Looking for nutritional advice, 435+ pounds, fitbit user

1. Don't rely on your Fitbit for calories. Use it as more of a general info data.
2. You didn't mention a food scale. Get one so you know how much calories you're eating and stay within that calorie deficit and do not calculate in your Fitbit "calories burned".
3. "I'm hoping for a steady 3 pound or more a week." No, 1-2lbs a week is more realistic and achievable.
4. You didn't get to 466 over night. You're not going to lose it overnight. Losing a significant amount of weight such as that you're looking will take years.

2nd Abatonfan. Tighten up your logging by using a digital food scale and the appropriate cups and spoons for liquids.
Double check your entries with the mfg labelling or the USDA.

As far as an exercise to raise your heart rate. Try aqua fit. The buoyancy and coolness of the water will help you. Little joint stress, and not too much dripping in sweat.
If you are worried about being in a swimsuit, don't be. Aqua fit gets all shapes and sizes in the class as it is ideal for those needing/wanting a low impact work out.
You can make it as slow or as fast as you want so as your cardiovascular system improves so can your performance.

Check with your doctor before starting a class.

Cheers, h.

I hate to be all "rah rah" when you are just looking for suggestions but that is how I feel reading your post! You are doing it! You are losing! You have got your food under control and you are moving!!

If you care to hear my story I will share. Short and sweet. It has taken my 7 years to lose 70lbs. I could stand to lose another 10. Losing slowely has helped me maintain easily. I can go off mfp and estimate my food for a few months and stay in a 5lb range. I am not always happy with how slowely I have managed this, but I have stayed sane in the process which for me is a big deal. If I feel too deprived I binge or if I work out too hard I hit a wall fast and then do nothing for the next three weeks.

1-2lbs a week is not too slow. It is a loss and your body will appreciate the pace instead of being shocked. Also, your skin will shrink back nicely this way.

I would go with the suggestion to get a food scale and use it regularly. Walk as much as you can, up the pace once In a while to see how it feels. Do some body weight stuff in your living room. Squats, lunges, wall push-ups, planks. You don't have to be perfect at them just do them to the best of your ability. Focus on fruit veg and protein so your diet has room for treats once in a while. Get enough sleep.

youre doing great!

get a food scale. it will help with knowing EXACTLY how much you are eating! no estimating, no guesses, no generic ' cup ' measurements.

keep moving! do what you can, when you can! its good for weight loss, yes but MORE important, its good for your HEALTH!

dont go by what fitbit says to eat. you can use it to monitor activity level and (estimated) exercise burn (only eat back about half) but not for much more than that. go by what MFP tells you to eat.

It sounds like you are doing great so far, congrats! As far as getting your heart rate up, try walking faster. Speed walk for a short period of time in the middle of your walk and gradually increase that. I am not overweight and am in relatively good shape, and I can get in a pretty good cardio workout upping the intensity of my neighborhood walks.

I'm about 85 pounds down now and when I was dieting I always lost on average 1-2 pounds a week. I think you are progressing well.

Slow as turtles I know.

I think what's going on here is that the 14,000 calorie per week deficit is simply not correct. As you said, 1-2lbs lost per week matches with 3500-7000 cal weekly deficit. Because your weight loss has been consistently in that range for some time, you have good evidence that your real deficit is in that range. It's the actual result of your eating, metabolism and activity.

I don't think it means you are doing anything wrong. Given that you are logging what you eat, you have some good information to start with. If you want to increase your weight loss by a pound per week you would need to increase your real deficit by 500 calories each day. You can do some of that with food, while staying above 1500 calories eaten per day. The other side is activity which is harder to quantify, but it can help substantially. As far as your doctor recomending sprints and other activities that seem impractical I think the intent is clear, to add activity that gets your HR up and makes you work. It doesn't matter too much what that is, if it's hard for you and you adjust your excercise as you get stronger.

Given that you are looking to change things up, whatever you do, make a plan and be consistent with it for 2 or ideally 4 weeks so you can get some good data. Based on your weight loss you can figure out how much of an impact the change made.

How tall are you? I can figure out your BMR to give you an idea of how many calories you are burning at a sedentary rate. That would be the lowest amount of calories you burn without doing much of anything. From that rate, you can figure out how many calories you need to burn in order to figure out your deficit. For instance, my BMR is 1745 based on the amount of exercise I do, which is moderate because I workout 5-6 times a week. I burn about 500 calories each workout in an hour (I have a heart rate monitor). If I eat 1500 calories in a day and burn 500 calories, and my BMR is 1745, I have a deficit of 745 calories. If I do the same thing all week, I have a deficit of 5215. Because 3500 calories = 1 pound, I will have lost 1.5 pounds that week.

Once you have your BMR, you can do the math and figure out how many calories you are burning each day. Your calories burn sounds too high.

yarwell wrote: »

SwtKittN wrote: »

I'm at a 14,000 calorie deficit this week, that's 4 pounds. I lost 2. I'm not sure if I should be just ignoring what MFP and my fitbit say and strive towards X amount of calories a day, X amount of fat a day, X amount of protein. I have no idea what my macros should be set at and I don't have a clue how to figure it out.

This is my fitbit link if it's any help https://www.fitbit.com/user/3CT3PL pretty sure it's not private but if it is and someone could show me how to change it I will. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. At least any advice other than be happy with 1-2 pounds a week because I have tried for a month or two and I'm tired of going in every week to get weighed and pretend like I'm satisfied with how things are going.

Not sure Fitbit does "public" but i made a friend request.

There's a general problem with heavy people and the equations used by MFP etc in that they can overestimate the calorie burn as there weren't many (any ?) people of 300+ lbs used to define the equations. In this case the Katch McArdle formula might be the best as it is based on lean body mass - I estimate your BMR is about 1600 calories a day based on this, which is about 1,000 less than other weight based equations would come up with.

Working from that, if you were reasonably active you might use 2500 calories a day so if you were to eat 1500 the deficit would indeed be 1000 and give you 2 lbs/week of loss.

If you can find a facility and the funding @SwtKittN I would get your metabolic rate measured at a sports science centre, metabolic clinic, YMCA, gym, University or whatever. This involves laying at rest and breathing through a mask into a gas analyser. With that you know your resting metabolic rate and can start to accurately determine the mathematics of what's going on. Perhaps the Doctor can help with that.

Meantime if you can eat a fixed 1500 calories every day regardless of exercise and get in 100 grams of protein per day with at least 30 grams in each of three meals I think you will do better. Use whatever walking and movement you can to increase the expenditure but don't eat any more - you want to be eating body fat not food where possible.

Another option to discuss with the Doctor might be a 6-8 week prescribed VLCD (very low carb diet) which would give you a faster loss rate to set you on the road, you could do spells of this on and off with calorie control in between times. Good Luck.

^^^^^
THIS is very good advice. With that amount you need to lose, you have a lot of wiggle room. You can burn off a lot more fat in a day than a 250 pound person can because you have a lot more fat to burn. Find a calorie level that works for you, 1500 sounds like it might work, and that you can comply with long-term. While VLCD are generally not that great, short term when one has a lot to lose and monitored by a doctor they have their place for people who have a lot to lose.

Just a note, you are doing great so far. The journey looks long, but you are making progress. Keep going.

First off, congrats on your progress so far!

I can't see your diary so I'm just going to throw everything I can think of based on my own experience and you can take whatever you like from it

Last June I tipped the scales just under 300lbs, I came back to MFP (I had joined before but fell of of it) after losing 10 lbs and since then have lost a total of 95lbs (yay me!) so I will impart what I have done as someone else who was/is working with big numbers.

Counting/weighting food is awesome; keep it up, it is the crux of your weightloss.
I try to make sure at least 5 out of 7 days a week my supper is no less than 50% veggies. Stir fry, casserole, stew, spaghetti squash with veggie laden sauce, there's a million ways to do it. Keep your eating varied so you can keep up with all those macros, healthy fats, protein, iron, calcium, etc.
Lots of water, early in the day. I have found that I feel fuller through the day with it. Do you *need* water to lose weight? Of course not. Placebo effect though it may be, I say if it ain't broke...

Fitbit is great; keeps you aware of your activity level. That being said, it's numbers are not gospel and MFP really over compensates for calories burned. I deactivated mine from adding info to MFP months ago ( I actually gave it to a friend who is just beginning her weight loss journey because it really is a great starter tool) because I found it mucky-mucked with the numbers too much.
Movement is important on any level, but if you really want to see the benefit of being active it's your heartrate that will put a huge dent in weight loss. It's easy to find what your target heart rate should be online, for me the absolute max is 180 bpm, I shoot for 150 but normally 140 is what I maintain. I'm not a lover of working out and I have some health issues that prevent me from serious attempts but you can elevate your heart rate even by walking. You can talk but can't sing is a good range; don't rely on counters, just take your pulse for ten seconds and multiply by 6. Twenty minutes, three times a week, it will make a staggering difference. Last December, my doctor gave me the go-ahead to come off my blood pressure medication, and now my average bp is 110/75 with a resting pulse of of 60-65!!! This is from someone who had to take Amlodipine to control blood pressure, that's the kind of difference it makes.

While aiming to lose more than two pounds per week is not a great idea, the reality is you are working with big numbers; big numbers on the scale and big numbers in your calorie allotment. You are not at a stage where you need to incorporate your calories burned and it wont compromise your health if you don't, so don't. If you only have 40 lbs to lose or weight train daily, yes you need to eat some calories back, but you can lowball it with what MFP gives you, not tack on what movement you do, and still lose weight healthily. Some may poo-poo that, but I don't care, it's what I did and I'm the healthiest I've been in years. If you go that route, you will probably see a bigger number than 2 lbs. Now weight loss isn't linear, but in the beginning my body responded insanely to all the changes (because I was working with a pretty big number too) that I averaged 3-4 lbs per week. It has slowed now, and that's cool because I'm not looking to hurt myself, but in the beginning it was motivating to see some pretty quick results. just remember to view it as the bonus that it is, not a standard you should expect.

Make sure you get plenty of sleep, sounds basic but willpower is finite and it needs to recharge, make sure yours has time to so you can face each day with a fresh amount of zeal to make good choices.

NEVER beat yourself up if you falter; you don't need to win every single battle in order to win the war. NEVER "start again tomorrow/Monday/after your birthday/etc"; start again the next time food is going in your mouth.

Cheat days are a sham that self sabotage; how can you expect to learn to eat in a balanced and moderate way if you categorize food as good/bad or treat/proper? You want pie? Then eat pie. Learn to make pie something that you can eat and still be happy with your choices. When you disarm food you can keep control over it. I did not get to 300lbs because I was good with moderation; you did not get to 400+lbs because you are good with moderation. It's the hardest part of the changes but it is the most beneficial. Do it slowly, but do it.
Also, your body is a very shrewd accountant when it comes to calories, you may give yourself a time out but your body couldn't care less.

And flowing off of that last one, be realistic. If you hate raw vegetables don't stock your fridge with celery and carrot sticks; complete recipe for disaster. It's about figuring out how to make what you like to eat work for you. It's about being sensible, yet satiated. Yes, food is fuel and all that but man has long associated food with celebration and victory and positive emotion and we will continue to; moderation and restraint is your goal. Moving around more to help your body burn some of those calories is your goal. Good choices beget more good choices.
Last night, I picked up some of those Special K sour cream and onion cracker chips; my daughter wanted to watch a movie so I thought I'd like some munchies. Already a better choice than what I would have made a year ago. I ate a little lighter at dinner, opting for just a big salad with my cheeseburger instead of a baked potato, watched our movie and when I went out to the livingroom this morning my unopened box of chips was still sitting next to the sofa. No denying; no wrestling; I simply forgot about the d*mn things! Hahaha.
All the work, all the struggle, all the hard choices, they WILL become habits. Eventually, you won't eat the pie because, eh, you don't really want the pie. Feeling full will become heavy and awful, feeling not hungry will be the norm. Before you know it, you'll walk out in the morning and see that you forgot you even bought chips, because you never felt hungry through the movie and you no longer associate eating with anything other than being hungry.

I know it's long and all over the place and probably way more than what you were looking for but I hope giving you all my tools on my journey can help you make your own that's just as successful!
I want everyone to feel as good as I feel; to be as proud as I am in their own accomplishments. I have faltered; I have held at maintenance for weeks on end because I just couldn't find the stamina to push any harder, but as long as I don't give up, I win. And we all get to win, if we want too.

So good luck! Feel free to friend me, and hopefully I will see YOU on the underside of 400 lbs

From what you are saying, I would suggest you don't change anything... just keep on keepin' on. When you make it too hard you risk over-facing yourself and just "giving up". It sounds like you are doing great. Keep it up!