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What am I doing wrong?
timhuangjune
Posts: 7 Member
I've been trying to cut around 1 pound a week with a calorie deficit of 500-600 per day. My maintenance calories is about 2900, so I would intake roughly 2300-2400 calories a day. I strength train 5x a week for roughly an hour with strenuous intensity. Currently I am weighing 182 pounds and have seen very little progress within 2 weeks. My macros are roughly 200G Protein, 55g Fat, 260G of carbs.
Does anyone recommend changing up my diet? I find myself not losing 1Lb a week.
Does anyone recommend changing up my diet? I find myself not losing 1Lb a week.
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Replies
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How are you measuring your food intake? Is this level of exercise new to you?2
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Oh, and this:
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I use a food scale and I've been tracking foods with the bar code from my fitness pal0
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How long have you been on this program?
How are you ascertaining your calorie deficit?
(bar code tracking is better than nothing, but can by law be 20% off in either direction)
How did you determine your maintenance calories?
FYI strenuous intensity at strength training is anaerobic activity with distressingly low calorie burns.
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Do not change. 2 weeks is not a long time.
Have you been weighing daily? Weight fluctuates quite a bit, but the trend will pop out.
Protein looks ok, fat is quite low, but ok in terms of maximizing carbs for lifting. don't drop fat any lower. Macros look good.
I wouldn't do anything but stay the course. If you've just started lifting you could have put some water weight into your muscles.3 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »How long have you been on this program?
How are you ascertaining your calorie deficit?
(bar code tracking is better than nothing, but can by law be 20% off in either direction)
How did you determine your maintenance calories?
FYI strenuous intensity at strength training is anaerobic activity with distressingly low calorie burns.
There's many calculators online and I took appropriate numbers that are relevant to each other. I'm not sure if this is the way to do this
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timhuangjune wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »How long have you been on this program?
How are you ascertaining your calorie deficit?
(bar code tracking is better than nothing, but can by law be 20% off in either direction)
How did you determine your maintenance calories?
FYI strenuous intensity at strength training is anaerobic activity with distressingly low calorie burns.
There's many calculators online and I took appropriate numbers that are relevant to each other. I'm not sure if this is the way to do this
At 182 lbs and lifting 5x week, your TDEE looks roughly ok to me. Barcode tracking should still be getting you in the ballpark (around 500 calorie less than your TDEE) but this is something to check up on, but it still should probably be working alright enough to average out.
Even if you get your numbers off by a little, consider dropping calories 100 and checking again in a week or so.
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timhuangjune wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »How long have you been on this program?
How are you ascertaining your calorie deficit?
(bar code tracking is better than nothing, but can by law be 20% off in either direction)
How did you determine your maintenance calories?
FYI strenuous intensity at strength training is anaerobic activity with distressingly low calorie burns.
There's many calculators online and I took appropriate numbers that are relevant to each other. I'm not sure if this is the way to do this
At 182 lbs and lifting 5x week, your TDEE looks roughly ok to me. Barcode tracking should still be getting you in the ballpark (around 500 calorie less than your TDEE) but this is something to check up on, but it still should probably be working alright enough to average out.
Even if you get your numbers off by a little, consider dropping calories 100 and checking again in a week or so.
Thanks, I do 5x5 program and have been consistent with it and then i decided to cut. I've been taking 2300-2400 , now I will start to take 2200 calories max for this week and see where my progress is from there.
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Granted that 2 weeks isn't a ton of time to see results, but I would question your calorie baseline. 2,900 calories sounds very high for maintenance at your weight.
I have a feeling that problem number one is overestimating your calorie needs because of a bum calculator (for example, don't let the calculator assume calories burned by exercise for you, it's best to calculate your baseline without the impact of exercise first and then to add that in afterwards). Don't cherry pick your calculator based on the one that gives you the highest calorie allowance, either hand calculate based on formulas you can find on the internet, or lean towards the more 'stingy' calorie results that you find.
For comparison, I'm 6'3" and started my weight loss program at 240 pounds. According to the more conservative calculators/formulas I've found online, 2900 calories is what I need to maintain assuming a sedentary lifestyle and no exercise.0 -
Granted that 2 weeks isn't a ton of time to see results, but I would question your calorie baseline. 2,900 calories sounds very high for maintenance at your weight.
I have a feeling that problem number one is overestimating your calorie needs because of a bum calculator (for example, don't let the calculator assume calories burned by exercise for you, it's best to calculate your baseline without the impact of exercise first and then to add that in afterwards). Don't cherry pick your calculator based on the one that gives you the highest calorie allowance, either hand calculate based on formulas you can find on the internet, or lean towards the more 'stingy' calorie results that you find.
For comparison, I'm 6'3" and started my weight loss program at 240 pounds. According to the more conservative calculators/formulas I've found online, 2900 calories is what I need to maintain assuming a sedentary lifestyle and no exercise.
Yea I agree, I found a new website where it says my maintenance is now 2700. I've been eating 2400 calories a day and now I will reduce this to around 2200 and see how my body reacts to it. Which calculator did you use?
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So far as I am aware, myfitnesspal is the only site that uses NEAT. There are many sites that use TDEE, and TDEE requires an accurate body fat percentage. Guess wrong on that, or use an electrical impedance measurement (synonymous with 'guess wrong'), and your calculated maintenance calories are off by no telling how much.
If you accurately track your food and cardio exercises, while maintaining your activity level and strength exercises, for a month, you can accumulate enough data to derive a calculation of your maintenance needs, without needing to be accurate on body fat percentage.4 -
timhuangjune wrote: »Granted that 2 weeks isn't a ton of time to see results, but I would question your calorie baseline. 2,900 calories sounds very high for maintenance at your weight.
I have a feeling that problem number one is overestimating your calorie needs because of a bum calculator (for example, don't let the calculator assume calories burned by exercise for you, it's best to calculate your baseline without the impact of exercise first and then to add that in afterwards). Don't cherry pick your calculator based on the one that gives you the highest calorie allowance, either hand calculate based on formulas you can find on the internet, or lean towards the more 'stingy' calorie results that you find.
For comparison, I'm 6'3" and started my weight loss program at 240 pounds. According to the more conservative calculators/formulas I've found online, 2900 calories is what I need to maintain assuming a sedentary lifestyle and no exercise.
Yea I agree, I found a new website where it says my maintenance is now 2700. I've been eating 2400 calories a day and now I will reduce this to around 2200 and see how my body reacts to it. Which calculator did you use?
How many calories does MFP give you?2 -
Christine_72 wrote: »timhuangjune wrote: »Granted that 2 weeks isn't a ton of time to see results, but I would question your calorie baseline. 2,900 calories sounds very high for maintenance at your weight.
I have a feeling that problem number one is overestimating your calorie needs because of a bum calculator (for example, don't let the calculator assume calories burned by exercise for you, it's best to calculate your baseline without the impact of exercise first and then to add that in afterwards). Don't cherry pick your calculator based on the one that gives you the highest calorie allowance, either hand calculate based on formulas you can find on the internet, or lean towards the more 'stingy' calorie results that you find.
For comparison, I'm 6'3" and started my weight loss program at 240 pounds. According to the more conservative calculators/formulas I've found online, 2900 calories is what I need to maintain assuming a sedentary lifestyle and no exercise.
Yea I agree, I found a new website where it says my maintenance is now 2700. I've been eating 2400 calories a day and now I will reduce this to around 2200 and see how my body reacts to it. Which calculator did you use?
How many calories does MFP give you?
2800 to lose weight.. lol
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »So far as I am aware, myfitnesspal is the only site that uses NEAT. There are many sites that use TDEE, and TDEE requires an accurate body fat percentage. Guess wrong on that, or use an electrical impedance measurement (synonymous with 'guess wrong'), and your calculated maintenance calories are off by no telling how much.
If you accurately track your food and cardio exercises, while maintaining your activity level and strength exercises, for a month, you can accumulate enough data to derive a calculation of your maintenance needs, without needing to be accurate on body fat percentage.
@JeromeBarry1 interesting about the body fat percentage. I never realized that was absolutely necessary for a tdee calculation.0 -
timhuangjune wrote: »
Yea I agree, I found a new website where it says my maintenance is now 2700. I've been eating 2400 calories a day and now I will reduce this to around 2200 and see how my body reacts to it. Which calculator did you use?
I use this one from the USDA. It's actually validated by correlation studies if that means anything (that is, they compared calculator results against actual people's experiences and saw that the results are in the ballpark).
https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/index.html
The numbers from this calculator also align with the results I got when I ran the Harris-Benedict equation.
Men BMR = (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) - (5 × age in years) + 5
BMR per the above X 1.2 gives you your daily caloric maintenance needs with little to no exercise.
If I make some assumptions about your height and age, the USDA calculator says that your maintenance calories should be something like 2400 per day before exercise impacts. If we assume that you burn about 200 calories per day 5X per week from weightlifting and are targeting a calorie deficit of 3500 per week, you should be eating something like 2000 calories per day.
For reference, some of the other online calculators I've used have said that I can eat as much as 2500 calories per day and still lose weight. The USDA site and Harris Benedict say that I should actually be eating about 1900 per day, all else equal. That's a massive difference.
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »So far as I am aware, myfitnesspal is the only site that uses NEAT. There are many sites that use TDEE, and TDEE requires an accurate body fat percentage. Guess wrong on that, or use an electrical impedance measurement (synonymous with 'guess wrong'), and your calculated maintenance calories are off by no telling how much.
If you accurately track your food and cardio exercises, while maintaining your activity level and strength exercises, for a month, you can accumulate enough data to derive a calculation of your maintenance needs, without needing to be accurate on body fat percentage.
@JeromeBarry1 interesting about the body fat percentage. I never realized that was absolutely necessary for a tdee calculation.JeromeBarry1 wrote: »So far as I am aware, myfitnesspal is the only site that uses NEAT. There are many sites that use TDEE, and TDEE requires an accurate body fat percentage. Guess wrong on that, or use an electrical impedance measurement (synonymous with 'guess wrong'), and your calculated maintenance calories are off by no telling how much.
If you accurately track your food and cardio exercises, while maintaining your activity level and strength exercises, for a month, you can accumulate enough data to derive a calculation of your maintenance needs, without needing to be accurate on body fat percentage.
you dont need to enter fat % for most of the TDEE sites, some may require it but not all do. you cvan get a good base TDEE from those sites without entering fat % because not everyone knows their fat %. It would probably be more accurate if you did though but not a requirement to work0 -
timhuangjune wrote: »I've been trying to cut around 1 pound a week with a calorie deficit of 500-600 per day. My maintenance calories is about 2900, so I would intake roughly 2300-2400 calories a day. I strength train 5x a week for roughly an hour with strenuous intensity. Currently I am weighing 182 pounds and have seen very little progress within 2 weeks. My macros are roughly 200G Protein, 55g Fat, 260G of carbs.
Does anyone recommend changing up my diet? I find myself not losing 1Lb a week.
How much are you actually losing per week?0
This discussion has been closed.
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