Confused

ajw019s
ajw019s Posts: 5 Member
edited November 24 in Health and Weight Loss
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.
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Replies

  • ajw019s
    ajw019s Posts: 5 Member
    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.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,253 Member
    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.?
  • ajw019s
    ajw019s Posts: 5 Member
    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.
  • ihp2015
    ihp2015 Posts: 221 Member
    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.
  • MarkusDarwath
    MarkusDarwath Posts: 393 Member
    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.

  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    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.

  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,244 Member
    evileen99 wrote: »
    gebeziseva wrote: »
    ajw019s 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.
  • dinadyna21
    dinadyna21 Posts: 403 Member
    edited January 2018
    buggsby83 wrote: »
    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.

    Seeing as OP is male I doubt they're suffering from PCOS, Hypothyroidism is a possibilty but even with untreated Hypo you can still lose weight in a deficit. Fact is the lack or results show that there is no deficit present. No one is blaming OP, they're trying to help him.
    And what you're referring to in regards to 'Baseline' happens when a person loses weight and the body re-adjusts to using less calories because there is less mass to move around. This can't be a possibility because OP said they haven't lost any weight.
    Edit: sentence
  • dinadyna21
    dinadyna21 Posts: 403 Member
    OP please take to heart the advice given here, I was frustrated and confused just like you thinking I was practically starving myself and didn't lose any weight. Fact is I was overeating and making any deficit I got through exercise null and void. Getting a food scale and honestly weighing and logging every bite, every sip, literally anything that went into my mouth was what finally got the weight to shift. Just try it for a few weeks, what do you have to lose at this point besides that stubborn weight?
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,439 Member
    Check out this thread, OP.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10634517/you-dont-use-a-food-scale/p1
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    quiksylver296 wrote: »
    Check out this thread, OP.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10634517/you-dont-use-a-food-scale/p1

    This one of my favorite threads that helped me immensely back in the day.

    OP if your profile is recent, you don't look like you have a whole lot to lose. So the weighing and assuring your food logging is on point will be the most important thing you do for successful weight loss.
  • ajw019s
    ajw019s Posts: 5 Member
    Thanks Everyone, I think that I’ll retry everyone’s advice and refocus on each actual meal to be sure I’m am doing exactly what I log in my diary. However the point about the exercise burn rate is not accurate in these on line calorie counters may be something to think about. I’ll keep logging my exercise as a remind, however work towards my original calorie target. The point about is this driving me crazy, is definitely correct. This post started off as a vent as well as to look for answers. I’ll give it another month and 5hen let everyone know what happened.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,253 Member
    If you really want to listen for advice consider that no male should be eating less than 1500 Cal as a MINIMUM

    That's an approximate multiplier of 4 to convert to kilojoules. So about 3 or 4 times your stated target.

    All you will manage to do by trying to speed things up is to slow them right down while making yourself miserable.

    Second thing is that if you are not obese or very overweight anything beyond a 500 Cal deficit is probably too adventuresome to start.

    Third is that trending weight applications are your friend. You can't see loss they is slow from your day to day or week to week weigh ins due to water weight variation.

    Fourth is that if you've increased exercise you are absolutely likely to have increased water retention for use in your muscles and yes that will mask losses for quite a while.

    Fifth IF losing weight is an appropriate goal (just because you think it is doesn't mean that it is, especially if you're already normal weight) if after four weeks you haven't lost anything on your trend you probably do need to reduce calories.

    However if you are feeling cold, shaky, week, tired, etc, you may be compensating for reduced calories by reducing your expenditure and in that case re-feeds or different strategies may be more appropriate.

    Again you haven't given out your stats. And mfp has a good percentage of people trying to lose weight at all costs when that is not a particularly appropriate goal for them and will not produce the results they seek. (And a bigger % who are absolutely pursuing the correct course, obviously). So YMMV!
  • stacimarie1015
    stacimarie1015 Posts: 30 Member
    You mentioned kj. How many calories a day do you log, on average? Are you confusing kj for calories? IF you're eating 4500 calories and not losing, the answer is to eat less than 4500 calories.
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