Gah, not losing the weight!
sinman0531
Posts: 6 Member
So I've been tracking my calories, and exercising for about 3 weeks. On average I burn about 450 cals/day. No rest days. I know it's not a lot but I spend a total of 3 hours per day commuting so it's hard to fit ANY life in. My calorie count per day is 1800, and most days (with exercise) I have 200-300 calories left over. In three weeks I have lost a whopping 1 pound, when all of my exercise is cardio. I have a couple pairs of pants that are falling off, but my waist measurement hasn't gone down either.
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So question, Have you been weighing your food to track it? How are you getting your 450 calories that you burn? My guess is that you have been under counting your calories you consume and/or over counting the exercise you add in. However losing 1 pound in 3 weeks is not bad. You seem to eating closer to your maintenance calories than really cutting. It is very easy to get up to 1000 calorie swing by just estimating your food portions. I would really encourage you to use a food scale.
How are you weighing? Did you weigh every day and see this one pound drop over three weeks? Remember that your weight can bounce around daily from any number of things so this can also add to the variance.1 -
If you're not losing, or losing more slowly than you think you should based on the calories you're tracking, it almost always means you're underestimating how much you're eating or overestimating how much you're burning. Or most of the time, it's some of both.
Like Casper said, if you're not already, use a food scale and log EVERYTHING you eat. Also keep in mind that all exercise calorie burn numbers are very rough estimates. Many people eat back 1/2 or so of those calories in order to make sure they aren't going over or cutting it too close.1 -
For the most part I'm using the recommended serving size for whatever it is I'm eating; for example, I prepare quinoa and the serving size according to the package is x. For proteins I'm guestimating but I round up.
I weigh in once a week and this is the first time I've seen the scale move.
I work at a barn, on top of my usual walking the dog, walking around the building at work, etc. I could lift 50 pounds before, so I don't consider anything I do horse related to be muscle building....just a LOT of walking from point a to b in Florida heat.
I forgot to mention I am also going mostly Paleo, so I've got a LOT of protein and veggies (carbs) in my diet. I do cheat and use foods like brown rice, no bread though.0 -
1) open your diary so we can help
2) give us the stats on current to goal weight, height etc.1 -
sinman0531 wrote: »For the most part I'm using the recommended serving size for whatever it is I'm eating; for example, I prepare quinoa and the serving size according to the package is x. For proteins I'm guestimating but I round up.
I weigh in once a week and this is the first time I've seen the scale move.
I work at a barn, on top of my usual walking the dog, walking around the building at work, etc. I could lift 50 pounds before, so I don't consider anything I do horse related to be muscle building....just a LOT of walking from point a to b in Florida heat.
I forgot to mention I am also going mostly Paleo, so I've got a LOT of protein and veggies (carbs) in my diet. I do cheat and use foods like brown rice, no bread though.
Yeah, but do you use a food scale to weigh every little bit of food that you eat? Guestimating/cups/spoons as well as using incorrect database entries and overestimating activity/exercise are the number 1 reasons why one doesn't lose weight calorie counting.
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cerise_noir wrote: »
Yeah, but do you use a food scale to weigh every little bit of food that you eat? Guestimating/cups/spoons as well as using incorrect database entries and overestimating activity/exercise are the number 1 reasons why one doesn't lose weight calorie counting.
For about 95% of what I'm eating, I don't need a scale. Dry ingredients are measured in dry form by cups, not ounces. For things like spinach, mixed veggies, etc...if it fits in the measuring cup, 8oz=1 cup. Even meat, which I buy from the counter because I live by myself, you can do basic math and find out the weight of what I'm eating (6oz slab of salmon I divided into 3rds for freezing, 2oz, etc.) If I'm unsure I round up. As far as exercise goes, according to the various calculators on the internet I burn something like 3500 calories in a 7 day period...I round that waaaay down, even including just plain sweating off weight. I walk about a mile and a half per day measured by pedometer.
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8 fluid ounces is not the same as 8 ounces as a weight measurement. Watch this video to see the inaccuracy... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpHykP6e_Uk you can be eating many more calories than you think.
Use measuring cups and spoons for liquids, scale for solids.4 -
1. If it's been less than 3 weeks or so since you last saw a drop on the scale, don't sweat it! Normal fluctuations happen and unfortunately sometimes we stall for a week or two even when we're doing everything right. Give your body some time to catch up with the changes you're making.
2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.
3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.
4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.
5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.
6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.
7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.
8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.
9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.
I would also recommend any of these quick videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVjWPclrWVY
https://youtu.be/vjKPIcI51lU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XpHykP6e_Uk 3 -
sinman0531 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
Yeah, but do you use a food scale to weigh every little bit of food that you eat? Guestimating/cups/spoons as well as using incorrect database entries and overestimating activity/exercise are the number 1 reasons why one doesn't lose weight calorie counting.
For about 95% of what I'm eating, I don't need a scale. Dry ingredients are measured in dry form by cups, not ounces. For things like spinach, mixed veggies, etc...if it fits in the measuring cup, 8oz=1 cup. Even meat, which I buy from the counter because I live by myself, you can do basic math and find out the weight of what I'm eating (6oz slab of salmon I divided into 3rds for freezing, 2oz, etc.) If I'm unsure I round up. As far as exercise goes, according to the various calculators on the internet I burn something like 3500 calories in a 7 day period...I round that waaaay down, even including just plain sweating off weight. I walk about a mile and a half per day measured by pedometer.
The reason so many people talk about using the scale instead of measuring cups is because how much something weighs on a scale is an absolute value but how much food fits into a container is not. Take watermelon, as an example, even though it's not very high calorie. If I cut watermelon into one inch cubes and put those cubes into a cup container I'm going to end up eating less watermelon than if I cut the pieces into 1/2" cubes or cut a piece of watermelon that exactly fit into the cup.2 -
sinman0531 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
Yeah, but do you use a food scale to weigh every little bit of food that you eat? Guestimating/cups/spoons as well as using incorrect database entries and overestimating activity/exercise are the number 1 reasons why one doesn't lose weight calorie counting.
For about 95% of what I'm eating, I don't need a scale. Dry ingredients are measured in dry form by cups, not ounces. For things like spinach, mixed veggies, etc...if it fits in the measuring cup, 8oz=1 cup. Even meat, which I buy from the counter because I live by myself, you can do basic math and find out the weight of what I'm eating (6oz slab of salmon I divided into 3rds for freezing, 2oz, etc.) If I'm unsure I round up. As far as exercise goes, according to the various calculators on the internet I burn something like 3500 calories in a 7 day period...I round that waaaay down, even including just plain sweating off weight. I walk about a mile and a half per day measured by pedometer.
a cup of dry ingredients is not going to be exactly one cup. 8 oz of meat is not going to fit into a measuring cup. a cup of veggies could be more than a serving as well.measuring cups are for liquids only. not dry ingredients. a half cup of oatmeal is usually more than the 40g it states. if you arent losing weight this is why,trust me I learned the hard way and got a scale.1 -
CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »sinman0531 wrote: »cerise_noir wrote: »
Yeah, but do you use a food scale to weigh every little bit of food that you eat? Guestimating/cups/spoons as well as using incorrect database entries and overestimating activity/exercise are the number 1 reasons why one doesn't lose weight calorie counting.
For about 95% of what I'm eating, I don't need a scale. Dry ingredients are measured in dry form by cups, not ounces. For things like spinach, mixed veggies, etc...if it fits in the measuring cup, 8oz=1 cup. Even meat, which I buy from the counter because I live by myself, you can do basic math and find out the weight of what I'm eating (6oz slab of salmon I divided into 3rds for freezing, 2oz, etc.) If I'm unsure I round up. As far as exercise goes, according to the various calculators on the internet I burn something like 3500 calories in a 7 day period...I round that waaaay down, even including just plain sweating off weight. I walk about a mile and a half per day measured by pedometer.
a cup of dry ingredients is not going to be exactly one cup. 8 oz of meat is not going to fit into a measuring cup. a cup of veggies could be more than a serving as well.measuring cups are for liquids only. not dry ingredients. a half cup of oatmeal is usually more than the 40g it states. if you arent losing weight this is why,trust me I learned the hard way and got a scale.
This. Cups and spoons are very inaccurate. The serving on the package may say 100g/1cup, but when that '1 cup' is weighed, it is significantly more than 100g.
The videos diannethegeek posted will demonstrate exactly that.
OP, I weigh everything because if I don't, I don't lose weight, which is the problem you're having right now.1 -
A different suggestion:
So your exercise is the walking around & work that you do? How have you set up MFP with your activity level? If you have set it at active (and it does sound like you are pretty active with work like that), then it may have already given you those calories in your daily allowance, so you maybe shouldn't be adding exercise calories unless you are doing even more exercise on top of that.
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A different suggestion:
So your exercise is the walking around & work that you do? How have you set up MFP with your activity level? If you have set it at active (and it does sound like you are pretty active with work like that), then it may have already given you those calories in your daily allowance, so you maybe shouldn't be adding exercise calories unless you are doing even more exercise on top of that.
I have it set as moderately active...a mile in a day is not active at all IMO. I have a background of Crossfit and dog training where I easily walked 7 miles via pedometer every day....so even though it's hard to fit into my current lifestyle, it's easy.
This is not the first time I've lost weight (I'm coming back from an injury now) and I've never had to use a scale for food previously. A clean diet in any capacity has worked for me.
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sinman0531 wrote: »A different suggestion:
So your exercise is the walking around & work that you do? How have you set up MFP with your activity level? If you have set it at active (and it does sound like you are pretty active with work like that), then it may have already given you those calories in your daily allowance, so you maybe shouldn't be adding exercise calories unless you are doing even more exercise on top of that.
I have it set as moderately active...a mile in a day is not active at all IMO. I have a background of Crossfit and dog training where I easily walked 7 miles via pedometer every day....so even though it's hard to fit into my current lifestyle, it's easy.
This is not the first time I've lost weight (I'm coming back from an injury now) and I've never had to use a scale for food previously. A clean diet in any capacity has worked for me.
but according to your thread title and your original post, it's not working. So perhaps entertain the thought of making the above suggested changes to your current situation rather than your past life?6 -
sinman0531 wrote: »A different suggestion:
So your exercise is the walking around & work that you do? How have you set up MFP with your activity level? If you have set it at active (and it does sound like you are pretty active with work like that), then it may have already given you those calories in your daily allowance, so you maybe shouldn't be adding exercise calories unless you are doing even more exercise on top of that.
I have it set as moderately active...a mile in a day is not active at all IMO. I have a background of Crossfit and dog training where I easily walked 7 miles via pedometer every day....so even though it's hard to fit into my current lifestyle, it's easy.
This is not the first time I've lost weight (I'm coming back from an injury now) and I've never had to use a scale for food previously. A clean diet in any capacity has worked for me.
Well it's clearly NOT working since you posted the thread. Are you even open to recommendations?
With a 3 hours commute, I would highly doubt you would consider the lifestyle as moderately active.1 -
I've only recently set my activity level to moderately active here, and I'm not touching exercise calories with that setting. That's after losing 91lbs and actually being moderately active. That means no less than 8 miles in steps every day for me...and using a fitness tracker with HRM to ensure my TDEE and losses are adding up over a period of time. Typically a moderately active woman burns 650 calories over sedentary levels. A real burn, not an estimation. Seriously, if I do less than 14K steps in a day, I don't hit the level of "moderately active". If you're biking long distances or something, your mileage may vary. This isn't what you're describing.
You are eating more than you think. Measuring isn't working for you right now, and a food scale can change your life. It's is not a hassle and it is immediately rewarding. I also highly recommend you set yourself to sedentary and play with eating only some exercise calories until you figure out where you should be.2 -
I did an experiment a few weeks ago. I wanted a half serving of Greek yogurt so I put my half cup measuring cup on the scale and zeroed it out. By the time I got to the serving size in grams in my measuring cup, I still had about a third of the cup empty.
A quarter cup of shredded cheese is more than the suggested grams for a serving size too.
You end up with enough of these little overages (especially stuff like yogurt and cheese that you could easily pack into a measuring cup to get more) and it could put you closer to maintenance VERY quickly.
So that's why the common mantra here to measure your liquids in cups and spoons and weigh everything else.
ETA: I don't always use measuring cups AND the scale. The only reason I did that was to see how inaccurate my logging was. Typically I just put the bowl/plate im planning to eat from and zero out the scale which also makes for less dishes. Win win1 -
bethannien wrote: »I did an experiment a few weeks ago. I wanted a half serving of Greek yogurt so I put my half cup measuring cup on the scale and zeroed it out. By the time I got to the serving size in grams in my measuring cup, I still had about a third of the cup empty.
A quarter cup of shredded cheese is more than the suggested grams for a serving size too.
You end up with enough of these little overages (especially stuff like yogurt and cheese that you could easily pack into a measuring cup to get more) and it could put you closer to maintenance VERY quickly.
So that's why the common mantra here to measure your liquids in cups and spoons and weigh everything else.
ETA: I don't always use measuring cups AND the scale. The only reason I did that was to see how inaccurate my logging was. Typically I just put the bowl/plate im planning to eat from and zero out the scale which also makes for less dishes. Win win
I was just looking at my 1cup measuring cup. it states on it also 235 ml. now most liquids for a serving is 240ml. so that goes to show you that measuring cups are not accurate. I have a measuring cup(the big pyrex like ones) and a cup(8oz) on it is not accurate either, I weighed water and it was a little over 8oz. its best to weigh on a scale if possible.0 -
Most of us have made this pitfall which is why you have so many responses about the food scale. I also recommend it and would try it. Chances are you are underestimating what your calorie intake truly is.0
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3 weeks 1 pound given the +/- error in weight due to things like water retention seems totally reasonable to me. If you go 6 weeks and aren't seeing a more clear weight loss then I'd be suprised. I think you should just stick with it and give it time.
How to properly weigh and log your intake is good advice and certainly something to follow, but its possible you just haven't given it enough time to show your progress.
In the past when I have attempted to lose weight often I don't actually "see" any weight loss for the first 5 weeks due to changes in water retention associated with increasing my exercise activity level.0
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