How to continue when you don't know how you did it?!

Are you still exercising quite a bit? If you are, are you accounting for that activity by eating back exercise calories? If you're not...well, yeah...anyone would be miserable because it would basically be like eating almost nothing.

emp707 wrote: »

Penthesilea514 wrote: »

How tall are you? How much are you trying to lose per week? You may be pushing yourself too hard (re: you goal weight loss per week is too low for you)- and your body is letting you know. All the weight I have lost I have done without being miserable- it is very possible, it just takes trial and error to find what works for you. For me, I like higher protein, some like higher fat, some like volume eating, some use just calorie counting period. If what you are doing isn't working, try a small change and see if that works better. If not, try something else.

You can also open your diary to the public and let some other experienced MFPers offer some insights into your food choices if you would like.

Hello! Thanks for the response. I am 5'1 so I am very short. I'm trying to lose 2lb per week. Normally my fats are over but I'm surprisingly managing ok with carbs. Putting my diary public may be a good idea, how do I do it? :-)

I'm gonna say that being short and only needing/wanting to lose 2 stone, 2 Lbs per week is super aggressive and likely not realistic in general...1,000 calories per day deficit is pretty huge and most people would be pretty miserable.

emp707 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

emp707 wrote: »

Penthesilea514 wrote: »

How tall are you? How much are you trying to lose per week? You may be pushing yourself too hard (re: you goal weight loss per week is too low for you)- and your body is letting you know. All the weight I have lost I have done without being miserable- it is very possible, it just takes trial and error to find what works for you. For me, I like higher protein, some like higher fat, some like volume eating, some use just calorie counting period. If what you are doing isn't working, try a small change and see if that works better. If not, try something else.

You can also open your diary to the public and let some other experienced MFPers offer some insights into your food choices if you would like.

Hello! Thanks for the response. I am 5'1 so I am very short. I'm trying to lose 2lb per week. Normally my fats are over but I'm surprisingly managing ok with carbs. Putting my diary public may be a good idea, how do I do it? :-)

I'm gonna say that being short and only needing/wanting to lose 2 stone, 2 Lbs per week is super aggressive and likely not realistic in general...1,000 calories per day deficit is pretty huge and most people would be pretty miserable.

Thanks for the advice here, do you think 1lb per week would be more viable? Also, when you say 1000 calories per day deficit what do you mean by that? Like 1000 to what I'd need to maintain? Yeah, I want to lose 2 more now (and maybe a wee bit more but that'd be absolutely ok with me). I feel like the final 2 will be so much harder than the initial 3 have been. I weigh in tomorrow and I've not done fantastically for the past couple of weeks so here's hoping for a loss...I've been pretty hungry and not exercising quite as much as I was ill etc so let's see...

Yeah, a 2 Lb per week rate of loss requires a 1,000 calorie deficit from maintenance...as an example for myself, that would mean I'd eat around 1600-1700 calories at the moment to lose 2 Lbs per week...I'd be miserable as all hell.

Typically a 2 Lb per week rate is good for people with 75+ Lbs to lose as given their size, they have a much higher calorie requirement starting out so a 1,000 calorie cut can still result in a relatively substantial amount of food.

As you get smaller, your calorie (energy) requirements become less and thus it becomes more difficult to maintain larger deficits because it means pretty much you can't really eat anything. It will also just get harder with the last pounds as you don't have the fat stores to mobilize for energy that you used to...I put on about 10 Lbs every winter and it usually takes me 3-4 months to get that off because even with the extra 10 I'm not really over fat...

emp707 wrote: »

That's interesting. Yeah it's very hard to eat so little! What scares me is one of my best friends is the same height as me, and she's 7 and a half stone (which I'd consider very skinny), and to maintain her weight she eats absolutely nothing fun whatsoever (might sound stupid) but I could never live like that. I'm struggling to eat smaller portions that's for sure...
How do you know how many calories you'd need to eat to maintain? Is there a way to calculate it here? I want to know what I should be eating to maintain once I hit around 10 stone.

set your goal to maintain instead of the 2 Lb per week loss...keep in mind that number is before deliberate exercise...exercise increases energy expenditure.

MFP will give me about 2300 calories to maintain...with regular exercise it's more like 2700/2800...more when I'm training.