A little confused

The program doesn't take into consideration your exercise until you add it. It will increase calories once you have worked out. So on days you don't work out 1200, on days you do work out 1200+.

For comparison purposes, I'm 5'5" and weigh 208, which means about 90 more pounds to lose. At 1400 calories a day and not much exercise beyond two 1.5-mile dog walks a day, I'm lucky to hit 1 pound a week of loss. At your height and distance from goal, a loss rate of 2 pounds a week would be phenomenal, so it doesn't surprise me a bit that the program is telling you 1200--in fact, I suspect it's set so that it never goes below 1200 in a recommendation, because that seems to be the magic number it considers safe. On the other hand, your relatively vigorous workout schedule will be very helpful.

What you might want to do is try 1200 for a week or so and see what happens. If that leaves you too hungry with all that working out, bump it to 1400 or even 1600 and see what happens there. The chances that you're counting your food or exercise calories with absolute fidelity are pretty slight; the best most of us seem likely to do is hit on a consistent method of counting that allows us to establish a routine that works. It always comes down to the results on the scale and the measuring tape. If you count consistently, you can adjust up or down to produce the loss rate you want, always taking into account that the closer you are to goal, the slower your progress is likely to be in the real world. Guys over six feet who weight 350 lbs. and are doing aggressive training may be able to drop 20 lbs. a month, but that's not 5'4" women who are mildly overweight. Cheer up! Your progress may not be lightning fast, but you don't have that much to lose, either. You'll see, it will come off quickly enough if you stick to a consistent calorie goal and keep working out.

Kate - you should also be aware that if you cut your calories too drastically, especially doing HIIT and strenght training (both are high effort exercices!) you might actually throw your body into a reactionary mode where you will gain weight even if you eat less than 1000 calories a day. You might reach your goal sooner and with a lot less frustration if you start slower.

I find I lose more weight if I stick around 1200-1400 than if I only eat 800-1000.

organic_homestead wrote: »

@Kate0707 I am in the same boat! I have an office job (I just got a sit/stand desk so now I stand more than sit!), strength train, run and a mix of yoga and HIIT.

I joined my office's Weight Loss Challenge and every weigh-in I'm going up! It's driving me crazy! Both weight and body fat are creeping up. I've been tracking my food for six days, so I'm still new here. Over the past five days I've averaged 1327 calories in and 2265 calories out per day. It seems I should be seeing a reduction.

Last year I began following an Atkins/Keto diet. My hubby and I really liked it and I had great results. I lost 16lbs and 6" (3 dress sizes). With a hip injury and the holidays I did gain about 4lbs back. I'd like to lose another 10; but mostly wanting to bring my body fat percentage down.

At first I had adjusted my macros myself to match an Atkins diet; but today when I changed my profile from lightly active to sedentary I wanted to see what MFP would suggest. I just can't see myself eating over 100g of carbs a day! And the sodium count is insane!

But I'm wondering if I should change up my macros in order to get body fat down. Can anyone share their macro % for me to try? I just don't like MFP's standard.

How are you tracking your food? Are you weighing EVERYTHING except water? The common cause for what you're describing is inaccurate tracking of food. It's very easy to do, I think that's one of the hardest things to learn to do correctly because it is a pain to do, and makes meal prep take much longer. But once you get used to doing it, it's less intrusive and can help you learn how to more accurately judge portion sizes, which will help in the long run.

You could also be overestimating your calories out. Don't rely on gym machines or MFP to give you an accurate calories burned from exercise. They use generic stats for calculation, which can be WAAAAYY off for some people. If you really want to know, get a heart rate monitor and do the calculations for yourself. Or, and activity tracker with a HRM. It won't be 100% accurate, but it'll be much closer than MFP.

kate0707 wrote: »

Thank you so much for the advice guys really appreciate it, think I will trial 1200 a day for a week and see how I go. You're right I should be more realistic and aim for 1lb a week loss.

OP, I agree, change your goal to 1 lb per week, and then eat back half your exercise calories. If some days you end up eating a little less, that's great, but losing weight fast when you don't have much to lose can result in more muscle loss than you would want. And you'll be less likely to burn out. I would chew off my arm if tried 1200! As a point of comparison, I'm 43, 5'4", 130 lbs, and I was eating @ 1600 to lose half a pound per week. And even then I had some days where I couldn't do it and ate a little more. It was slow, but it was painless

Good luck!