio - and it really deserves it's only rest for recovery.
If doing something else that HIIT label has been slapped on, may not be that bad.

So Lightly Active is maybe correct (depending on length of strength) if exercise was only other activity you do besides a 45 hr desk job/commute and no kids/pets not much other activity.

But how busy during the day outside of exercise - sitting for 9 - 12 hrs daily?

Likely fluctuating so much because on verge of being near TDEE and glucose stores are topping off and depleting depending on what happens that day.

Did you use the Just TDEE Please spreadsheet on my profile page? Or it matched the rough 5 level TDEE table?

I'd copy again, probably corruption. If you deleted a non-yellow cell (or orange-yellow), like red or what could have appeared empty cell, probably deleted a required formula.
Or confirm you got stat's on right section for US or metric only.

For daily life - are you sitting for 9 hrs a day a sedentary desk job would cause? - and even there someone that is active with family in the evening ends up being not sedentary. Sedentary in that description is really a bump on a log - including weekends. Talking less than 3000 steps daily.
3K- 4K seems to be where people with Fitbit find they start to get extra calorie burn for the day over the MFP sedentary, which is same as spreadsheet with no check marks.

So strength training is 3.5 x 35 min = 123 min weekly.
W/U & C/D is whatever level of cardio you do.
HIIT is high cardio for 75 min.

I'd say daily activity of sedentary job with kids then,

Don't know, you didn't answer questions to help guess.

But considering 1840 is MFP's estimate of sedentary with no exercise - the easy answer is no - you'll be higher than that because you do exercise and likely aren't exactly sedentary either.

But how long were you at a reset eating maintenance?

thank you for posting this is what i needed

Thankyou so much for your explanation.... I think i'm not ready to up my calories at the moment.... I hardly reach 1800 forcing my body to eat! I'll keep going for 1800 maybe next 2 to 3 more weeks then increase....