NEED HELP AVOIDING TRASH WEEKENDS
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Not sure what your weekends look like, and if it's food or drink that is causing the overage. Here's what I do, Fridays stick with my M-F plan and no drinking. Saturday - run 10 miles early morning to set myself up with a nice deficit and eat all calories back. If I'm going to drink, I do it on Saturday. Sunday is my rest day and I focus on keeping 250 under my goal to set me up with a buffer for the week.0
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WinoGelato wrote: »Curious why you don't exercise on the weekends? If you make it a priority during the week, why not on the weekends as well?
What are your stats - height/weight/goal weight? What sort of exercise are you doing? Did you calculate a TDEE? What rate of loss did you set up with MFP? You clearly aren't logging everything you eat currently, and you aren't weighing your food as you mentioned. When you do exercise, are you eating back a portion of those calories?
There's lots of ways to improve the accuracy of what you are doing - I would focus on being more consistent and accurate in logging and also making exercise a priority on the weekend too - before changing your overall calorie goal.
Currently at 6'1", 206lbs trying to get to 190. I was down to 203 and the last two weekends have been full of travel and stress. What's a TDEE? And MFP has me at 1.5lbs/week. I was losing 3 though for the first two weeks and I plateaued at 203. Hopefully when my food scale arrives today I'll be on a better track.0 -
Not sure what your weekends look like, and if it's food or drink that is causing the overage. Here's what I do, Fridays stick with my M-F plan and no drinking. Saturday - run 10 miles early morning to set myself up with a nice deficit and eat all calories back. If I'm going to drink, I do it on Saturday. Sunday is my rest day and I focus on keeping 250 under my goal to set me up with a buffer for the week.
Mostly food does it. There's no alcohol in my diet so that's not my issue. I typically am up late Friday and sleep in on Saturday so my first meal is anywhere from 11-1. I'll have to just work on upoing my expenditure during the weekend and slowly cut back.
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CattOfTheGarage wrote: »I find it works fine for weight loss, I lose weight as predicted by mfp. The only effect I'm seeing is a lot of weight fluctuation - variations in how much carbs I'm taking in lead to variations in water retention. It's no biggie. Water is not fat and I fluctuate a lot whatever I do, so it's a price I'm more than willing to pay.
I don't have a definitive answer for the metabolism question, but my hunch is that the metabolism is not going to react to short-term reductions in calories (a few days) and that eating close to or over maintenance for a couple of days a week might make metabolic adaptation actually less likely than if you have a deficit every single day. But that is just a hunch, I have zero science to back it up.
The idea is that you stick with the same deficit you would otherwise have, but you look for that deficit as a weekly average, not a daily thing. I don't know your numbers, but I'll explain mine to you. My maintenance is about 2000 net, and I am aiming to lose 1lb per week, so my overall goal is 1500 net. Instead of setting my goal to 1500, I set it to 1200, and I try to stick to that Mon-Thurs. Then on the weekend, I stop looking at my daily goal and start looking at the average (in the Android app it's under Nutrition on the left-hand menu). I want that average to stay under 1500 - I can eat quite a lot without pushing it over that. The ideal is to hit 1500 average on Sunday night, then I can go back to 1200 on Monday and the process starts all over again. Remember all these numbers are net, so if I exercise more, I eat more.
That's if I'm having a very regular, consistent week, which I often don't. In actual fact I'll often go over the 1200 a few times during the week and I don't worry too much as long as the average is still looking healthy; I just know that if I eat more during the week I'll have to eat less (or do more exercise) at the weekend. It's flexible, which is what I like about it, and the fact I can eat over maintenance every now and then makes a huge difference and stops me feeling deprived. And if people bring doughnuts into the office, I don't have to be sad about it.
So what can I do to keep my water intake up but not retain the weight?
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HurricaneForce1 wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Curious why you don't exercise on the weekends? If you make it a priority during the week, why not on the weekends as well?
What are your stats - height/weight/goal weight? What sort of exercise are you doing? Did you calculate a TDEE? What rate of loss did you set up with MFP? You clearly aren't logging everything you eat currently, and you aren't weighing your food as you mentioned. When you do exercise, are you eating back a portion of those calories?
There's lots of ways to improve the accuracy of what you are doing - I would focus on being more consistent and accurate in logging and also making exercise a priority on the weekend too - before changing your overall calorie goal.
Currently at 6'1", 206lbs trying to get to 190. I was down to 203 and the last two weekends have been full of travel and stress. What's a TDEE? And MFP has me at 1.5lbs/week. I was losing 3 though for the first two weeks and I plateaued at 203. Hopefully when my food scale arrives today I'll be on a better track.
TDEE is your Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It is the sum of the calories you burn in a day - including your BMR (amount you need to sustain your basic bodily functions), your regular daily activity excluding exercise (this plus BMR is called NEAT which is what MFP works off of) and an estimate of calories burned through purposeful exercise. You can calculate it using an online calculator like: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/
or by analyzing your actual data (but without tracking everything consistently and accurately it will be impossible to estimate).
MFP has you at 1.5 lbs/week because that is what YOU put in as a goal. It doesn't set that goal for you - you select a rate of loss. With what you are aiming for - losing approximately 15-20 lbs, that is way more aggressive than needed. You should be aiming for 0.5 lbs/ week.
I would also take the time to read the stickied Most Helpful Forum Posts at the top of each forum section - but in particular in the Getting Started section these are very helpful for understanding how to set up and optimize your approach using MFP.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10260499/i-like-old-posts-and-i-cannot-lie/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1
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Yeah, do weekly calories, so eat less on weekdays, giving yourself a few 100 extra for weekends.
Pre-log your calories. If you know you are going out to dinner, and going to have a few beers, enter your dinner estimate that morning. And plan the rest of your day around that.
Make sure you get your exercise even on weekends. I like to make sure I have a good bike ride or run in the morning if I know I am going out that evening.
Try to limit over indulgence to one night, so only go out Saturday and be good on Friday.0 -
HurricaneForce1 wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Curious why you don't exercise on the weekends? If you make it a priority during the week, why not on the weekends as well?
What are your stats - height/weight/goal weight? What sort of exercise are you doing? Did you calculate a TDEE? What rate of loss did you set up with MFP? You clearly aren't logging everything you eat currently, and you aren't weighing your food as you mentioned. When you do exercise, are you eating back a portion of those calories?
There's lots of ways to improve the accuracy of what you are doing - I would focus on being more consistent and accurate in logging and also making exercise a priority on the weekend too - before changing your overall calorie goal.
Currently at 6'1", 206lbs trying to get to 190. I was down to 203 and the last two weekends have been full of travel and stress. What's a TDEE? And MFP has me at 1.5lbs/week. I was losing 3 though for the first two weeks and I plateaued at 203. Hopefully when my food scale arrives today I'll be on a better track.
With only 16 pounds to lose, you should be aiming for a loss of 0.5 lbs/ week.
I don't run a weekly deficit - I both eat more and exercise more on the weekends.0 -
Got a tape and calipers in the mail today. Measured at 22mm or 20% BF. Tape was at 36. Am currently 6'1" at 206lbs and trying to reach 190lbs. With these values how should I approach the last 16lbs?0
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And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?0
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HurricaneForce1 wrote: »And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?
Because you're tall, have a high lean body mass (and possibly are young). I'd be shocked if your TDEE was less than 3000 calories/day if you get any activity at all. So, if you set a reasonable weightloss goal of 0.5 pounds/week, MFP is going to give you a fairly high calorie intake.1 -
exercise extra and eat a bit under the days prior or after...just make up for it. Also..try to only go off for a meal..but i you go off for two days.. that is hard to compensate.0
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HurricanForce1 ... Took the liberty of entering your shared numbers into a Lean body mass calculator to help you visualise the variations in TDEE estimations, daily caloric requirements et al, some members on the thread are sharing with you.
To lose weight, you may choose to eat 500 calories less than your TDEE.
ETA: exchange verbiage & attached pic2 -
HurricaneForce1 wrote: »And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?
Did you put your stats in? What rate of loss did you select? Did you enter exercise? Did you read the threads I linked above?1 -
HurricaneForce1 wrote: »CattOfTheGarage wrote: »I find it works fine for weight loss, I lose weight as predicted by mfp. The only effect I'm seeing is a lot of weight fluctuation - variations in how much carbs I'm taking in lead to variations in water retention. It's no biggie. Water is not fat and I fluctuate a lot whatever I do, so it's a price I'm more than willing to pay.
I don't have a definitive answer for the metabolism question, but my hunch is that the metabolism is not going to react to short-term reductions in calories (a few days) and that eating close to or over maintenance for a couple of days a week might make metabolic adaptation actually less likely than if you have a deficit every single day. But that is just a hunch, I have zero science to back it up.
The idea is that you stick with the same deficit you would otherwise have, but you look for that deficit as a weekly average, not a daily thing. I don't know your numbers, but I'll explain mine to you. My maintenance is about 2000 net, and I am aiming to lose 1lb per week, so my overall goal is 1500 net. Instead of setting my goal to 1500, I set it to 1200, and I try to stick to that Mon-Thurs. Then on the weekend, I stop looking at my daily goal and start looking at the average (in the Android app it's under Nutrition on the left-hand menu). I want that average to stay under 1500 - I can eat quite a lot without pushing it over that. The ideal is to hit 1500 average on Sunday night, then I can go back to 1200 on Monday and the process starts all over again. Remember all these numbers are net, so if I exercise more, I eat more.
That's if I'm having a very regular, consistent week, which I often don't. In actual fact I'll often go over the 1200 a few times during the week and I don't worry too much as long as the average is still looking healthy; I just know that if I eat more during the week I'll have to eat less (or do more exercise) at the weekend. It's flexible, which is what I like about it, and the fact I can eat over maintenance every now and then makes a huge difference and stops me feeling deprived. And if people bring doughnuts into the office, I don't have to be sad about it.
So what can I do to keep my water intake up but not retain the weight?
You misunderstand - water retention is not a bad thing and you can't avoid it or control it. It just happens. You need to ignore it and look at the overall trend, not the day to day numbers, which can vary by several pounds for all sorts of reasons. You are trying to lose fat, not water.
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SusanMFindlay wrote: »HurricaneForce1 wrote: »And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?
Because you're tall, have a high lean body mass (and possibly are young). I'd be shocked if your TDEE was less than 3000 calories/day if you get any activity at all. So, if you set a reasonable weightloss goal of 0.5 pounds/week, MFP is going to give you a fairly high calorie intake.
I used a calculator and set my goal to 1lb/week and it gave a TDEE of 2,486/day. I manually entered this value into MFP and am now doing weekly calorie averages over daily ones.
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777Gemma888 wrote: »HurricanForce1 ... Took the liberty of entering your shared numbers into a Lean body mass calculator to help you visualise the variations in TDEE estimations, daily caloric requirements et al, some members on the thread are sharing with you.
To lose weight, you may choose to eat 500 calories less than your TDEE.
ETA: exchange verbiage & attached pic
So I should be basing my intake deficit on TDEE? Or the basal metabolic rate? I feel like I might be losing muscle too even though I keep my protein up. I have drop 4lbs in two weeks - surely this isn't just fat?
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HurricaneForce1 wrote: »And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?
Because you are a large young male?0 -
You should NEVER eat below your BMR. Your BMR is what your body needs to survive. Eating below your TDEE@maximum less 500 calories is what I would suggest. Never a deficit above 500. Tweak the numbers (less TDEE) to place yourself within a comfortable deficit where you aren't starving after your workouts.2
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To avoid excessive weekends, I eat breakfast. About 4 hours after that I eat lunch. Then about 5 hours after that I eat dinner.
It sounds simple, but if I did not have breakfast, I'd start snacking and could not stop.2 -
Keep self busy. If you can stick to it through the week i imagine its because your busy and on weekends your just sitting around? i dunno i havent read all the posts....I just find keeping self busy helps. Obvious answer im sure has already been said
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