Am I working hard enough?

eappsychology
eappsychology Posts: 4 Member
edited December 4 in Health and Weight Loss
I know most will say trust your body, but my head interferes and says I am just using x as an excuse to stop or be lazy.

I consume around 1,300 calories a day, low carb diet (but I can't consume a lot of dairy due to eczema), I work out between 5-6 days a week burning between 300-500 calories. A mixture of hiit, pilates and weight training. Even on the treadmill I make it more of a hiit workout.

Is this enough to lose weight? What am I doing wrong?

Replies

  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    It's not so much about working hard enough, but about working smart enough. What is your estimated TDEE? A sustained calorie deficit is enough to lose weight. If you log correctly, you will know how many calories you are eating. Then you just have to measure your results correctly ("weight loss is not linear") and adjust as needed.
  • eappsychology
    eappsychology Posts: 4 Member
    And if it's over 2,000 meaning I'd be in a deficit but nothings happening, either I'm not working out hard enough, I am not counting properly right?
  • abadvat
    abadvat Posts: 1,241 Member
    1200 with 400 cals workout.... seems low, very low... unless you are a very tiny person that is.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    eappsychology wrote: »
    I know most will say trust your body, but my head interferes and says I am just using x as an excuse to stop or be lazy.

    I consume around 1,300 calories a day, low carb diet (but I can't consume a lot of dairy due to eczema), I work out between 5-6 days a week burning between 300-500 calories. A mixture of hiit, pilates and weight training. Even on the treadmill I make it more of a hiit workout.

    Is this enough to lose weight? What am I doing wrong?

    None of that has anything directly to do with losing weight...exercise is nice and IMO, necessary for general wellness...and there's the added bonus of expending a bit more energy than you otherwise would...but really, for most people there energy expenditure from exercise is a small fraction of what they are otherwise expending just existing and doing the daily.

    If you're not losing weight, you're consuming more calories than you are expending...exercise aside. It's pretty common place to log incorrectly...there are inherent inaccuracies when counting calories...and combine those with selecting erroneous entries from the data base and not verifying entries, guestimating portions, over estimating calorie burns, etc...well, it's pretty easy to be wrong even when you think you're right.
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    eappsychology wrote: »
    And if it's over 2,000 meaning I'd be in a deficit but nothings happening, either I'm not working out hard enough, I am not counting properly right?

    More likely not counting properly or measuring food correctly.
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    How long has it been since you've seen a loss on the scale?

    Are you eating back your exercise calories?

    What are your current height and weight?

    You haven't given us enough information to start to guess what's going on.
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited October 2016
    Is the real issue that you are not losing weight doing what you are doing?

    The exercise has really nothing to do with weight loss.. It does help you enhance your weight loss.. i.e. the calorie deficit some, but exercise is for fitness and health. The weight loss come down to primarily your calorie deficit.

    MFP (NEAT + exercise calories) actually expects you to eat back your exercise calories (a portion thereof to meet the NET calorie goal) so you see if you are exercising on top of low calorie goal and not eating these back your NET calories are low.

    So the questions that need answering are what are your stats, activity level in MFP, and how many pounds did you set MFP to lose each week? Are you weighing all the foods you consume via a food scale?
  • eappsychology
    eappsychology Posts: 4 Member
    I do weigh my foods on a scale. I will have to analyse what I'm mis calculating and cut back more!!
    Well I had been seeing weight loss and then it stopped!
    I understand the basic calorie in and calorie out. It being 80% diet and 20% everything else. And I certainly don't sit on my butt all day and believe just exercising once will be enough. Though it can be hard when in lectures but I ensure I walk a lot between them etc.
    It was more the case is it possible that my workouts aren't burning enough.

    I'm 5"7 and 150 pounds
    23 years old so young.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    eappsychology wrote: »
    I do weigh my foods on a scale. I will have to analyse what I'm mis calculating and cut back more!!
    Well I had been seeing weight loss and then it stopped!
    I understand the basic calorie in and calorie out. It being 80% diet and 20% everything else. And I certainly don't sit on my butt all day and believe just exercising once will be enough. Though it can be hard when in lectures but I ensure I walk a lot between them etc.
    It was more the case is it possible that my workouts aren't burning enough.

    I'm 5"7 and 150 pounds
    23 years old so young.

    And how long have you been doing this for and for how long exactly have you not lost weight?
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited October 2016
    OP I ran your stats and your approx BMR is 1470 (this includes your current weight and height of of course).. A sedentary TDEE is appox 1760 and TDEE for 1-3 exercise is approx 2020..

    I use this calculator: http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator

    Setting your weight loss below you BMR is a little on the aggressive side. You want to set your deficit off your approx TDEE to lose weight (perhaps 20% off that which would make you around 1410 to 1460 (based on activity level).. You will want to setup MFP accordingly to make sure if gives you a less aggressive rate of loss.

    While you are still in a calorie deficit (presuming that your logging is fairly accurate and can say with almost 100% certainty that you are consuming 1300 calories), you are losing weight, there may be some things that compounding your scale weight due to eating too low of calorie goal, which adds to additional stress you may be putting on your body and add the exercise you do on top of that.. Also being female also adds fluctuations on the scale, as well along with other variables like hydration, sodium intake, carb intake, muscle repair, etc..

    By best advice with knowing nothing further is the following:

    1) Reassess your rate of loss
    2) Make sure your logging efforts are accurate (entries used from the database, all foods are weighed and logged that you are consuming)
    3) Eat back your exercise calories. Refer to my post above..

    I don't know the time frame this has been occurring, but if you check these things and make adjustments make sure you give this a min of 4 weeks for you and your body to adjust.
  • eappsychology
    eappsychology Posts: 4 Member
    Thank you for the advice guys. Probably seems like a very foolish question.

    I have been dieting from around the age of 10 and just been improving and learning as I go. (And exercising). It has only been a stall since I started my new job about 10 months ago and sometimes I see a drop and then it goes back up to my frustration.

    I am basically getting beaten down sadly. But I suppose I need to just buckle under, re evaluate, work harder and then I should see results. Basically don't give up.

    Thanks again guys!! Especially Roxiedawn, very informative.
  • tomteboda
    tomteboda Posts: 2,171 Member
    Is the woman on your profile picture you?
This discussion has been closed.

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