Women 40+ Question...

I'm a bit older than you and last year when I started MFP, I was given 1240 calories based on no exercise (I definitely was not exercising). I lost weight pretty rapidly on that without exercise. It took about 3 weeks to really start rolling off, but it did. But that amount was not sustainable for me long term (I am 5'7" and was around 155 lbs). I think you should probably shoot for 1400 calories at your current level. Oh, and make sure you become a measuring NINJA!!! Most people don't do it right and in reality your 1400 calories will be 1600 calories and then you'll not know why you didn't lose weight.

kimny72 wrote: »

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

Enter the, "you just have to burn more than you consume" crowd. The trouble with that statement is that how do we really know just how much we burn? I am convinced that a simple mathematical formula is just not accurate. Eating the calories we figure we burned during exercise never did anything but get me backsliding. I don't know what my body is doing honestly. All I know is that in order to lose even a pound a month I have to keep my calories consumed to 1,200 and that is even with any amount of exercise. MFP tells me that if I want to lose a pound a week I should be eating 1,580 calories a day. I would love to know why it's near impossible to drop another single pound.

Try using a food scale for a couple of weeks for all solid and semisolid food. I used to swear I was eating 1400 cals a day and couldn't lose an ounce. Got a kitchen scale and started weighing and logging every single thing I ate - and realized I had actually been eating more like 1700-1800 cals a day. Total eye-opener!

It would be great if it were as simple as that.But it isn't. I have been using a food scale for 15 years. I am not accidentally eating more than I think. I am very well practiced in weighing food. I also log everything I eat so that would also not be the problem. The problem is in my body. Unfortunately.
At any rate I was only joining the club on this one. Sometimes the weight just refuses to move at this stage in life. At least for some of us.

Small deficit and being active works for me. If your size and activity level require low cals that's one thing but in general I'm a full grown active woman and I'm going to eat like one.

I'm 47, 5'8", and currently 197, aiming for 1lb/week loss. MFP sets me at 1480 cals per day, which just isn't quite enough to satiate. I have lately been getting 10k steps a day, which gives me another 300-400 calories to work with. 1800 cals a day works fine for me, and I lose on pace. As long as I get those steps in.

oolou wrote: »

I'd say eat back your exercise calories if you are hungry - otherwise don't bother and just stick to your calorie goal for the day, or keep them in reserve as a buffer in case of unexpected food/drink situations. Listen to your body - make sure it's proper hunger and not just the chatter in the back of your head going 'ooh more food please because I wants it'. If you find that in general that the target is just too aggressive, try for a half pound loss a week instead. In the end there is no hard and fast rule but working out what works best for you. We are all different.

MFP gives you a lower calorie goal expecting you to eat back exercise calories. If you don't eat at least some of them back, you are most likely undereating. Why purposefully misuse a tool?

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

Enter the, "you just have to burn more than you consume" crowd. The trouble with that statement is that how do we really know just how much we burn? I am convinced that a simple mathematical formula is just not accurate. Eating the calories we figure we burned during exercise never did anything but get me backsliding. I don't know what my body is doing honestly. All I know is that in order to lose even a pound a month I have to keep my calories consumed to 1,200 and that is even with any amount of exercise. MFP tells me that if I want to lose a pound a week I should be eating 1,580 calories a day. I would love to know why it's near impossible to drop another single pound.

Try using a food scale for a couple of weeks for all solid and semisolid food. I used to swear I was eating 1400 cals a day and couldn't lose an ounce. Got a kitchen scale and started weighing and logging every single thing I ate - and realized I had actually been eating more like 1700-1800 cals a day. Total eye-opener!

It would be great if it were as simple as that.But it isn't. I have been using a food scale for 15 years. I am not accidentally eating more than I think. I am very well practiced in weighing food. I also log everything I eat so that would also not be the problem. The problem is in my body. Unfortunately.
At any rate I was only joining the club on this one. Sometimes the weight just refuses top move at this stage in life. At least for some of us.

Have you had your thyroid checked? Unless you are very short and light, the only reason you should be that far off the predicted calories is a medical condition.

I really don't think that's the only possible reason. The standard deviation is large enough that perhaps 1 in 20 will be a fairly significant outlier in one direction or the other. Some of those will be medical, surely.

But I suspect - completely without direct proof - that there are some other potential causes. Among older women especially, I think the cumulative adaptive thermogenesis penalty for 2-3 decades of VLCD yo-yo weight loss, perhaps combined with persistent underconsumption of protein even in the re-gaining phases, plus possibly some general lifestyle factors that foster faster muscle loss, potentially stacked on top of a lower than average NEAT in the first place . . . I think that could get pretty ugly, maybe even as few hundred calories daily worth of ugly. Maybe there are other possible reasons, too - dunno.

It's an unpopular opinion, but I think there are a few ultra-low-burn people out there. Yes, a fair fraction of those who claim to be such are miscounting, in denial about the effect of periodic frustrated DGAF food-fests, etc. But I think there are a few like this in this demographic that are truly outliers - 1 in 50, maybe? 1 in 75? And to the extent they do exist, I think they're far more likely to post than are those for whom the population-average burn estimates work adequately.

This is not actually "CICO doesn't work". It's the extremes of variation around the mean, with respect to standard goal estimates. The estimates are just statistical estimates. They aren't principles of physics. CICO still works. CO is just a little haywire.

P.S. I'm not one of these women, though I have at least one in my MFP friend feed that I believe is. I'm an outlier in the other direction. For some reason, that direction gets a person less vehement disbelief around here.

This may be a pie in the sky kind of dream, BUT wouldn't it be great if they invented a fitness gadget that actually could detect actual calorie burn? I am not into gadgets, but I would gladly put money down for that.

The muscle loss you mention, I am also suspecting is a more common reason for the thermogenesis penalty that comes with age. Which may not be entirely preventable but perhaps it can be lessened by taking better care of ourselves in our youth.

There's testing you can have done, but I don't know how expensive it is.

I remember someone who had issues like yours and she had all sorts of tests run (sorry, I have a bad memory as to the specific nature of the tests), but they did verify that her BMR was quite outside of the norm. She was able to somewhat compensate for it with exercise.

I am 46 and have lost 45 lbs fairly easily. I am lightly active, eat 1,300 calories plus 1/2 my exercise calories ( I only record intentional exercise from my Fitbit.) I walk/jog 45 min/4x per week and do a bit of resistance training. I lose around 1 - 1 1/2 lbs a week.

I am not finding it any harder to lose weight now than when I was younger, plus, I feel like I am doing it in a more healthy manner now than years ago when I would starve myself and exercise hours daily.

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

Nixi3Knox wrote: »

Enter the, "you just have to burn more than you consume" crowd. The trouble with that statement is that how do we really know just how much we burn? I am convinced that a simple mathematical formula is just not accurate. Eating the calories we figure we burned during exercise never did anything but get me backsliding. I don't know what my body is doing honestly. All I know is that in order to lose even a pound a month I have to keep my calories consumed to 1,200 and that is even with any amount of exercise. MFP tells me that if I want to lose a pound a week I should be eating 1,580 calories a day. I would love to know why it's near impossible to drop another single pound.

Try using a food scale for a couple of weeks for all solid and semisolid food. I used to swear I was eating 1400 cals a day and couldn't lose an ounce. Got a kitchen scale and started weighing and logging every single thing I ate - and realized I had actually been eating more like 1700-1800 cals a day. Total eye-opener!

It would be great if it were as simple as that.But it isn't. I have been using a food scale for 15 years. I am not accidentally eating more than I think. I am very well practiced in weighing food. I also log everything I eat so that would also not be the problem. The problem is in my body. Unfortunately.
At any rate I was only joining the club on this one. Sometimes the weight just refuses top move at this stage in life. At least for some of us.

Have you had your thyroid checked? Unless you are very short and light, the only reason you should be that far off the predicted calories is a medical condition.

I really don't think that's the only possible reason. The standard deviation is large enough that perhaps 1 in 20 will be a fairly significant outlier in one direction or the other. Some of those will be medical, surely.

But I suspect - completely without direct proof - that there are some other potential causes. Among older women especially, I think the cumulative adaptive thermogenesis penalty for 2-3 decades of VLCD yo-yo weight loss, perhaps combined with persistent underconsumption of protein even in the re-gaining phases, plus possibly some general lifestyle factors that foster faster muscle loss, potentially stacked on top of a lower than average NEAT in the first place . . . I think that could get pretty ugly, maybe even as few hundred calories daily worth of ugly. Maybe there are other possible reasons, too - dunno.

It's an unpopular opinion, but I think there are a few ultra-low-burn people out there. Yes, a fair fraction of those who claim to be such are miscounting, in denial about the effect of periodic frustrated DGAF food-fests, etc. But I think there are a few like this in this demographic that are truly outliers - 1 in 50, maybe? 1 in 75? And to the extent they do exist, I think they're far more likely to post than are those for whom the population-average burn estimates work adequately.

This is not actually "CICO doesn't work". It's the extremes of variation around the mean, with respect to standard goal estimates. The estimates are just statistical estimates. They aren't principles of physics. CICO still works. CO is just a little haywire.

P.S. I'm not one of these women, though I have at least one in my MFP friend feed that I believe is. I'm an outlier in the other direction. For some reason, that direction gets a person less vehement disbelief around here.

This may be a pie in the sky kind of dream, BUT wouldn't it be great if they invented a fitness gadget that actually could detect actual calorie burn? I am not into gadgets, but I would gladly put money down for that.

The muscle loss you mention, I am also suspecting is a more common reason for the thermogenesis penalty that comes with age. Which may not be entirely preventable but perhaps it can be lessened by taking better care of ourselves in our youth.

Two things:

I mentioned that in my MFP friend feed, there is someone I believe is one of these "slow burn" older women. We've been MFP friends for nearly 2 years, IIRC, and I looked at her very meticulous diary repeatedly, as well as communicating with her directly (messages, status comments) though with no contact in real life.

She was able to lose - very slowly for her size, which is not ultra-petite (I think she's 5'7" or 5'9" or something) - on a calorie level we're not allowed by terms of service to discuss here . . . and absolutely the best nutrition I've ever seen here at that calorie level and even from most people with a calorie budget hundreds higher daily.

As she got near goal, she seems to have been able to - very slowly - move her burn rate noticeably higher through a combination of disciplined, quite intense (for her) strength training, alongside very gradual reverse dieting while maintaining that same excellent nutrition. This was not a case of simply adding yet more cardio to buy more calories (though that's a good strategy, too). I could not do what she did; I don't have the strength of character. But perhaps it does work for some.

Second: I don't really aspire to the device you mention. I feel like attentive experimentation (including meticulous logging, especially for the first year) has gotten me plenty close enough to knowing what I eat/burn, for practical purposes.

I do use a heart rate monitor for most of my intentional exercise, and the exercise i do (mostly rowing, spin, cycling) is close to the type for which HRM are relatively more accurate.

It helps that I like data, and am fairly good at analyzing it (plus find that fun ), and have a simple enough life that I can fit that in (given its importance to me). And who knows, maybe some of us are simply more metabolically predictable . . . though offhand I can't think of a mechanism that would cause that.

I can understand why someone with a different nature/disposition than I have would be more eager for a device that would produce a solid answer more automagically, however.

TranquilityBreeze wrote: »

I am definitely going through the "hit the 40s and harder to drop pounds" issue. What do you find has worked for you? I keep reading how hard it is to lose weight after 40 but I also find articles where people are not seeing a major difference.

In order to drop 1 pound a week MFP says to have 1240 calories. I have put me down as inactive, though I do the stationary bike 3-4 times a week and walk the dogs almost everyday with an average of 2.5 miles. Is 1240 too low? I would love to hear how others are doing. I know the calorie intake depends on height and weight but it still seems low.

Thanks!!!

I lost 25 kg when I was 48 with no problem at all.

I was on net 1250 cal for the first 16 weeks and lost 15 kg.

I took a 1-month break.

Then I was on net 1350 cal for the next 16 weeks and lost the final 10 kg.

I suppose I am fortunate, thus far, as in spite of having had hypothyroidism since the age of 28, I lose weight on 1700-1800 calories as long as I am active and eat back my exercise calories. It may be because I am tall or because I have a lung issue that means I have to work harder to breathe when exercising but I cannot remember a time I ever had trouble losing weight. I am 42.

Untreated hypothyroidism stinks, and it's very common, especially in women as we age. It's worth getting checked out, perhaps along with iron, B12 and D.

That said, I was over 40 and menopausal when I was diagnosed with a fairly severe case, and weight gain was not among my symptoms. Years later, when my drug dosage needed a tune-up, I did notice it being slightly harder to lose, but the effect was small. (I know others' experiences differ.)

Correctly medicated, at 59-60, I lost straightforwardly . . . and relatively quickly, while eating more calories than MFP estimated I'd need to maintain. Hypothyroidism is not a universal deal-breaker for weight loss.