Weight gain despite exercise and 1200-1500 cal/day
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I've been logging in for 15 days in a row and have netted around 1200-1500 calories per day. I exercise 5 days per week. As of a couple days ago, I had only lost a couple of pounds. As of today, I'm a pound heavier than when I started. Wtf? I'm 5'6 and 155 lbs. my clothes aren't fitting more loosely, so I dint think I'm trading fat for muscle enough to cause this weight gain. Also- I'm a healthy eater. My calories are from pretty good foods
First of all, 15 days is nothing at all, it's just a start. It's during this time that you find out certain things that might not be working.
What is not working is that you are unknowingly eating more than you realize. If you were eating at a calorie deficit, you would be losing weight. The evidence of whether you are eating at a calorie deficit is always in the results.
Do you log everything you consume, including drinks and condiments?
Do you weight all your solids and measure all your liquids?
Do you eat your exercise calories back? If so, where do you get those burns from?
Also, what are your stats? How much are you trying to lose?
I'm 5'6", 155 lbs. I want to be 145lbs and am hoping to be there in 5 weeks. Ultimately I'd love to be 140, but whatever. I stopped breastfeeding and ten lbs magically appeared. Now I need to lose the weight and maintain the loss... forever.
Losing 2 pounds per week is not a wise goal when one only has 10 pounds to lose. Creating that big a deficit is not good for you, mentally or physically, and can be counterproductive, as you have seen.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/
...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.
They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.
And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).
When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, let’s cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.9 -
annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. How many calories per day are you actually eating? Either list the numbers for all 15 days or the average for all 15 days. Eating, not netting.0 -
I think the OP's got a GIGO - - garbage in, garbage out - - data situation.
IMO, s/he's gaining weight simply because s/he's either eating more cals than logged or over-estimating the cals burned or both.
A quick way to correct this is to stop netting or eating any cals back for any estimated cals burned and see what happens.
If the OP continues to gain weight, s/he is still eating too much and needs to cut back further. If s/he's losing weight, just increase, decrease or maintain what s/he's doing in order to adjust the rate of loss accordingly.1 -
annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. How many calories per day are you actually eating? Either list the numbers for all 15 days or the average for all 15 days. Eating, not netting.
Average of about 1800/day, not net. I think I am going to have to cut out my evening wine:-/
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annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. How many calories per day are you actually eating? Either list the numbers for all 15 days or the average for all 15 days. Eating, not netting.
Average of about 1800/day, not net. I think I am going to have to cut out my evening wine:-/
If you are netting 1200-1500 after eating 1800, your exercise calories logged are 300-600. That's a pretty sizeable exercise burn. Is it all exercise or is it normal daily activity, from a fitbit?
I went back and read your OP. You started dieting 15 days ago, lost 2 lbs, and then went back up a pound. I think you are witnessing a combo of a normal loss (2 lbs) and normal female hormonal water retention.
If it were me I wouldn't change anything for now. Log your weight and then compare it to your weight at the same time in your next menstrual cycle. Women, especially when not all that overweight, should not compare weights day to day or week to week. Instead, compare Week 1 to Week 1, Week 2 to Week 2, etc.1 -
annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
That's why I use MFP instead of a TDEE calculator and add the exercise as I do it.
When I eat the calories given to me by MFP, weigh and log my food, exercise, and eat back some (but not all) of my exercise calories, my average weight loss over time matches the weekly weight loss goal I set.1 -
annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. How many calories per day are you actually eating? Either list the numbers for all 15 days or the average for all 15 days. Eating, not netting.
Average of about 1800/day, not net. I think I am going to have to cut out my evening wine:-/
If you are netting 1200-1500 after eating 1800, your exercise calories logged are 300-600. That's a pretty sizeable exercise burn. Is it all exercise or is it normal daily activity, from a fitbit?
I went back and read your OP. You started dieting 15 days ago, lost 2 lbs, and then went back up a pound. I think you are witnessing a combo of a normal loss (2 lbs) and normal female hormonal water retention.
If it were me I wouldn't change anything for now. Log your weight and then compare it to your weight at the same time in your next menstrual cycle. Women, especially when not all that overweight, should not compare weights day to day or week to week. Instead, compare Week 1 to Week 1, Week 2 to Week 2, etc.
Until this discussion, I figured I could trust mfp and the elliptical machine for general calories burned. I've been setting a goal of 500 calories on the elliptical and it takes me about 45 minutes to "reach" that goal. I also do yoga a few times per week and I swim laps (hardcore- I do butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle).
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annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. How many calories per day are you actually eating? Either list the numbers for all 15 days or the average for all 15 days. Eating, not netting.
Average of about 1800/day, not net. I think I am going to have to cut out my evening wine:-/
If you are netting 1200-1500 after eating 1800, your exercise calories logged are 300-600. That's a pretty sizeable exercise burn. Is it all exercise or is it normal daily activity, from a fitbit?
I went back and read your OP. You started dieting 15 days ago, lost 2 lbs, and then went back up a pound. I think you are witnessing a combo of a normal loss (2 lbs) and normal female hormonal water retention.
If it were me I wouldn't change anything for now. Log your weight and then compare it to your weight at the same time in your next menstrual cycle. Women, especially when not all that overweight, should not compare weights day to day or week to week. Instead, compare Week 1 to Week 1, Week 2 to Week 2, etc.
Until this discussion, I figured I could trust mfp and the elliptical machine for general calories burned. I've been setting a goal of 500 calories on the elliptical and it takes me about 45 minutes to "reach" that goal. I also do yoga a few times per week and I swim laps (hardcore- I do butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle).
As a male 5 6 and 165 I used to burn around 360-400 calories in a very intense 45 minute spinning workout, according to my heart rate monitor. 500 calories in 45 minutes on an elliptical is likely a large overestimate.
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^^^ This. It would be very difficult to burn 500 calories in 45 minutes.
I absolutely hate the elliptical and the gym in general, but if i knew i could burn that much in under an hour I would definitely be dragging/forcing my butt to the gym!5 -
Im 5'6 1/2 and 168-170 lbs and to burn 500 calories in 45 min I would have to be doing something high intensity for that time frame and going full force. riding my bike(outdoor road bike) an hr at about 10-12 mph I only burn about 300 calories. so dont think an elliptical would burn more in a shorter amount of time.3
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kshama2001 wrote: »I've been logging in for 15 days in a row and have netted around 1200-1500 calories per day. I exercise 5 days per week. As of a couple days ago, I had only lost a couple of pounds. As of today, I'm a pound heavier than when I started. Wtf? I'm 5'6 and 155 lbs. my clothes aren't fitting more loosely, so I dint think I'm trading fat for muscle enough to cause this weight gain. Also- I'm a healthy eater. My calories are from pretty good foods
First of all, 15 days is nothing at all, it's just a start. It's during this time that you find out certain things that might not be working.
What is not working is that you are unknowingly eating more than you realize. If you were eating at a calorie deficit, you would be losing weight. The evidence of whether you are eating at a calorie deficit is always in the results.
Do you log everything you consume, including drinks and condiments?
Do you weight all your solids and measure all your liquids?
Do you eat your exercise calories back? If so, where do you get those burns from?
Also, what are your stats? How much are you trying to lose?
I'm 5'6", 155 lbs. I want to be 145lbs and am hoping to be there in 5 weeks. Ultimately I'd love to be 140, but whatever. I stopped breastfeeding and ten lbs magically appeared. Now I need to lose the weight and maintain the loss... forever.
Losing 2 pounds per week is not a wise goal when one only has 10 pounds to lose. Creating that big a deficit is not good for you, mentally or physically, and can be counterproductive, as you have seen.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/
...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.
They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.
And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).
When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, let’s cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.
If my goal is to loose 10-15 lbs, is a pound and a half per week weight loss ideal? A pound per week?0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »I've been logging in for 15 days in a row and have netted around 1200-1500 calories per day. I exercise 5 days per week. As of a couple days ago, I had only lost a couple of pounds. As of today, I'm a pound heavier than when I started. Wtf? I'm 5'6 and 155 lbs. my clothes aren't fitting more loosely, so I dint think I'm trading fat for muscle enough to cause this weight gain. Also- I'm a healthy eater. My calories are from pretty good foods
First of all, 15 days is nothing at all, it's just a start. It's during this time that you find out certain things that might not be working.
What is not working is that you are unknowingly eating more than you realize. If you were eating at a calorie deficit, you would be losing weight. The evidence of whether you are eating at a calorie deficit is always in the results.
Do you log everything you consume, including drinks and condiments?
Do you weight all your solids and measure all your liquids?
Do you eat your exercise calories back? If so, where do you get those burns from?
Also, what are your stats? How much are you trying to lose?
I'm 5'6", 155 lbs. I want to be 145lbs and am hoping to be there in 5 weeks. Ultimately I'd love to be 140, but whatever. I stopped breastfeeding and ten lbs magically appeared. Now I need to lose the weight and maintain the loss... forever.
Losing 2 pounds per week is not a wise goal when one only has 10 pounds to lose. Creating that big a deficit is not good for you, mentally or physically, and can be counterproductive, as you have seen.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/
...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.
They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.
And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).
When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, let’s cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.
If my goal is to loose 10-15 lbs, is a pound and a half per week weight loss ideal? A pound per week?
For less than 25 lbs to lose, 0.5 lb/week is the recommended rate of loss.3 -
500 calories in only 45 minutes? I think your logging is off - I would guess with both exercise and food. Happens to many in the beginning. Just work on that - get a food scale if you don't have one and work on getting your logging in order. You've got this. 2 lbs a week is unrealistic for as small as you are too. Aim for half a pound. Good luck!1
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annaskiski wrote: »Since you said 'netted', I'm assuming that you're eating exercise calories back.
Many apps overestimate exercise calories. Some people only eat back half.
Either way, you might try calculating your TDEE and not eating over that, no matter how many exercise calories you get....
Yes, I have been eating my exercise calories back. I calculated my TDEE on a website and it's around 2100. But it seems wushu washy because some days o do 45 minutes of yoga, and some days I do 45 minutes on the elliptical with an average heart rate of 160.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. How many calories per day are you actually eating? Either list the numbers for all 15 days or the average for all 15 days. Eating, not netting.
Average of about 1800/day, not net. I think I am going to have to cut out my evening wine:-/
If you are netting 1200-1500 after eating 1800, your exercise calories logged are 300-600. That's a pretty sizeable exercise burn. Is it all exercise or is it normal daily activity, from a fitbit?
I went back and read your OP. You started dieting 15 days ago, lost 2 lbs, and then went back up a pound. I think you are witnessing a combo of a normal loss (2 lbs) and normal female hormonal water retention.
If it were me I wouldn't change anything for now. Log your weight and then compare it to your weight at the same time in your next menstrual cycle. Women, especially when not all that overweight, should not compare weights day to day or week to week. Instead, compare Week 1 to Week 1, Week 2 to Week 2, etc.
Until this discussion, I figured I could trust mfp and the elliptical machine for general calories burned. I've been setting a goal of 500 calories on the elliptical and it takes me about 45 minutes to "reach" that goal. I also do yoga a few times per week and I swim laps (hardcore- I do butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle).
Yeah that burn seems too good to be true. I'm 5'7" with about 10lbs to goal and I burn 200-300 calories doing Insanity for the same amount of time depending on how hard I go. When I skip Insanity and do my stepper instead I burn about half of that according to fitbit. The MFP estimates were much higher when I used to enter workouts here. This site gave me about 480 for Insanity which I knew was too high.0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »I've been logging in for 15 days in a row and have netted around 1200-1500 calories per day. I exercise 5 days per week. As of a couple days ago, I had only lost a couple of pounds. As of today, I'm a pound heavier than when I started. Wtf? I'm 5'6 and 155 lbs. my clothes aren't fitting more loosely, so I dint think I'm trading fat for muscle enough to cause this weight gain. Also- I'm a healthy eater. My calories are from pretty good foods
First of all, 15 days is nothing at all, it's just a start. It's during this time that you find out certain things that might not be working.
What is not working is that you are unknowingly eating more than you realize. If you were eating at a calorie deficit, you would be losing weight. The evidence of whether you are eating at a calorie deficit is always in the results.
Do you log everything you consume, including drinks and condiments?
Do you weight all your solids and measure all your liquids?
Do you eat your exercise calories back? If so, where do you get those burns from?
Also, what are your stats? How much are you trying to lose?
I'm 5'6", 155 lbs. I want to be 145lbs and am hoping to be there in 5 weeks. Ultimately I'd love to be 140, but whatever. I stopped breastfeeding and ten lbs magically appeared. Now I need to lose the weight and maintain the loss... forever.
Losing 2 pounds per week is not a wise goal when one only has 10 pounds to lose. Creating that big a deficit is not good for you, mentally or physically, and can be counterproductive, as you have seen.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/
...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.
They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.
And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).
When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, let’s cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.
If my goal is to loose 10-15 lbs, is a pound and a half per week weight loss ideal? A pound per week?
For less than 25 lbs to lose, 0.5 lb/week is the recommended rate of loss.
This.0
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