Using a Fitbit trying to lose weight but gaining! Help!!
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callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »I_Will_End_You wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »Take what your fitbit says with a grain of salt (or any wrist-based HRM). They have been known it be inaccurate. While it is good for a ballpark estimate of your calories and heart-rate it's not completely correct. As big of a pain as some might think it is, the chest strap is much more accurate then the wrist mount HRM, especially if it's not worn correctly.
Also, it could be other reasons that you're not losing. Such as food, you may be eating more than you think.
I hear you about the Fitbit - I'll try a chest HRM, as for eating too much I'm logging absolutely as accurately as I can, everything as possible !! If it's got a barcode I scan it and my snacks are fruit/raw veg. Plus I eat less calories than what I gain through exercise, apart from a couple of days when I my knee hurt then I ate less than the 1200, I don't eat rubbish or white bread.
I'm very active. I need to eat...
You're probably under estimating how much you are eating. It doesn't matter how "healthy" you eat, if it's too many calories you won't lose. If you're just scanning barcodes, using cups and spoons to measure your food, or guessing on portions, you can't really be sure how many calories you're eating.
Just to be clear I'm not eating too much. I have a VERY physical job - I'm a UK traditional plasterer and decorator - I'm by no means sedentary. I have a boarder collie X and power walk at least two hours a day on top of my job, and go hill walking at the weekends. I am meticulous with my diary to the point of distraction! I find the food I eat isn't enough to satisfy me esp when working. If I didn't eat my fruit / veg nutty snacks i'd feel faint and I can't have that up ladders.
I eat a rawish plant based vegetarian/vegan diet. No cakes, no processed sugars, very little dairy... (Eggs!) I'd definitely say I was very 'healthy'. Unless you're saying I should be weighing every banana/Apple/blueberry I eat?
I can honestly say last week hasn't been as active as I might have been as I'm on holiday... But hey still pretty chuffed with how many km I did!
I've still got 600k left to eat... Apparently... Maybe I'll leave them there for tonight.
if you are not losing weight, and you are not WEIGHING your food (no matter how 'healthy' it may be.... you need to start WITH A FOOD SCALE
WOW. Chill out luv. I get the food scale message.
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I am experiencing something similar. I gained 3 pounds in two weeks, but I have also lost 4 inches. I think this could be due to some muscle toning. Hopefully next week it will show that I have lost some weight also.0
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Suspected my Fitbit ChargeHR was showing inaccurate calorie burn, so tested it today versus the treadmill at the gym and the exercise search on MFP. Walking at 3mph for 25 minutes: Fitbit said 160 calories burned, treadmill said 117, and MFP says 112. That is a big difference in just 25 mins. I am not going to eat back the calories I burn. And I have started to weigh some food. A banana that looked medium to me ended up being large and more calories. I think we all tend to underestimate portion sizes. Plus make sure you get enough protein daily, esp if vegetarian. Good luck.0
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JustMissTracy wrote: »
So that banana might not be 6 inches?
[/quote]
Sounds to me like you've got it figured out
[/quote]
Haha
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All the comments say that you are just doing it wrong and that getting a smaller body is JUST calories in/calories out (please remind me how it takes months, even years for someone to starve to death? just sayin). Oh that repeating record gets old. You might want to consider that your plant based (likely high grain/nut/sugar, probably low in essential natural saturated fats- yes I said "essential saturated fats") diet may not be as "healthy" as you think. ("What human society was ever only vegan or vegetarian?" may be a good question to ask.) Otherwise just keep doing what you are doing and hopefully it works out for you. Weight loss takes lots of time and is not linear as also already mentioned.0
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Suspected my Fitbit ChargeHR was showing inaccurate calorie burn, so tested it today versus the treadmill at the gym and the exercise search on MFP. Walking at 3mph for 25 minutes: Fitbit said 160 calories burned, treadmill said 117, and MFP says 112. That is a big difference in just 25 mins. I am not going to eat back the calories I burn. And I have started to weigh some food. A banana that looked medium to me ended up being large and more calories. I think we all tend to underestimate portion sizes. Plus make sure you get enough protein daily, esp if vegetarian. Good luck.
Thank you that's very useful and cheers for the encouragement. I've got a Fitbit Surge, the battery keeps losing life so I'm sending it back for a replacement. Maybe the new one might show something completely different? Hmmm slightly annoying if it does.
To be honest I'm dunno how much more exercise I can fit in in a day... I literally run myself into the ground every day! I'm at work at 8am and home for 8pm, in bed for 10!
Bonkers.
Yes, I thought about protein, I'll defo add more this week.
I also think I eat too much bread. Oooh lovely seeded loaves and I do like a wrap. Trying to switch to raw wraps... Time though, I'll have to make some - time!
G
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martyguy74 wrote: »I am experiencing something similar. I gained 3 pounds in two weeks, but I have also lost 4 inches. I think this could be due to some muscle toning. Hopefully next week it will show that I have lost some weight also.
That sounds good. Keep it up!!0 -
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georginacullen wrote: »
Ha - yes I do! Weigh everything. Manually scan in whatever has a barcode. Exercise daily. Who knows.... just gonna keep chuggin0 -
Akimajuktuq wrote: »All the comments say that you are just doing it wrong and that getting a smaller body is JUST calories in/calories out (please remind me how it takes months, even years for someone to starve to death? just sayin). Oh that repeating record gets old. You might want to consider that your plant based (likely high grain/nut/sugar, probably low in essential natural saturated fats- yes I said "essential saturated fats") diet may not be as "healthy" as you think. ("What human society was ever only vegan or vegetarian?" may be a good question to ask.) Otherwise just keep doing what you are doing and hopefully it works out for you. Weight loss takes lots of time and is not linear as also already mentioned.
That's very helpful too. I've been veggie/vegan for 25 years and it's only since I gave up smoking I've had this weight fast gain issue... Plus a bit of stress in my life.
Might be my metabolism...? But yes. Grains... I'm a sucker for a nice chunk of rustic bread. Maybe I should knock that on the head...
I'll keep on at it. It will come off eventually... Just like a little kick start to keep me motivated. 0 -
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georginacullen wrote: »
Ha - yes I do! Weigh everything. Manually scan in whatever has a barcode. Exercise daily. Who knows.... just gonna keep chuggin
I'm gonna friend you chick (seriously don't have any - haha it's not a popularity contest!). Think we'd be good motivators and we both got super cute dogs!
You can laugh at my food diary! Haha
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georginacullen wrote: »I also think I eat too much bread. Oooh lovely seeded loaves and I do like a wrap. Trying to switch to raw wraps... Time though, I'll have to make some - time!
G
There's nothing wrong with bread. I wouldn't give it up if you held a gun to my head. Just make it fit into your daily calorie goal.
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georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.0 -
Chain_Ring wrote: »Fitbit pretty much sucks. It is essentially a glorified pedometer. Go buy yourself a Garmin device, it'll make all other devices look like the toys that they are.
So are the Garmin Vivo series when used indoors for basic activity tracking.
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kshama2001 wrote: »
Ahhh don't let it worry you...georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.
But you don't know what I'm eating or how much. And yes, I definitely burn what I eat... Which right now isn't much at all.
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georginacullen wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »
Ahhh don't let it worry you...georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.
But you don't know what I'm eating or how much. And yes, I definitely burn what I eat... Which right now isn't much at all.
That's their point though. If you truly are not eating that much food, you'd be at a calorie deficit. You cannot gain muscle on a calorie deficit. That's not how muscle building works. You can only gain muscle mass eating at a caloric surplus or, at a much, much slower rate, eating at maintenance. Hence why several posters have said it cannot be muscle mass. If the weight gain were due to muscle mass, that would imply you are either eating at maintenance or, more likely, a surplus of calories. Since you are saying that simply cannot be the case, people are saying it simply cannot be muscle gains. Give it a bit more time if you truly feel your calorie counting is on point. If in the next two weeks you still do not see a loss, then yeah, you need to start weighing your food because you're eating more than you think/need.0 -
georginacullen wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »
Ahhh don't let it worry you...georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.
But you don't know what I'm eating or how much. And yes, I definitely burn what I eat... Which right now isn't much at all.
That's their point though. If you truly are not eating that much food, you'd be at a calorie deficit. You cannot gain muscle on a calorie deficit. That's not how muscle building works. You can only gain muscle mass eating at a caloric surplus or, at a much, much slower rate, eating at maintenance. Hence why several posters have said it cannot be muscle mass. If the weight gain were due to muscle mass, that would imply you are either eating at maintenance or, more likely, a surplus of calories. Since you are saying that simply cannot be the case, people are saying it simply cannot be muscle gains. Give it a bit more time if you truly feel your calorie counting is on point. If in the next two weeks you still do not see a loss, then yeah, you need to start weighing your food because you're eating more than you think/need.
Riiiiiiiigggghhhhttttt. Thank you.0 -
That's an insane amount of floors climbed. Mine doesn't track that though so maybe I just don't know what's normal for floors haha.
It counts floors by an altimeter, not by any motion. A friend of mine logs "stairs" when she drives over a bridge to and from work. You'll log stairs if you take an elevator.0 -
georginacullen wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »
Ahhh don't let it worry you...georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.
But you don't know what I'm eating or how much. And yes, I definitely burn what I eat... Which right now isn't much at all.
Weightloss is quite simple. Burn 500 calories more a day than you eat. I believe ( I could be wrong, off the top of my head) the magic number to burn is 3500 calories a week, in order lose one pound. If you're not burning 3500 calories more a week than you are consuming, you wont lose any weight. Period. Regardless if you eat twinkies or eggs and spinach... regardless if you paint and paper walls, drywall, and demo whole apartments (Good on you, btw!!!) or even if you sit at a desk 12 hours a day like I do. You should open your diary luv, there are a lot more educated and experienced people than I here, who would be able to point you in the direction you need, based on your entries. xo0 -
JustMissTracy wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »
Ahhh don't let it worry you...georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.
But you don't know what I'm eating or how much. And yes, I definitely burn what I eat... Which right now isn't much at all.
Weightloss is quite simple. Burn 500 calories more a day than you eat. I believe ( I could be wrong, off the top of my head) the magic number to burn is 3500 calories a week, in order lose one pound. If you're not burning 3500 calories more a week than you are consuming, you wont lose any weight. Period. Regardless if you eat twinkies or eggs and spinach... regardless if you paint and paper walls, drywall, and demo whole apartments (Good on you, btw!!!) or even if you sit at a desk 12 hours a day like I do. You should open your diary luv, there are a lot more educated and experienced people than I here, who would be able to point you in the direction you need, based on your entries. xo
Well, to expand upon this, you will lose weight burning less than 3500 calories per week but it may not show up on the scale. If you burn 1750 extra calories per week, theoretically you should see a half pound loss for the week, but it doesn't always work out that way. I'm at a rate of a half pound loss per week. For the past two weeks, I remained between 115 and 116 pounds despite my deficit. However, I was also ovulating which is the time for insane water retention for me. My TOM began three days ago. My weigh in weights? 114.9, 114.1, and 113.6 this morning. The deficit has finally shown up. This is why giving it a few more weeks may give you the answers you need about your body. If you see a sudden big drop, then you know that those prior weeks are most likely your high times for water retention. If you see no decrease at all, then you'd have to reassess.0 -
JustMissTracy wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »
Ahhh don't let it worry you...georginacullen wrote: »
Why not?
Because you simply cannot build significant muscle if you are eating at a calorie deficit. Your body requires sufficient calories to increase muscle mass and if you're on a diet, it's not possible, no matter what you're doing all day. It's not a slight to your physical activity, it's just biology.
You can make some strength gains still, yes, and the muscle you have will show more clearly as you lose fat, but you're not going to increase the size of your muscles at the same time you're losing weight.
ETA: You should be looking at your diet, not your exercise, for the answers here. If you're not weighing and measuring everything you're eating and you're wondering why you're not losing, it's because you're eating more than you need, period.
But you don't know what I'm eating or how much. And yes, I definitely burn what I eat... Which right now isn't much at all.
Weightloss is quite simple. Burn 500 calories more a day than you eat. I believe ( I could be wrong, off the top of my head) the magic number to burn is 3500 calories a week, in order lose one pound. If you're not burning 3500 calories more a week than you are consuming, you wont lose any weight. Period. Regardless if you eat twinkies or eggs and spinach... regardless if you paint and paper walls, drywall, and demo whole apartments (Good on you, btw!!!) or even if you sit at a desk 12 hours a day like I do. You should open your diary luv, there are a lot more educated and experienced people than I here, who would be able to point you in the direction you need, based on your entries. xo
Well, to expand upon this, you will lose weight burning less than 3500 calories per week but it may not show up on the scale. If you burn 1750 extra calories per week, theoretically you should see a half pound loss for the week, but it doesn't always work out that way. I'm at a rate of a half pound loss per week. For the past two weeks, I remained between 115 and 116 pounds despite my deficit. However, I was also ovulating which is the time for insane water retention for me. My TOM began three days ago. My weigh in weights? 114.9, 114.1, and 113.6 this morning. The deficit has finally shown up. This is why giving it a few more weeks may give you the answers you need about your body. If you see a sudden big drop, then you know that those prior weeks are most likely your high times for water retention. If you see no decrease at all, then you'd have to reassess.
Thank you. That's very interesting and helpful.
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georginacullen wrote: »
I think it's less about the effort and more about the large calorie deficit.
That's it's very hard to gain muscle while in a 2lb per week deficit.0 -
That's an insane amount of floors climbed. Mine doesn't track that though so maybe I just don't know what's normal for floors haha.
It counts floors by an altimeter, not by any motion. A friend of mine logs "stairs" when she drives over a bridge to and from work. You'll log stairs if you take an elevator.
I just have the fitbit One, but it does not give me stairs for taking the elevator.
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That's an insane amount of floors climbed. Mine doesn't track that though so maybe I just don't know what's normal for floors haha.
It counts floors by an altimeter, not by any motion. A friend of mine logs "stairs" when she drives over a bridge to and from work. You'll log stairs if you take an elevator.
I just have the fitbit One, but it does not give me stairs for taking the elevator.
I imagine it would have to register steps and a change in height for it to count.
Tried walking in circles in an elevator? Ski lift?
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Same here with the food scale - I tend not to weigh EVERYTHING but I am happily losing, when it comes to the point that I find myself stuck (which I have done in the past) - then its down to the food scaleChristine_72 wrote: »callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »I_Will_End_You wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »Take what your fitbit says with a grain of salt (or any wrist-based HRM). They have been known it be inaccurate. While it is good for a ballpark estimate of your calories and heart-rate it's not completely correct. As big of a pain as some might think it is, the chest strap is much more accurate then the wrist mount HRM, especially if it's not worn correctly.
Also, it could be other reasons that you're not losing. Such as food, you may be eating more than you think.
I hear you about the Fitbit - I'll try a chest HRM, as for eating too much I'm logging absolutely as accurately as I can, everything as possible !! If it's got a barcode I scan it and my snacks are fruit/raw veg. Plus I eat less calories than what I gain through exercise, apart from a couple of days when I my knee hurt then I ate less than the 1200, I don't eat rubbish or white bread.
I'm very active. I need to eat...
You're probably under estimating how much you are eating. It doesn't matter how "healthy" you eat, if it's too many calories you won't lose. If you're just scanning barcodes, using cups and spoons to measure your food, or guessing on portions, you can't really be sure how many calories you're eating.
Just to be clear I'm not eating too much. I have a VERY physical job - I'm a UK traditional plasterer and decorator - I'm by no means sedentary. I have a boarder collie X and power walk at least two hours a day on top of my job, and go hill walking at the weekends. I am meticulous with my diary to the point of distraction! I find the food I eat isn't enough to satisfy me esp when working. If I didn't eat my fruit / veg nutty snacks i'd feel faint and I can't have that up ladders.
I eat a rawish plant based vegetarian/vegan diet. No cakes, no processed sugars, very little dairy... (Eggs!) I'd definitely say I was very 'healthy'. Unless you're saying I should be weighing every banana/Apple/blueberry I eat?
I can honestly say last week hasn't been as active as I might have been as I'm on holiday... But hey still pretty chuffed with how many km I did!
I've still got 600k left to eat... Apparently... Maybe I'll leave them there for tonight.
if you are not losing weight, and you are not WEIGHING your food (no matter how 'healthy' it may be.... you need to start WITH A FOOD SCALE
Yep, I always say that weighing every little thing you eat is not a prerequisite when trying to lose weight, but if one is NOT losing, accurate food weighing/logging would be the first thing I'd be looking atChristine_72 wrote: »callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »I_Will_End_You wrote: »georginacullen wrote: »Take what your fitbit says with a grain of salt (or any wrist-based HRM). They have been known it be inaccurate. While it is good for a ballpark estimate of your calories and heart-rate it's not completely correct. As big of a pain as some might think it is, the chest strap is much more accurate then the wrist mount HRM, especially if it's not worn correctly.
Also, it could be other reasons that you're not losing. Such as food, you may be eating more than you think.
I hear you about the Fitbit - I'll try a chest HRM, as for eating too much I'm logging absolutely as accurately as I can, everything as possible !! If it's got a barcode I scan it and my snacks are fruit/raw veg. Plus I eat less calories than what I gain through exercise, apart from a couple of days when I my knee hurt then I ate less than the 1200, I don't eat rubbish or white bread.
I'm very active. I need to eat...
You're probably under estimating how much you are eating. It doesn't matter how "healthy" you eat, if it's too many calories you won't lose. If you're just scanning barcodes, using cups and spoons to measure your food, or guessing on portions, you can't really be sure how many calories you're eating.
Just to be clear I'm not eating too much. I have a VERY physical job - I'm a UK traditional plasterer and decorator - I'm by no means sedentary. I have a boarder collie X and power walk at least two hours a day on top of my job, and go hill walking at the weekends. I am meticulous with my diary to the point of distraction! I find the food I eat isn't enough to satisfy me esp when working. If I didn't eat my fruit / veg nutty snacks i'd feel faint and I can't have that up ladders.
I eat a rawish plant based vegetarian/vegan diet. No cakes, no processed sugars, very little dairy... (Eggs!) I'd definitely say I was very 'healthy'. Unless you're saying I should be weighing every banana/Apple/blueberry I eat?
I can honestly say last week hasn't been as active as I might have been as I'm on holiday... But hey still pretty chuffed with how many km I did!
I've still got 600k left to eat... Apparently... Maybe I'll leave them there for tonight.
if you are not losing weight, and you are not WEIGHING your food (no matter how 'healthy' it may be.... you need to start WITH A FOOD SCALE
Yep, I always say that weighing every little thing you eat is not a prerequisite when trying to lose weight, but if one is NOT losing, accurate food weighing/logging would be the first thing I'd be looking at
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I am having the same issue
I was gaining a lot of weight. Then I started to weighting everything I eat in January. I am in a 1200 calories diet and I haven't lost any weight yet, but after starting weighting my food the weight stopped going up, which is good. I am now hoping that I will soon start seeing the scale going down.
I also have a serious problem with water retention, so it is very hard to measure if my weight is water or fat.
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