Confused
ajw019s
Posts: 5 Member
Every one says, that all you need to do, is eat less food that your burn each day to lose weight. However this just doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve kept a food diary and averaged 2 hours of cardio a day for a year now, with no result. All I want to do, is lose body fat and this just doesn’t work for me? I’m absolutely confused.
5
Replies
-
How are you tracking your food? If you're not weighing, odds are good you're probably eating at maintenance, not at a deficit.9
-
Every one says, that all you need to do, is eat less food that your burn each day to lose weight. However this just doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve kept a food diary and averaged 2 hours of cardio a day for a year now, with no result. All I want to do, is lose body fat and this just doesn’t work for me? I’m absolutely confused.
Keeping a good diary is not the same as weighing food and eating in a deficit for a year?7 -
I used this application with out fail, to record every days food quantity as well as exercise. Somethings not right. However I will take your advice and refocus on every meal to be sure.3
-
Are you weighing all solids?5
-
Yes, cup of white rice , 200 grams of rump steak, 3 lots of 45 minutes of cardio (morning, lunch time and evening), etc. Plus I’ve tried to have these as 6 small meals a day.7
-
What are your stats? (Age, height, current weight, weekly deficit, target weight)
How many calories are you eating and drinking?
How long have you been doing so?
Are you using a trending weight application/how are you measuring your weight? How much has it changed and over what time period?
What is your activity like excluding deliberate exercise?
Are you eye ball, measure using physical cups, or measure using a scale?
Do you log before or after you eat? Do you log condiments, oils or butter used in cooking, dressings etc.?2 -
The application I use is “My Fitness Pal” by Under Armour. You put all your stats in to the application, which then gives you a goal to work towards. My goal is 4,500 Kilojoules per day. I travel around a bit to see clients, however ever I’m certainly not doing any manual labour. I track every thing. I started in November 2016. I always log before I eat so I can plan my meals for the day and then stick to what’s planned. For my meals I have a measuring cup and a set of scales. Lately, I’ve actually started not eating condemns at all and only eating one food group at each meal, to see if this would make a difference. Which unfortunately it hasn’t. My weight has stayed the same over the year. It’s good to get all this feed back as the main theme everyone suggests is to refocus on the small details and start again.3
-
unless you open your diary, the only thing any of us will say is you are 99% likely to be eating more than you think you are due to inaccurate logging.
9 -
The application I use is “My Fitness Pal” by Under Armour. You put all your stats in to the application, which then gives you a goal to work towards. My goal is 4,500 Kilojoules per day. I travel around a bit to see clients, however ever I’m certainly not doing any manual labour. I track every thing. I started in November 2016. I always log before I eat so I can plan my meals for the day and then stick to what’s planned. For my meals I have a measuring cup and a set of scales. Lately, I’ve actually started not eating condemns at all and only eating one food group at each meal, to see if this would make a difference. Which unfortunately it hasn’t. My weight has stayed the same over the year. It’s good to get all this feed back as the main theme everyone suggests is to refocus on the small details and start again.
yeah we get that. thats this site
14 -
Measuring cups are not always accurate. I would suggest you weigh everything on a food scale and stop using cups. You can also check this by taking one cup of rice and measure how much that is in grams on you're food scale. A cup should be 40 grams, but this is not always the case.3
-
Two things: one, if you are logging your exercise MFP will add the estimated calorie burn back to your daily calorie target. I don't log exercise here for that reason, but those who do say that the program often over-estimates that burn, so that if you eat all the way to your target calories with the exercise logged it can take you out of deficit. They generally suggest that you only eat 50% - 75% of the calories MFP tacks on for exercise.
Two, BMR and TDEE calculations are really only a rough estimate. They are generally within a certain margin of error for most people, but your actual calorie expenditure probably does not exactly match the number produced by the formulas. If you are eating to your calculated calorie target and not losing weight then your actual burn may just be less than what the formula says.
On the other hand, I don't know how aggressive of a deficit you are set for, but there have also been cases where people have set too deep of a deficit and their body reacted by reducing their metabolic burn. In theory, there's only so much of a change that can occur when the body does things like lowering core temperature and reducing muscle mass, but there can be a subconscious behavior adaptation as well, things like not pushing as hard at your exercise (even though you think you still are) and a change in habits like less fidgeting, and sitting more often and for longer periods.
Both of the first two situations would be remedied simply by eating a couple hundred calories less per day and see what happens over the next 3 to 4 weeks.
If that doesn't gain any results and your calorie target is on the low end, then you may have to consider the possibility of an energy conserving adaptive response and go the other direction (higher) with calories for a couple weeks to see what happens from that.
2 -
Open your diary if you want people to help - there's a good chance that might reveal the problem.
Measuring cups is a common issue, they are simply not accurate for lots of food items as calories are in relation to weight not volume (which is what cups measure).
Refocus on the big items not the small items - your calorie goal, accurate food and exercise logging. It's your calorie balance that's drives weight loss not eating single food groups.5 -
4500 kilojoules is only 1075 calories per day. I'm on 5020 kilojoules, which is 1200 calories per day, the least a woman should eat I believe. I'm only 5 feet tall - if you are a taller male (and practically everyone is taller than me) then you should be on way more kilojoules than 4500. Are you sure the app set you to only 4500 kilojoules?6
-
Intake sounds low as a setting.
Your cup of rice, are you measuring it dry or cooked?
Is the entry you're using for dry or for cooked?
(Advanced: is it a USDA entry verified with their site or a database entry verified with your food packaging?)
Weight stayed the same over the year. Can we explore this? How often do you weigh yourself? Weigh in conditions? Trending weight app in use?
The stress of eating single food groups multiple times a day must be driving your stress levels through the roof.
Original stats question not answered.
Are you normal weight trying to move within the normal weight range? Morbidly obese trying to get to overweight?
Different people/situations, different goals, different strategies needed.
Just because the app allows you to select a setting or goal doesn't mean that the setting or goal is appropriate for you....
But again, as far as I'm concerned, not enough info to give anything more than generic answers that may not even apply to YOU.6 -
Every one says, that all you need to do, is eat less food that your burn each day to lose weight. However this just doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve kept a food diary and averaged 2 hours of cardio a day for a year now, with no result. All I want to do, is lose body fat and this just doesn’t work for me? I’m absolutely confused.
Something is off here. If you were weighing all your food, logging it and staying at a deficit diligently every day but seeing no loss you would have been here screaming in frustration after 2 weeks tops. Not 1 year.
7 -
You mentioned condiments. Depending upon what you were consuming as condiments, you may have been able to add a lot of un-counted calories to your intake.
4 -
gebeziseva wrote: »Every one says, that all you need to do, is eat less food that your burn each day to lose weight. However this just doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve kept a food diary and averaged 2 hours of cardio a day for a year now, with no result. All I want to do, is lose body fat and this just doesn’t work for me? I’m absolutely confused.
Something is off here. If you were weighing all your food, logging it and staying at a deficit diligently every day but seeing no loss you would have been here screaming in frustration after 2 weeks tops. Not 1 year.
OP has never stated if s/he is weighing or measuring all their food6 -
gebeziseva wrote: »Every one says, that all you need to do, is eat less food that your burn each day to lose weight. However this just doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve kept a food diary and averaged 2 hours of cardio a day for a year now, with no result. All I want to do, is lose body fat and this just doesn’t work for me? I’m absolutely confused.
Something is off here. If you were weighing all your food, logging it and staying at a deficit diligently every day but seeing no loss you would have been here screaming in frustration after 2 weeks tops. Not 1 year.
OP has never stated if s/he is weighing or measuring all their food
That's kinda my point.4 -
If you have been doing the exact same thing for a year and haven't lost weight, you are eating too much.
There is no way you've actually been eating 4500 kilojules for a year and exercising and not losing weight. So you're eating more than you think. Fix that part and/or see a doctor.6 -
Everyone seems really quick to blame OP for not doing something right but suppose for a moment that she is doing everything right. There are medical conditions that can stall weight loss significantly, like PCOS or hypothyroidism, that the OP would benefit from getting tested for. Also I've heard of the body adjusting to what you're changing and setting a new "base line" so to say, creating a weight loss plateau that can be very frustrating to get past.26
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 392.9K Introduce Yourself
- 43.7K Getting Started
- 260.1K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.8K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.5K Fitness and Exercise
- 415 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.5K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.9K Motivation and Support
- 8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.6K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 1.1K Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.5K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions