Is my calorie deficit too low?
Options
Replies
-
You'll likely get better advice if you open up your diary. I echo what others have said - you're not gaining fat on 1300 calories. Gaining water weight for one week and then giving up and dropping cals and convincing yourself that you'll gain fat by eating a sustainable amount is steering you wrong.
You are likely eating more than you think you are, even though you think you're being meticulous. That's not meant to attack you or anything; it's actually VERY common. Most of us here who advocate for weighing and logging accurately started out making mistakes, too. We're adamant about it because we've seen how much of a difference accurate logging makes in losing weight.
So I'm confused again I checked my macros on iifym and it's showing i should be eating 1507 calories and MFP shows I should be eating I should be 1,600. But I will track my diet closer.
Why is this confusing? The two systems use different methods for setting your goals. Being within 100 calories seems pretty consistent to me...
When you say "track my diet closer" what does that mean to you? Are you logging everything you eat using a digital food scale for accuracy? Can you open your diary so people might be able to identify some common logging errors you might be making?2 -
I track all my foods on here but I weigh them on a food scale but eating enough to hit 1,208. But it seems I'm meant to eat more that's what I'm struggling with. I don't know how to open up my diary. But i am truthfully telling you what I've been eating. I'm also Asian so we eat a lot of South Indian foods but instead of the heavy laden great food our dinners consists of white rice with currys I don't eat currys i make my grilled chicken or fish.
It's hard losing weight.2 -
You can't expect to see a huge difference. Your diary isn't open, so we can't see what you're logging BUT it says that your first visit was in August of this year. Seeing as it's still August..... the MOST you should have lost would have been about 8 pounds, IF you started on the 1st and IF you were tracking correctly AND logging to lose 2 lbs/week and not overeating/underestimating your calories. You've not even been on here for a month. Be patient, and it will come.0
-
You can open your diary by going into setting -> diary -> select public so we can all see it ( change it back later if you want)1
-
You can't expect to see a huge difference. Your diary isn't open, so we can't see what you're logging BUT it says that your first visit was in August of this year. Seeing as it's still August..... the MOST you should have lost would have been about 8 pounds, IF you started on the 1st and IF you were tracking correctly AND logging to lose 2 lbs/week and not overeating/underestimating your calories. You've not even been on here for a month. Be patient, and it will come.
I started here August two years ago lol but yes it's hard to be patient hope for the results to come
0 -
I opened up my diary before you judge I did go out on Sunday and I ate around 1,400 calories my cheat meal1
-
I opened up my diary before you judge I did go out on Sunday and I ate around 1,400 calories my cheat meal
It looks as if you are choosing a lot of generic and homemade entries created by other users. This can make it very difficult to be accurate -- you have no idea you are preparing it the same way or with the same ingredients. You may be eating more calories than you think you are.3 -
Okay, right off the bat I see mostly "generic" entries. You should either rely on the label that came with the food, or try to find a USDA entry.
"Homemade - Broccoli-Cauliflower Bake, 1 cup cooked" & "Homemade - Dahl Recipe, 1 cup" Did you make these yourself? Did you use the recipe builder? Homemade entries can fluctuate dramatically if you don't know how it was prepared. One of my friends uses an entire stick of butter in her mashed potatoes, I don't.
I see entries that are not weighed - "Homemade - Baked White Fish, 1 piece cooked" - how many grams or ounces was this?
"Asda Great Stuff - Apple, 1 Apple" - "Generic - Orange - Medium Size, 1 whole, fresh" These should be weighed, because grocery stores can tend to sell some enormous fruits. My recent nectarine purchase resulted in 110 calorie fruit.
0 -
Remember to log the incidentals that some people forget about including cooking oils, stock, condiments and drinks, weigh food raw before cooking and make sure you find the raw weight on MFP. If it goes in your mouth, log it, even if you didn't prepare it or intend to eat it like a sample of cheese at the market or a few chips from your friends plate. Also log any days you fall off the wagon and be honest. The main thing is to tighten up your logging and I mean everything.
Before you change your calorie settings tighten your logging then go from there. I agree that it sounds like your logging is inaccurate, if after a few weeks of honest discipline and consistently hitting your cals and there is still no loss on a 1200cal diet, I would personally see a doctor. xxx Good luck0 -
I opened up my diary before you judge I did go out on Sunday and I ate around 1,400 calories my cheat meal
you arent weighing everything, the fish for one isnt weighed.2 pieces of fish the same size can be different weights.are the homemade entries yours? or in the database? if they arent yours you dont know what was included in the recipe or how much. your scoop of protein powder can be more than a scoop.I learned that the hard way. fruit is another thing you should be weighing as well.3 -
MommaGem2017 wrote: »Okay, right off the bat I see mostly "generic" entries. You should either rely on the label that came with the food, or try to find a USDA entry.
"Homemade - Broccoli-Cauliflower Bake, 1 cup cooked" & "Homemade - Dahl Recipe, 1 cup" Did you make these yourself? Did you use the recipe builder? Homemade entries can fluctuate dramatically if you don't know how it was prepared. One of my friends uses an entire stick of butter in her mashed potatoes, I don't.
I see entries that are not weighed - "Homemade - Baked White Fish, 1 piece cooked" - how many grams or ounces was this?
"Asda Great Stuff - Apple, 1 Apple" - "Generic - Orange - Medium Size, 1 whole, fresh" These should be weighed, because grocery stores can tend to sell some enormous fruits. My recent nectarine purchase resulted in 110 calorie fruit.
What's USDA? I say generic for majority of my stuff because I can't find the brand when I scan the product. The Dahl yes I cook it myself
ok noted I will weigh my fruits. So I could actually be eating around 200 calories extra.. interesting. Thank you all !
0 -
What's USDA? I say generic for majority of my stuff because I can't find the brand when I scan the product. The Dahl yes I cook it myself ok noted I will weigh my fruits. So I could actually be eating around 200 calories extra.. interesting. Thank you all !
I understand that you may have cooked it yourself, but did you build that entry using the Recipe Builder? Or did you do a database search and choose someone else's entry?
When you're choosing someone else's entry, you have no idea what ingredients they are using. It could be very different from your recipe.
4 -
Ah seen your diary, lots of generic entries and cup measurements rather than digital scale measurements. You must weigh everything there is no such thing as a medium potato they can vary from 100g to 300g, and that 2oz of rice is the cooked calories not the dry calories and is reading very low.
As I said before you need to get the digital scales out and calculate your entire recipes from scratch, oil, stock, dry rice, dry lentils, uncooked meat and veg you should only be using the generic entries as a last resort (eg if you're eating out) and I usually go for the most calorific entry and add 20%. Take care. x1 -
USDA - sorry! You might not be from the US, I just assumed. It stands for U.S. Department of Agriculture and they provide lists of the nutritional information of food. So if you search for the food in the MFP database, you can type "usda whitefish raw" and it's usually pretty accurate.
I love dahl - yummy! Do you use the Recipe Builder feature on MFP to enter in your ingredients and get a calorie count for your specific recipe?
1 -
You're not logging accurately. Like MommaGem2017 said, 1 piece of cooked white fish isn't weighing everything with a scale.
I know you closed your diary again now, but on Saturday you had 1 ounce of lamb curry with rice for one meal. One ounce? I think one ounce would be one single tiny piece of lamb.
Everyone's telling you your problem is incorrect logging. Your problem is incorrect logging. You're not hurting anyone here if you continue. You're only hurting yourself.1 -
Also don't add 200 more calories until you've tightened up your logging and weighing everything yourself, I very much suspect you're way over that 1208 already xxx1
-
MommaGem2017 wrote: »Okay, right off the bat I see mostly "generic" entries. You should either rely on the label that came with the food, or try to find a USDA entry.
"Homemade - Broccoli-Cauliflower Bake, 1 cup cooked" & "Homemade - Dahl Recipe, 1 cup" Did you make these yourself? Did you use the recipe builder? Homemade entries can fluctuate dramatically if you don't know how it was prepared. One of my friends uses an entire stick of butter in her mashed potatoes, I don't.
I see entries that are not weighed - "Homemade - Baked White Fish, 1 piece cooked" - how many grams or ounces was this?
"Asda Great Stuff - Apple, 1 Apple" - "Generic - Orange - Medium Size, 1 whole, fresh" These should be weighed, because grocery stores can tend to sell some enormous fruits. My recent nectarine purchase resulted in 110 calorie fruit.
What's USDA? I say generic for majority of my stuff because I can't find the brand when I scan the product. The Dahl yes I cook it myself ok noted I will weigh my fruits. So I could actually be eating around 200 calories extra.. interesting. Thank you all !
you could actually be eating more than 200 extra. weigh everything in grams(if its a solid and semi solid) and all liquids in cups. also weigh all oils you may use as well. anything like rice,spaghetti,macaroni,etc need to be weighed dried before you cook it.1 -
I am a little shorter and heavier than you (5'2", 185 lbs) and I lost about a pound a week over the last month at a net 1900 calories. There's nothing to be embarrassed about, but it is very likely that you are currently eating quite a bit more than you think you are. If the numbers are stressing you out, maybe try just to focus on your portions. If you aren't losing weight, you are eating too many calories, no matter what numbers you're using. It sounds like you're not hungry on your current portions, so maybe just cut down your portions wherever it makes sense to cut and see where you are in a couple of weeks.1
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.7K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 394 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.3K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 949 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions