I need an opinion.
michael_m1989
Posts: 37 Member
I keep being told that it's not what you eat, it's how many calories you eat that matters. So, I've stuck to this pretty generally. I've cut out the fast food and eating out, but I am still eating pretty normal foods, as long as I stay in my calories and macros. I am also drinking about a gallon of water a day. Here's my issue with this, I am not losing any weight. I lost about 12 pounds and now I've been stalled for well over a month. My weight fluctuates between the same 2 to 3 pounds. I am so frustrated that I went and did a food overhaul. I cut out most breads, switched to Almond Milk, switched from ground beef to ground turkey etc. Still things I enjoy, I am not torturing myself with plain chicken breasts and broccoli every night. But we will see what the end results are. My other issue is, I do work a noc shift 3 days a week, I am wondering if this is messing me up at all?
What are your guy's opinions, advice?
What are your guy's opinions, advice?
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Replies
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Oh yes I do! I have a food scale I use religiously. I even weigh weird things like a slice of pizza. So I know exactly how much I am eating.2
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How are you counting your calories? If you are not already, use a food scale and weigh things out. For me, I was able to lose weight quick at first without being very exact then I stalled. I did a bit of a calorie audit and started actually weighing my food and found that I was really bad at guessing and I was eating around 1600 calories with a goal of 1300. For weight loss it really should not mater if you go for plain chicken or a tasty cheeseburger, as long as the calories are under your goal. I personally find that it is easier to stay in my calorie goal if I eat lots of protein and lots of good fiber, like raw veggies, because I feel fuller longer. If I tried to eat junk but the same calories it would feel like nothing and I would struggle more. Oh, and I also hear that it gets harder to lose when you have less to lose...I'm no scientist but I hope this helped. good luck!0
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So macros/almond milk/turkey are all well and good for health (body composition, vitamins, minerals, etc)., but it really only comes down to calories for weight loss. Normally a plateau is 6+ weeks, but you're almost at that... which means you are eating at maintenance. Your current intake - exercise (+ calories you burn just to live) = zero. You're not gaining weight, you're not losing weight = you're at maintenance. Do you use a food scale? Do you measure everything you eat? You're likely eating more than you realize or overestimating your calorie burns.0
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I was at about 1900 when I was losing weight, then MFP lowered it to 1865 ish when I lost 12 pounds. Then I lowered it to about 1650 when I wasn't losing weight. Because I was experimenting to see if it would help.0
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How much weight have you lost? You need to adjust your profile regularly to ensure you have the right BMR/TDEE0
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It is purely calories in vs calories out.
You're eating at maintenance which mean you are over estimating calories out, underestimating calories in or both.
If you're not sure where you can open your diary and people will be able to help you spot whats wrong.
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Have you started a new exercise program within the last month, or changed your existing routine in any way?
Started taking any kind of supplements and/or medications you weren't taking before?0 -
No, I have intensified what I have already been doing and added in some intermediate hiking on my days off. I generally go on 1 hike a week.0
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Another thing to consider is your exercise habits.
If you've started a new exercise routine (especially strength-based) recently, you may be holding onto some excess water weight while your muscles repair themselves.
And another thing to ask - are you eating back your exercise calories (all or a percentage?) and how are you calculating them?2 -
Is there a possibility you aren't logging some snacks, perhaps while at work?
Have you kept the same exercise routine or ramp'd it up ? (if you keep it the same, over time your body will get used to the exercise and expend less calories to do the same thing, effectively lowering your TDEE)0 -
michael_m1989 wrote: »No, I have intensified what I have already been doing and added in some intermediate hiking on my days off. I generally go on 1 hike a week.
That would be a "yes." You've added in hiking and changed your intensity level of existing exercise. There's a decent chance you're retaining some water. Give it a few more weeks.
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@toxikon I generally try not to eat back my exercise calories, but when I do, it's usually only about 30% or less. I've found in the past that when I eat them back, it stalls my weight loss, I also don't know how accurate my exercise calories are, so I don't want to screw myself over by eating them back if they're over estimated. I use a Fitbit to calculate my exercise.1
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michael_m1989 wrote: »@toxikon I generally try not to eat back my exercise calories, but when I do, it's usually only about 30% or less. I've found in the past that when I eat them back, it stalls my weight loss, I also don't know how accurate my exercise calories are, so I don't want to screw myself over by eating them back if they're over estimated. I use a Fitbit to calculate my exercise.
Gotcha. Well since I see you mentioned ramping up your exercise lately, I assume it's a water weight thing. I'd give it a couple more weeks to see if the scale starts moving again.0 -
michael_m1989 wrote: »No, I have intensified what I have already been doing and added in some intermediate hiking on my days off. I generally go on 1 hike a week.
That would be a "yes." You've added in hiking and changed your intensity level of existing exercise. There's a decent chance you're retaining some water. Give it a few more weeks.
^This. Exactly why I asked the question.0 -
michael_m1989 wrote: »Oh yes I do! I have a food scale I use religiously. I even weigh weird things like a slice of pizza. So I know exactly how much I am eating.
Yay you have an open diary!
5/31: How did you earn 1k calories? That may be overestimated.
5/30: There are many things that say tbsp. Were those weighed? You have Homemade Tacos, Generic El Pastor.. were these entries created by you? otherwise they're not going to be accurate. 620 calorie margarhita but it only has calories, no fat, salt or sugar listed? That entry is inaccurate and that sodium is probably bloating you right up/causing you to retain water. Again--- an extra 1k calories??
I'm seeing a lot of beverages from starbucks. They aren't weighing those ingredients. I'm also guessing you're burning less that it says. Try eating back only 1/2 of your exercise calories.
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How much weight do you have to lose?
If you've been successful losing the first 12 lbs then keep it up! Don't concern yourself over switching from beef to turkey or dairy to almond milk - that is pretty much irrelevant when the goal is weight management.
Just taking a glance through your diary I don't see any major issues, but note there is an inherent 20% margin of error in calorie estimations. Still you have a very large deficit established. Just give it time - 4-6 weeks typically.
Biological systems don't like change, especially dramatic ones. A series of small changes will have greater impact in the long term. Think marathon over sprint on this.1 -
Couple thoughts -- I looked at a few days of your diary and you are doing 1650 net (which is good if you are exercising), but you have some large exercise totals, so that could be one place for estimates being off.
You have some entries that are "generic" and "homemade." If you did not create them, they could be WAY off. Specifically referring to "Homemade - Taco's El Pastor, 2 tacos, 200 cal" and "Generic - El Pastor, 2 oz, 140," for example. I KNOW that restaurant stuff can be hard to estimate, but it's an inaccuracy that can be messing you up.
If you go up and down with sodium, you could be experiencing swings related to that.
Bigger issue, perhaps: 3 weeks is not long, and I assume noc shift=night shift and that's why the various missing dinners? That could be messing up your time clock and just affecting things in weird ways like water retention, especially if it's new. It also could be making scale weight not consistent if you sometimes weigh closer in time to eating than others (because of weird sleep schedule or eating schedule that changes). I'd say give it some time at the current level and just try to tighten up the logging as much as possible.
Aside: calorie ARE what matter, but other things affect water weight (sodium, carbs), and one benefit to so called "clean" eating is that it can just be easier to log accurately (I know my inaccuracies are mostly due to restaurant meals, or eating something at work that someone brought in (homemade) or the like).1 -
What's your current height and weight?0
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I have good news. I know what the problem is and you can fix it.
It's your food logging and the types of food you are eating and your estimation of how many calories they are.
3 slices of Kirkland bacon. I saw this a few times, you've underestimated its calories.
Whatever a caramalizer is, you gotta drop this thing like it's hot.
You gotta start eating food that you have to cook yourself. When you are at the grocery store, pick foods from the outside.
I want to see this in your food log
Broccoli 100 g
No fat greek yogurt 2 tbsp.
Baked Potato - 150 g
Chicken thigh (no skin)
Black coffee.
0% fat Cottage cheese 1/2 cup
It's pretty obvious to me that your overnight schedule is messing with your ability to control and desire the foods you eat because you're making food decisions when you're tired. Getting some more sleep will help you control this, and eating more low fat protein will help you with this too.
Also, weighing daily will help you focus on making good choices.
Only good can come of eating real food.
You got this. 3 -
Probably some water weight but probably also underestimating calories... Do you weigh your bagels or just use a random entry? I'm asking because last time I weighed my bagel... it ended up being 440 calories using a USDA entry, and definitely not the 260 that you logged. Same for your tacos etc... Tacos are very rarely only 100 calories. Cheese quesadillas? 300 for the cheese, 200 for the tortilla (or more), plus whatever it's fried in - probably 600+ calories and not 400.
Someone mentioned bacon, but my bacon slices always end up weighing at least 25% more than what the package says (even crispy and patted down on paper towels).
So I'd tighten your logging and use more realistic entries (most cupcakes are not 170 calories, lol).1 -
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I have good news. I know what the problem is and you can fix it.
It's your food logging and the types of food you are eating and your estimation of how many calories they are.
3 slices of Kirkland bacon. I saw this a few times, you've underestimated its calories.
Whatever a caramalizer is, you gotta drop this thing like it's hot.
You gotta start eating food that you have to cook yourself. When you are at the grocery store, pick foods from the outside.
I want to see this in your food log
Broccoli 100 g
No fat greek yogurt 2 tbsp.
Baked Potato - 150 g
Chicken thigh (no skin)
Black coffee.
0% fat Cottage cheese 1/2 cup
It's pretty obvious to me that your overnight schedule is messing with your ability to control and desire the foods you eat because you're making food decisions when you're tired. Getting some more sleep will help you control this, and eating more low fat protein will help you with this too.
Also, weighing daily will help you focus on making good choices.
Only good can come of eating real food. You got this.
So I just wanted to add to this - we talk a lot here about how you can eat whatever you want and lose weight. You don't "have" to eat whole food or home-cooked meals. Plenty of people here have lost lots of weight or just vanity pounds eating out a lot. But if you are struggling and the numbers aren't working, the first place to look is calories you are estimating. And anything you don't prepare yourself is totally estimated. so if you're eating a lot of restaurant or takeaway food, it would be easy for those to be off 100 cals here and 100 cals there and there goes your deficit.
Having said that, I disagree with the low fat recommendations, and the outside of my grocery store includes the alcohol, the bakery, and the frozen desserts so not sure how that would help.
As others have suggested, give it a couple more weeks to see if it's water weight from your increased exercise. Then double check some of the entries you are using (as many are user entered and very incorrect). Good luck!6 -
Yeah, you have to be really careful with entries from the database, too. I think there are a lot of people entering really bad data, and there are entries that were probably taken from packages so they SOUND right, but the serving size was entered wrong so that any other serving sizes get calculated wrong.
A single small flour tortilla is 80 calories, as an example. ONE Ortega hard taco shell is 60 calories. So even a small taco is going to be hard-pressed to be only 100 calories once stuff is in them. Maybe someone somewhere built one out of lettuce and sadness for under 100 calories, but you shouldn't use their entry in the database because the chances that your taco is also filled with lettuce and sadness is probably slim.
Also: Calorie 'burns" given by fitness trackers or hte gym machines are often highly... "aspirational."4 -
I have good news. I know what the problem is and you can fix it.
It's your food logging and the types of food you are eating and your estimation of how many calories they are.
3 slices of Kirkland bacon. I saw this a few times, you've underestimated its calories.
Whatever a caramalizer is, you gotta drop this thing like it's hot.
You gotta start eating food that you have to cook yourself. When you are at the grocery store, pick foods from the outside.
I want to see this in your food log
Broccoli 100 g
No fat greek yogurt 2 tbsp.
Baked Potato - 150 g
Chicken thigh (no skin)
Black coffee.
0% fat Cottage cheese 1/2 cup
It's pretty obvious to me that your overnight schedule is messing with your ability to control and desire the foods you eat because you're making food decisions when you're tired. Getting some more sleep will help you control this, and eating more low fat protein will help you with this too.
Also, weighing daily will help you focus on making good choices.
Only good can come of eating real food. You got this.
So I just wanted to add to this - we talk a lot here about how you can eat whatever you want and lose weight. You don't "have" to eat whole food or home-cooked meals. Plenty of people here have lost lots of weight or just vanity pounds eating out a lot. But if you are struggling and the numbers aren't working, the first place to look is calories you are estimating. And anything you don't prepare yourself is totally estimated. so if you're eating a lot of restaurant or takeaway food, it would be easy for those to be off 100 cals here and 100 cals there and there goes your deficit.
Having said that, I disagree with the low fat recommendations, and the outside of my grocery store includes the alcohol, the bakery, and the frozen desserts so not sure how that would help.
As others have suggested, give it a couple more weeks to see if it's water weight from your increased exercise. Then double check some of the entries you are using (as many are user entered and very incorrect). Good luck!
Yeah maybe I should have added the only reason you'd go for "low fat" stuff is to meet your macros if that is one of the ones you're trying to hit.
and by outside isles of the grocery store it just generally means fresh ingredients are better for you and you'll be cooking them yourself.0 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »
On second thought, that looks good enough to keep, but it might be the only item you can eat now judging by all the calories. Man that looks good! Look at all that whipped cream....mmmmmmm...and syrup on top!!
Oh yeah.0
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