Increase my calories?

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Silpeanut
Silpeanut Posts: 62 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello, I have been maintaining a 1200 cal daily goal ( as suggested by MFP) and cannot seem to lose weight. I do cardio and strength training everyday. I am 40 yrs old, 5 ft tall and 138 lbs and workout a total avg about 60-90 mins a day 5 days a week and I work 3 days a week on my feet as a server. Although I have been super disciplined and active and sticking to a low cal and low carb diet I cannot seem to lose weight ( I use scale , clothing fit and measurements to measure changes). Some of my friends have suggested that maybe I need to increase my calorie intake . It is really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that I need to eat more to lose weight but it is possible that I am at such a low calorie intake that my body may think it should be in a conserve-we-are-starving mode. I don't know and both sides make sense to me and would be great to get input from anyone who knows something about this issue. Thank you in advance and have an awesome day!

Replies

  • Merkavar
    Merkavar Posts: 3,082 Member
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    Are you weighing your food?

    Like say you have a banana, do you log it as 1 medium banana or as 165g banana?

    Maybe your eating more than you think.
  • Asher_Ethan
    Asher_Ethan Posts: 2,430 Member
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    How do you calculate the calories you burn when you exercise? You probably burn less than you think.
  • allora770
    allora770 Posts: 3 Member
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    Being that active I would say you need to increase your calories big time! I have done the same, my BMR is just under 1600, I also work out 6x a week and have increased my calories to 1800. Guess what? The scale has started moving again!
  • Silpeanut
    Silpeanut Posts: 62 Member
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    Yes I weigh all my food and I use MFP to calculate my exercise burn, and I usually put in less time than I actually workout because I know that MFP exaggerates the calories burned .
  • hiyomi
    hiyomi Posts: 906 Member
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    I don't want to discourage you or anything, but you are not very overweight, and a little older, which both make it harder in general to lose weight. You may want to try lifting weights/exercising to start building muscle mass, in turn you will still look smaller as muscle looks a lot less than fat. :)
  • _Figgzie_
    _Figgzie_ Posts: 3,506 Member
    edited February 2016
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    if you weigh 138 pounds, 1200 calories is not a big deficit. I would say you are overestimating how much you are burning and underestimating how much you are eating. If you are not losing weight, eating more isn't going to help you start losing again. Someone mentioned above how the scale started moving when they upped their calories and that's not how it works. More than likely they are burning more calories than they were before and the bump in calories still left them in a deficit. I would tighten up your food logging and find a more accurate way to log your exercise. Even if you are off by 100-200 calories in your logging / exercise that could make a huge difference since you do not have much weight to lose
  • katej37
    katej37 Posts: 56 Member
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    Whats your goal? Seems to me like you have MFP set at 2lb a week loss which with only a little to lose is too aggressive. Set it for 0.5lb a week loss and eat the extra calories. Look at the net figure not the gross. Have you set MFP as lightly active or more? I'm 5ft, 42 years old, my activity level is set at lightly active and I'm on 1240 per day plus any exercise calories I get. I am tending to average around 1100 net calories a day (sometimes more/sometimes less) I try to only eat half activity calories back as it allows for the times where my logging may not be as tight as it should - I'm losing on average 1lb a week. There is a flowchart somewhere on here but I don't have it saved.
  • LKArgh
    LKArgh Posts: 5,179 Member
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    Silpeanut wrote: »
    Hello, I have been maintaining a 1200 cal daily goal ( as suggested by MFP) and cannot seem to lose weight. I do cardio and strength training everyday. I am 40 yrs old, 5 ft tall and 138 lbs and workout a total avg about 60-90 mins a day 5 days a week and I work 3 days a week on my feet as a server. Although I have been super disciplined and active and sticking to a low cal and low carb diet I cannot seem to lose weight ( I use scale , clothing fit and measurements to measure changes). Some of my friends have suggested that maybe I need to increase my calorie intake . It is really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that I need to eat more to lose weight but it is possible that I am at such a low calorie intake that my body may think it should be in a conserve-we-are-starving mode. I don't know and both sides make sense to me and would be great to get input from anyone who knows something about this issue. Thank you in advance and have an awesome day!

    It is hard to wrap your head around this concept, because it makes no sense. Your are now maintaining your weight, eat more and you will gain.
    Without exercise, I would guess that your maintenance is around only 1500-1600 ? So if you are off by just a bit from your 1200 goal, you could be easily eating around maintenance or have a very small deficit. You do not have a lot to lose, so weight loss will be slow.
  • dragon_girl26
    dragon_girl26 Posts: 2,187 Member
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    aggelikik wrote: »
    Silpeanut wrote: »
    Hello, I have been maintaining a 1200 cal daily goal ( as suggested by MFP) and cannot seem to lose weight. I do cardio and strength training everyday. I am 40 yrs old, 5 ft tall and 138 lbs and workout a total avg about 60-90 mins a day 5 days a week and I work 3 days a week on my feet as a server. Although I have been super disciplined and active and sticking to a low cal and low carb diet I cannot seem to lose weight ( I use scale , clothing fit and measurements to measure changes). Some of my friends have suggested that maybe I need to increase my calorie intake . It is really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that I need to eat more to lose weight but it is possible that I am at such a low calorie intake that my body may think it should be in a conserve-we-are-starving mode. I don't know and both sides make sense to me and would be great to get input from anyone who knows something about this issue. Thank you in advance and have an awesome day!


    It is hard to wrap your head around this concept, because it makes no sense. Your are now maintaining your weight, eat more and you will gain.
    Without exercise, I would guess that your maintenance is around only 1500-1600 ? So if you are off by just a bit from your 1200 goal, you could be easily eating around maintenance or have a very small deficit. You do not have a lot to lose, so weight loss will be slow.

    ^^This.
    The reason it doesn't make sense is that conserve-as-we-are-starving mode as you refer to it here, more commonly known as "starvation mode", is a myth. If you aren't losing weight at your current deficit, the last thing you should be doing is eating more. That isn't how it works. You might either be off in your logging (most common problem), overestimating your calorie burn, or there may be an underlying medical issue.
    Alos, if you don't have much left to lose, weight loss is going to be slower, as it should be. It's not a good idea to try to lose too quickly.

    Here is the flowchart someone was looking for earlier. Hopefully this will be more helpful. Best of luck to you!

    o33xux19w9d1.jpg
  • Silpeanut
    Silpeanut Posts: 62 Member
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    Update!! At my first week weigh in after increasing my calorie intake I lost 1.8 lbs, I was unable to exercise due to an injury and did nothing different except for increase my caloric intake. So thanks for the input but I think it was a great move on my part!

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