Gaining weight 700 cal below TDEE
Replies
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I looked in your diary for February and March. February is unlogged and March has 20 unlogged days and 1 partially logged day. You don't know what you are consuming but if you are gaining weight as you self-report you are eating in a surplus. There is just no way around that fact. Invest in a $20 food scale and weigh all caloric solids on it. Measuring cups and spoons are exclusively for caloric liquids. Log every day.
I was skeptical as well when I first started 3.5 years ago. I was gonna prove a mean bodybuilder wrong. Turns out I was wrong. I can lose, gain or maintain weight by weighing my food and adjusting my calories accordingly and I'm a 44 year old perimenopausal woman with a bum thyroid.
I hope you give it an honest try. What do you have to lose except the pounds?4 -
billglitch wrote: »Hello. Brand new to the forums, but I've been using MFP for a while now.
I'll get right to the point. I should be losing weight, and I'm gaining. Something is wrong, and I wanted some opinions on what it could be.
My TDEE is around 2550 according to various online calculators. My diary is open, but I'm not sure exactly what stats you can see. Male, 31, 5'11" 220 pounds, "lightly" active at work (I guess).
I have punched the (surely very popular) 2 pound per week loss goal into MFP, and it calculates 1700 to acheive this. Sure, not a bad place to start. 20% off my TDEE is 2040 so an extra 340 below that would be great.
I'm doing "OK" at sticking to the calorie goals. It's hard, and honestly most days I end up closer to 1800. So, according to that, I should be losing *some* weight. I am gaining 1-2 pounds, steadily, every week. According to MFP, I would have to be eating 3240 calories, daily, to get a 1 pound gain per week. I weigh myself daily (sometimes 2-3 times daily, hoping it was some kind of hydration level fluke or something). Body fat % on the scale (it's one of those that shoots an eletric signal through your feet) has gone up by about 1%, reading 25.5% currently.
I can't be eating double what I think I am. A good deal of the food I eat is scanned by barcode, and it's pretty easy to tell if you're eating a 6oz steak or 2 tablespoons of salad dressing. It's not like I'm absentmindedly chewing on whole sticks of butter here and logging them as 1 tablespoon servings. I have significantly reduced my soda intake (a serious hardship for me, and I can't stand diet soda at all) - almost every meal is with water. Alcoholic beverages are down to about once a year.
I am alternating between being depressed about this and being outright furious. What the heck, body?! What are we doing here?!
I am by no means an expert, but I decided to lose weight in Jan using low carb eating. The good thing about it is you dont feel hungry. look into it. I was a 355 and am down under 315 now. I am also eating about 1200 to 1550 cals. My carbs are between 10 and 50 g per day. None or little of the following ...potatoes, bread, rice, pasta ,cookies, soda
low carb=low calories by default.
I did low carb and always felt "empty" I would never suggest that for someone who is lifting either.
If low carb == low calories, then how do people put on gains from lifting while on keto?0 -
coreyreichle wrote: »billglitch wrote: »Hello. Brand new to the forums, but I've been using MFP for a while now.
I'll get right to the point. I should be losing weight, and I'm gaining. Something is wrong, and I wanted some opinions on what it could be.
My TDEE is around 2550 according to various online calculators. My diary is open, but I'm not sure exactly what stats you can see. Male, 31, 5'11" 220 pounds, "lightly" active at work (I guess).
I have punched the (surely very popular) 2 pound per week loss goal into MFP, and it calculates 1700 to acheive this. Sure, not a bad place to start. 20% off my TDEE is 2040 so an extra 340 below that would be great.
I'm doing "OK" at sticking to the calorie goals. It's hard, and honestly most days I end up closer to 1800. So, according to that, I should be losing *some* weight. I am gaining 1-2 pounds, steadily, every week. According to MFP, I would have to be eating 3240 calories, daily, to get a 1 pound gain per week. I weigh myself daily (sometimes 2-3 times daily, hoping it was some kind of hydration level fluke or something). Body fat % on the scale (it's one of those that shoots an eletric signal through your feet) has gone up by about 1%, reading 25.5% currently.
I can't be eating double what I think I am. A good deal of the food I eat is scanned by barcode, and it's pretty easy to tell if you're eating a 6oz steak or 2 tablespoons of salad dressing. It's not like I'm absentmindedly chewing on whole sticks of butter here and logging them as 1 tablespoon servings. I have significantly reduced my soda intake (a serious hardship for me, and I can't stand diet soda at all) - almost every meal is with water. Alcoholic beverages are down to about once a year.
I am alternating between being depressed about this and being outright furious. What the heck, body?! What are we doing here?!
I am by no means an expert, but I decided to lose weight in Jan using low carb eating. The good thing about it is you dont feel hungry. look into it. I was a 355 and am down under 315 now. I am also eating about 1200 to 1550 cals. My carbs are between 10 and 50 g per day. None or little of the following ...potatoes, bread, rice, pasta ,cookies, soda
low carb=low calories by default.
I did low carb and always felt "empty" I would never suggest that for someone who is lifting either.
If low carb == low calories, then how do people put on gains from lifting while on keto?
a surplus of calories and a progressive load lifting program and protein to help repair muscles just like someone not doing keto or HFLC.
hmmm...I get a feeling that this was not a "real" question.
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Your logging is all over the place. It looks like you're typing in what you ate, and picking the first thing that pops up in the database. You need to completely revamp your way of logging or you won't know how many calories you're eating. Watch the videos people posting about weight of food and calorie content.0
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »Cook at home. Ditch the sugar water. Eat more vegetables.
Or just log food accurately and stay below goal.1 -
Disregard everything you've read in this thread, here's the answer you're looking for:
You are a special snowflake. Your body's biological functions are so unlike any other that no matter what you do, you can't lose weight. In fact, your body is so uniquely efficient that it can produce extra energy to store when it takes in less energy than it needs. You will soon be contacted by physicists to be studied as you break the basic laws of energy.
WHY THEM AND NOT ME?!0 -
I know there's a lot of attitude in my posts, but the point I'm trying to make is that I can't be overeating my calorie goal by double and not realizing it. That's what I would have to be doing to gain the amount of weight I have gained in a month's time.
There's a relatively simple way to test this out. Fancy being part of a science experiment of one?
Given your stats and current intake (irrespective of the lack of exercise) you should be losing weight without question. A month would generally be sufficient for natural fluctuations to be accounted for on the scale (ignore the home body fat reading though - they are next to useless.)
Now this is going to prove a little boring, and possibly a bit expensive, but it can put your mind at rest so it may be possibly worth the investment.
There are numerous companies out there who market pre packaged meals / meal replacements and so on where they state they give accurate calorie counts (although they can be a little off the calorie level you will be keeping should budget for this.) Many of these companies target sports nutrition as well so it doesn't have to be poor nutritional choice supermarket ready meals.
For two weeks eat 1,800 calories per day with these products only. See if you lose weight.
You want to know what my money is on?
Im surprised you have any money if you think you need to purchase special food programs to lose weight.
Get the food scale and surprise yourself. Weigh pasta and rice dry before cooking, weigh it after and see the difference. I was so sure I knew what I was eating- until I weighed it.0 -
I know there's a lot of attitude in my posts, but the point I'm trying to make is that I can't be overeating my calorie goal by double and not realizing it. That's what I would have to be doing to gain the amount of weight I have gained in a month's time.
There's a relatively simple way to test this out. Fancy being part of a science experiment of one?
Given your stats and current intake (irrespective of the lack of exercise) you should be losing weight without question. A month would generally be sufficient for natural fluctuations to be accounted for on the scale (ignore the home body fat reading though - they are next to useless.)
Now this is going to prove a little boring, and possibly a bit expensive, but it can put your mind at rest so it may be possibly worth the investment.
There are numerous companies out there who market pre packaged meals / meal replacements and so on where they state they give accurate calorie counts (although they can be a little off the calorie level you will be keeping should budget for this.) Many of these companies target sports nutrition as well so it doesn't have to be poor nutritional choice supermarket ready meals.
For two weeks eat 1,800 calories per day with these products only. See if you lose weight.
You want to know what my money is on?
Im surprised you have any money if you think you need to purchase special food programs to lose weight.
Get the food scale and surprise yourself. Weigh pasta and rice dry before cooking, weigh it after and see the difference. I was so sure I knew what I was eating- until I weighed it.
I think that poster was just pointing out that he's eating more than 1800 calories per day. Basically if he was on a strict, calorie controlled diet (like prepackaged, pre weighed food) he'd lose.4 -
Disregard everything you've read in this thread, here's the answer you're looking for:
You are a special snowflake. Your body's biological functions are so unlike any other that no matter what you do, you can't lose weight. In fact, your body is so uniquely efficient that it can produce extra energy to store when it takes in less energy than it needs. You will soon be contacted by physicists to be studied as you break the basic laws of energy.
WHY THEM AND NOT ME?!
I always think of Captain America and how (in the movie at least) they state his metabolism is 4x that of a normal person's. So if a normal sedentary guy is like, what, 2,200 calories? That's at least 8,800 calories, not accounting for his muscle mass and his non-sedentary lifestyle. How is the guy not eating all day? Also, I want to be able to eat 8,000 calories a day...sure it would get expensive. But it would deliciously expensive. Also the movie message of the first movie seems very pro-steroid...just sayin'...
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Hello. Brand new to the forums, but I've been using MFP for a while now.
Hi, welcome to Wonderland.I'll get right to the point. I should be losing weight, and I'm gaining. Something is wrong, and I wanted some opinions on what it could be.
My TDEE is around 2550 according to various online calculators. My diary is open, but I'm not sure exactly what stats you can see. Male, 31, 5'11" 220 pounds, "lightly" active at work (I guess).
Online calculators are estimates and not every 5'11" 220 pound male who is "lightly" active will burn the same number of calories. You can pretty much bet that your TDEE is not what you think it is when you start. Overtime you can figure it out by tweaking the number in comparison to what you lose or gain over time.I have punched the (surely very popular) 2 pound per week loss goal into MFP, and it calculates 1700 to acheive this. Sure, not a bad place to start. 20% off my TDEE is 2040 so an extra 340 below that would be great.
Why do you want to lose so fast? Are you really sticking with that number?
I'm doing "OK" at sticking to the calorie goals. It's hard, and honestly most days I end up closer to 1800. So, according to that, I should be losing *some* weight. I am gaining 1-2 pounds, steadily, every week. According to MFP, I would have to be eating 3240 calories, daily, to get a 1 pound gain per week. I weigh myself daily (sometimes 2-3 times daily, hoping it was some kind of hydration level fluke or something). Body fat % on the scale (it's one of those that shoots an eletric signal through your feet) has gone up by about 1%, reading 25.5% currently.
Oh, okay, no you're not sticking with your goal. Maybe adjust to something you can stick with?
Ignore the body fat% on the scales. They're useless for that.I can't be eating double what I think I am. A good deal of the food I eat is scanned by barcode, and it's pretty easy to tell if you're eating a 6oz steak or 2 tablespoons of salad dressing. It's not like I'm absentmindedly chewing on whole sticks of butter here and logging them as 1 tablespoon servings. I have significantly reduced my soda intake (a serious hardship for me, and I can't stand diet soda at all) - almost every meal is with water.
My apologies but this had me laughing a bit. Not at you so much as because we've all been there. Yea, if you're estimating by eyeballing you're wrong and way underestimating your calories intake.Alcoholic beverages are down to about once a year.
Alcoholic beverages are down to once a year? So you've been at this a year?
I am alternating between being depressed about this and being outright furious. What the heck, body?! What are we doing here?!
Garbage (data) in/Garbage (results) out . . .3 -
So it's been repeated but the reality is that either you're incredibly special and your body doesn't work like 99.9% of the world's does . . . . or you're not being honest with yourself.
Honesty about what you're eating is probably the single hardest, and single most important, thing you can do in this journey. If you aren't honest with yourself about everything you're consuming then you can't expect to have great results.
As others said, you're logging generic entries . . . do you really know what's in that homemade side caesar salad?? Where did it come from? What kind of dressing did they use? Did it have bacon on it? Croutons?? Cheese? You just don't know.
If you're going to eat something, eat it, enjoy it and own it. Don't plead ignorance when calorie counts are wrong in MFP . . . you ate it, you own it. I feel like while your logging is off, the actual issue is that you aren't being honest about what you eat - either on purpose, or by accident - and that's causing a lot of issues for you, like gaining weight instead of losing.4 -
blues4miles wrote: »Disregard everything you've read in this thread, here's the answer you're looking for:
You are a special snowflake. Your body's biological functions are so unlike any other that no matter what you do, you can't lose weight. In fact, your body is so uniquely efficient that it can produce extra energy to store when it takes in less energy than it needs. You will soon be contacted by physicists to be studied as you break the basic laws of energy.
WHY THEM AND NOT ME?!
I always think of Captain America and how (in the movie at least) they state his metabolism is 4x that of a normal person's. So if a normal sedentary guy is like, what, 2,200 calories? That's at least 8,800 calories, not accounting for his muscle mass and his non-sedentary lifestyle. How is the guy not eating all day? Also, I want to be able to eat 8,000 calories a day...sure it would get expensive. But it would deliciously expensive. Also the movie message of the first movie seems very pro-steroid...just sayin'...
Haha. Well at least the Flash series got that right, Barry is eating a lot.0 -
Disregard everything you've read in this thread, here's the answer you're looking for:
You are a special snowflake. Your body's biological functions are so unlike any other that no matter what you do, you can't lose weight. In fact, your body is so uniquely efficient that it can produce extra energy to store when it takes in less energy than it needs. You will soon be contacted by physicists to be studied as you break the basic laws of energy.
WHY THEM AND NOT ME?!
You get yours later.
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Activity level is set to "light" in MFP. I work in sales, on my feet about 90% of the time, lots of moving around, lifting and stacking heavy boxes. I sweat hard enough most days I need to get something to wipe my face so it doesn't drip on my shirt. I'd say "lightly" active would be generous for what I actually do most days.
I realize didn't mention exercise. It's usually only once per week (yeah I know, I should be exercising at least 30 hours a day, 8 days a week according to half the broscience on the internet out here), and it's about an hour per session. I keep my heartrate 80-90% of max HR for my age/weight for 30 minutes+, then 30 minutes of lifting. I do not eat-back the calories MFP says I "earned" while exercising.
So, two people have suggested I weigh my food. I'm a little skeptical this will actually change anything. I don't think the grocery store is going to give me a 32oz steak and charge me for a 6oz. I'm also pretty sure it didn't mysteriously grow while it was in my refrigerator. I know how much a cup of milk is, or a tablespoon of butter.
I know there's a lot of attitude in my posts, but the point I'm trying to make is that I can't be overeating my calorie goal by double and not realizing it. That's what I would have to be doing to gain the amount of weight I have gained in a month's time.
you would be surprised what weighing will accomplish. that 32oz steak you are talking about? could be more than 32oz could be less,packaging doesnt have to be 100% ,a cup of milk could be 10oz or more depending on the glass or cup you use including a measuring cup,a teaspoon of butter can be off too. weighing for me was a real eye opener. same with fruit. you can take 2 apples around the same size and when you weight one can be up to 40g or more larger than the other.all those calories do add up over time.and like another poster stated oils and stuff in foods add up quick.0 -
I know there's a lot of attitude in my posts, but the point I'm trying to make is that I can't be overeating my calorie goal by double and not realizing it. That's what I would have to be doing to gain the amount of weight I have gained in a month's time.
There's a relatively simple way to test this out. Fancy being part of a science experiment of one?
Given your stats and current intake (irrespective of the lack of exercise) you should be losing weight without question. A month would generally be sufficient for natural fluctuations to be accounted for on the scale (ignore the home body fat reading though - they are next to useless.)
Now this is going to prove a little boring, and possibly a bit expensive, but it can put your mind at rest so it may be possibly worth the investment.
There are numerous companies out there who market pre packaged meals / meal replacements and so on where they state they give accurate calorie counts (although they can be a little off the calorie level you will be keeping should budget for this.) Many of these companies target sports nutrition as well so it doesn't have to be poor nutritional choice supermarket ready meals.
For two weeks eat 1,800 calories per day with these products only. See if you lose weight.
You want to know what my money is on?Im surprised you have any money if you think you need to purchase special food programs to lose weight.
Get the food scale and surprise yourself. Weigh pasta and rice dry before cooking, weigh it after and see the difference. I was so sure I knew what I was eating- until I weighed it.
It was suggested as an alternative to weighing.
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OP, in addition to getting a food scale, which i highly recommend, I peeked at the last three days of your diary and have some observations:
- A lot of "takeaway" food. While published nutrition info for restaurants is a great way to make smarter choices, that info is based on how an item is typically made. If the person who puts your sandwich together has a heavy hand, they can easily add hundreds of calories. Eating out sometimes is fine, but the more often you do that, the less sure you can be about your calorie total.
- Generic entries - like "dinner roll", "caesar side salad". Did you create that entry or did you find it in the database? There is a ton of incorrect info in the database. Make sure you are using correct entries.
Maybe one of those things is not enough to add enough calories, but combining all these issues together - eyeballing portions, using generic entries created by other users, and depending on restaurant employees to match a published calorie count - could definitely make a difference.
Once your diary is as accurate as possible and you give it a few weeks to see results, then if your results are still not quite right, it will be easier to pinpoint the problem. Good luck!
@adavis539 when I eat out I bring back half the entree and weigh it. I am always shocked at how many calories are in restaurant servings. They are often double what I would expect. Try eating out less and see what happens.
10 Thirty-Minute Dinners For Busy Weeknights0 -
Pretty sure OP has stomped their foot and run off because we keep telling them what they don't want to hear.2
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"I am by no means an expert, but I decided to lose weight in Jan using low carb eating. The good thing about it is you dont feel hungry. look into it. I was a 355 and am down under 315 now. I am also eating about 1200 to 1550 cals. My carbs are between 10 and 50 g per day. None or little of the following ...potatoes, bread, rice, pasta ,cookies, soda"
I'm glad the above is working for you, but 10-50 g of Carbs is ridiculously low. I started my exercise and diet program on March 1st. Feb 29th I weighed 308# Monday(the 11th) I weighed in at 280.0 I put myself on a low calorie diet. 1200-1400 total for the day..and I burn off about 650-700 doing mainly cardio. I have a food scale, but I don't use it for very much. I find no need to. (Not saying it is a bad thing) The important thing is willpower..you have to get serious about losing weight. A Low Calorie diet will naturally keep your carbs low..but not to super low amounts. I have no idea what you could eat all day to only get 10g of Carbs?
to the original poster-Find what works for you and get serious. Take out food and half hearted attempts at a food diary will not cut it.
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Actually, no. I weighed myself before bed last night and was too angry at myself to sleep, so I wrote those two posts. Then I woke up and had to work 12 hours straight (with no lunch break, mind you) because one co-worker no-showed and the other started vomiting and ended up going home.Pretty sure OP has stomped their foot and run off because we keep telling them what they don't want to hear.
I feel like I owe this thread an apology. I was full of anger when I wrote my posts last night, and now I am full of shame. I see lots of advice, which is exactly what I was asking for. I wanted to thank anybody who took the time to respond for their time.
I should have picked a better time to "come out" with my open diary and bare my self to the internet. Yes, my diary entries in the last few days show increasingly poor food choices. I feel this is a reflection of my depressed self, on the subject of my increasing mass and girth. It's that feedback cycle of eating and depression and more eating.
As for the "incomplete" entries, I disagree. Anybody who is looking at my diary are seeing the all the foods I have eaten in the last month. Well, 23 days so far on this streak - last year I had a much longer streak, I don't know how to see how long that was. I can answer for every entry you see. 3/10/16, I ate 410 calories in the morning and literally nothing else until the following day because I felt like I would vomit if I ate anything from about 11am until I woke up the next morning. Stomach bug I guess?
For the "inaccurate" entries, sure. I'm guilty there. I do sometimes pick entries like "french bread roll 1.3oz", but it's because I ate a small portion of french bread from a much larger roll. "Taco bell bean burrito"? Not from taco bell, from a school fundraiser who was selling bean burritos. Close enough. "Applebees bacon cheeseburger" for 970 calories? Not from Applebees, made in a gastropub where I had lunch with my family. Gotta be close enough. I know the steak I ate 4/12/16 was 6oz because it was a 12oz steak when I bought it, and I split it right down the middle to share with my wife.
I do cook most of my meals at home, and I do approximate some of the meals because I don't want to spend hours logging. I also frequently make custom recipes to log, based on all the ingredients and the portions sizes I consumed, relative to the entire batch. I do know that the caesar salad I ate for dinner last night had about 2oz of french bread, made into croutons with herbs, spices, and not more than half a tablespoon of olive oil. It had the exact brand of salad dressing I logged on it, I approximated it to be 3 tbsp. I know it wasn't half a cup of dressing. I also ate a large apple a little later, which seems like a lot at 110 calories and it's because of all the sugar I'm sure.
Weighing every ounce of food that I need seems seriously obsessive-compulsive to me, but what I'm doing obviously isn't working. I will consider a food scale, but I'll definitely feel like a weirdo when I use it. I'm aware I am not a special snowflake.
I'm also sure I can't possibly answer all of the opinions offered. I'm not even really trying to argue here, just vent my frustration. Again, I am sincere in my thanks for everybody who has posted. I'm trying here, just need some help.8
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