Critique my plan

shawnt85
shawnt85 Posts: 24 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
So I'm one of those people that frequently needs to start over but I finally feel committed and ready. I've been measuring, weighing and logging my food for just about 3 weeks now. The scale has moved a little but I'm unsure what is actual weight loss and what was just water loss. I thought that I weighed enough that losing 2 lbs a week would be reasonable but I'm finding that is not happening. I know this takes time but I wanted to get some opinions on my food diary and my overall plan to see if anyone has helpful info to add.

The details.
32 yr old woman, had a baby back in October, not breastfeeding
5'10
SW 211
CW 209.2
GW 175 (This is at the top of the recommended weight for my height but this is what looks and works best on me.)
I work a desk job 40 hours a week
I workout 3 days a week running or elliptical for 30 min. I'm going to add 1 day of weights
On days I don't work out I make sure I get 10k steps
I weigh everything that isn't liquid on a digital scale.
I'm currently aiming for 1300 calories and I try to eat at least half of my workout calories.
I don't really pay attention to my fitbit 10k step calories.

I believe my diary is open if you want to take a look

Replies

  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,130 Member
    give it a couple more weeks, 3 weeks is still too short of a time to see a trend. You seem to have a couple of "Quick Adds" is your logging as accurate as you think it is? Are you measuring your liquids or are you just guesstimating, there are a lot of tablespoon entries?

    There are a number of factors that can mask weight loss with water retention that can take a few days to come back off including alcohol (there's a few days with wine), high sodium intake (there are a few days it's on the higher side), changes to work outs, changes to eating pattern/intake, hormones (particularly just before your period) and hydration.

    Daily weighing, if you're not doing this already can help you to understand the effects these things have on your day-to-day weight. It's not for everyone but if you can get past the scale going up as well as down it's can be a very useful learning tool.
  • pupntot
    pupntot Posts: 25 Member
    I'm no expert but aiming for 2 pounds loss a week is expecting too much, your TDEE looks to be around the 2080 mark. So to lose 2 pounds a week you'd have to have a deficit of 1000 cals. So you'll need to net 1080, which isn't healthy in my opinion, or remotely sustainable.

    Losing 2 pounds a week is actually very difficult to do healthily, and the fact MFP will default anything lower back up to 1200 cals means that people will often think it's not working, when in fact the deficit need is just too high for their weight.
  • BonnieDundee78
    BonnieDundee78 Posts: 158 Member
    Your diary looks pretty good - but those mysterious 200cal Quick Adds (with no sense of what they are and no recorded macros) mean it is a little hard to tell. I'd definitely stay the course for another few weeks, and like @tinkerbellang83 says, daily weighing might be a good idea to see what your trend looks like. Happy Scale is a good app for tracking it outside of your "official" MFP weight log ins.
  • amtyrell
    amtyrell Posts: 1,449 Member
    I have to say the numbers for avacado looks low.
    Also I am wondering how well you are measuring your super high calorie coffee drinks?
  • leooftheyear
    leooftheyear Posts: 429 Member
    Honestly, I'd add more weight days, and think about looking into a program like New Rules of Lifting, I don't think 1 day of weights is enough.
  • shawnt85
    shawnt85 Posts: 24 Member
    Thanks for the responses guys.

    I measure all liquids with measuring cups or spoons.

    Anything that's quick add is either from me going to a restaurant and looking up the calories and being too lazy to enter the other info or if the food is not something I can get from a restaurant I guess.

    The avocado is half an avocado and I weigh it. Maybe I'm using the wrong item in MFP? I never thought that I could be using the wrong item. I eat a lot of freakin avocado.

    For coffee I just measure the amount of creamer I add. I get black coffee from my office, it's just regular foldgers.

    I think part of my problem is that I need to adjust my expectations. When I was younger I lost weight much faster in not very good ways. I'm just so impatient.
  • cathipa
    cathipa Posts: 2,991 Member
    edited March 2017
    1300 is pretty low considering your CW. Was this the recommendation of MFP? Did you ask for 1 or 2 pounds per week? Also you should be aiming for at least 50g of fat a day for basic hormone function. The protein macro looks good. And if the scale is moving down then you are doing something right. 3 weeks may not be enough time to see significant change especially if you are new to working out you may be experiencing DOMS. Also what about TOM? I recommend using a weight trend app like Libra and weigh every day at the same time.

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