No weight loss

eat your exercise calories

^^ THIS ^^

I am the same!

Gonna try and eat 90 per cent of my exercise calories adn see if it makes a diff

How certain are you that your assumed 1200 calorie intake is accurate? By that, I mean are you using a food scale to increase accuracy?

The starvation mode does not work like that. It's a common misconception.

Just ask any successful anorexic.

Being facetious for the most part, but adaptive thermogenesis (the real name for the starvation mode) does not cause you to store calories in the face of a deficit. It simply stands to reduce daily energy cost via a number of mechanisms. And metabolism doesn't crash to a degree where an extreme deficit turns into s surplus.

I use a scale and am strict on ensuring my calorie count is accurate
I drink between 8-12 glasses of water a day (generally 3-4 24oz bottles)
I eat most of my exercise calories

So ... still looking for some serious in-depth answers if anyone has them :ohwell:

So do you eat 1200 calories per day? Or do you eat 1200 + the calories you expended exercising?

I use a scale and am strict on ensuring my calorie count is accurate
I drink between 8-12 glasses of water a day (generally 3-4 24oz bottles)
I eat most of my exercise calories

So ... still looking for some serious in-depth answers if anyone has them :ohwell:

So do you eat 1200 calories per day? Or do you eat 1200 + the calories you expended exercising?

1200 regularly + about 90% of exercise cals (if I exercise)

If you had to come up with an average, how much are you expending via exercise? A lot of people overestimate their energy expenditure and therefore wind up eating too much when they eat their exercise calories back.

So you said you workout 4 days per week I think. So in 7 days your intake might be 3 days a 1200 and 4 days at 1650 (1200 + 90% of your 500 calories expended). That totals 10,200 calories for the week.

Your maintenance, if you're 140 lbs, is likely around 1800. So that means your weekly energy expenditure is likely around 12,600.

That gives you a weekly deficit of 2400 calories. If you lost nothing but fat while in a deficit, which isn't the case, you'd be losing roughly 2/3 of a pound of fat each week.

But you have to understand... this assumes that your metabolism is functioning optimally. If you've lost a significant amount of weight in the past... your energy expenditure is likely lower would be expected.

It also assumes that your energy intake and expenditure estimates are close to accurate. I've been doing this a long time working with a lot of people. I've been researching the topic for a lot of years too. It's very evident that we such at accurately tracking calorie intake... chances are better than not that you're underestimating calorie intake and overestimating calorie expenditure, thus putting you closer to maintenance than you'd assume.

You're working with a relatively small wiggle room so it's very easy to hit a mark that's closer to maintenance than you realize.

To go along with Stroutman81's line of thinking...You can also try wearing a monitor. I have a Polaris that keeps track of my total calories burned, tells me when I am burning "fat" calories, when I switch into Fitness mode and tracks the Percent of fat calroies burned for the course of a work out. I absolutely love it! It not only "keeps me honest" on how many calories I am burning for a given task but helps me to track how many Fat calories I am burning, which is my goal . I am a pretty active person and find I push too hard sometimes and jump quickly into "firness" mode where I increase my cardio and build muscle (both of which are excellent goals and help burn calories long term) but I personally need to reduce my body fat percentage in relation to my overall weight and the Polaris definately helps. Good luck!

I am not sure which medication you are taking, but there are several that are notorious for causing weight gain, and if you taking one of those, you have probably read the stories of people who gained up to 30 lbs in as little as 3-6 months while in treatment.

Since you are eating and working out as you have described, it sounds to me like you've found a way to keep the extra medication pounds at bay -- something most people seem unable to accomplish. It could be that you won't lose any more weight, but you should be very relieved that you are not gaining. Weight loss might not occur while you are taking medication, and you may have to continue your hard workouts and strict calorie counting just to avoid gaining -- but that is a great accomplishment, given that many people despite diet and exercise cannot seem to avoid putting on weight on certain meds.

I would say, be kind to yourself and patient, and don't obsess terribly about how or when you will reach your goal. Just realize that you are doing everything humanly possible, and know that it will eventually pay off, if not in pounds lost, at least in pounds not gained.

To go along with Stroutman81's line of thinking...You can also try wearing a monitor. I have a Polaris that keeps track of my total calories burned, tells me when I am burning "fat" calories, when I switch into Fitness mode and tracks the Percent of fat calroies burned for the course of a work out. I absolutely love it! It not only "keeps me honest" on how many calories I am burning for a given task but helps me to track how many Fat calories I am burning, which is my goal . I am a pretty active person and find I push too hard sometimes and jump quickly into "firness" mode where I increase my cardio and build muscle (both of which are excellent goals and help burn calories long term) but I personally need to reduce my body fat percentage in relation to my overall weight and the Polaris definately helps. Good luck!

I wouldn't put a lot of faith on the substrate utilization assumptions that the monitor is making. I'd have to hear exactly how it's working... but I'd imagine it's basing it solely on percentage of maximum heart rate and that wouldn't be at all accurate.

In addition, even if it were, the fuel substrate used during exercise is of little importance when it comes to fat loss. Think of it like this, as a percentage we use fat for fuel mostly. So why not relax ourselves to fat loss?

I'd focus more on calories in vs. calories out.