Help I'm lost
Replies
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Found it
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I thought weight loss was a mystery too until I finally decided to give MFP a real shot. I also thought weighing my food was woo. So I just started logging every meal to get a rough idea of how much I was actually eating. I didn't get a food scale at first because that sounded nuts. After roughly logging for a couple weeks I was surprised with how much I was actually eating and I just naturally wanted to eat less. The weight started to come off just by a little cutting back which gave me motivation to keep logging. Then it started to become annoying trying to figure out how many ounces of cheese I was eating. I found a food scale for $10 and figured what the heck, even if I just weigh my cheese one time it'll be an interesting experiment. Once I had the scale I was curious about a lot more than cheese weights. I discovered that weighing your food is really no big deal and that $10 was the best investment I've ever made. I don't weigh everything because I eat out a lot, but I weigh when I can and it really helps determine portion sizes. I've now lost 30 lbs in 3 months. It wasn't magic. I didn't cut out food groups. I don't even work out. I just ate less than I burned. Ignore people like Shugahhfatt who say CICO doesn't work. Note he says "if I did what mfp suggested." He clearly hasn't given it a chance. There is some research that shows that your metabolism can slow eating at a deficit, but it doesn't stop, and eating at maintenance for a while seems to reverse this. Moreover, all diets require eating at a deficit, so that will happen no matter what plan you use if you want to lose weight. So why not give a real shot to one that will cost you around $10?5
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I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah
All due respect - this is what's wrong with your diet. If I had to bet these "diets" did not teach you how to actually eat healthy. If someone does that portion of the "diet" for you and just flat out tells you what to eat - then you are doomed to fail. You HAVE TO know what your body is going to do when you eat certain things. That is precisely where MyFitnessPal comes in. If you log every single thing you put in your mouth, its almost guaranteed that you will lose weight. (Of course this excludes a certain few people with outlier genetics and various other conditions).
You don't even have to have a diet in mind. Just start logging what you are eating and weigh yourself REGULARLY. You will start to see trends. IE: Yesterday and the day before I ate a bunch of crap, went over my calorie goal and now I'm up 1-2 pounds. IE: I did really good on my calorie goal for the last 2 weeks and I'm down 3 pounds!
Things that have taken me a long time to learn:- Forgive yourself for screwing up.
- It's okay to crave and eat things that are bad for you (just dont do it regularly)
- Weight loss takes a long time.
- Motivation is fleeting. Fight through your desperation.
- You WILL GAIN WEIGHT BACK. It's ok. We all do. It's ok. It's ok. It's ok. You can lose it again. Don't give up.
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To the OP: You have to REALLY want to lose weight before you will make the changes you need to lose weight. Even starting with very small changes will help. Don't bring food that you don't want to eat into the house. What one junk food would cut the most from your calories if you gave it up? Just something to think about. I wish you well.3
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There is some research that shows that your metabolism can slow eating at a deficit, but it doesn't stop, and eating at maintenance for a while seems to reverse this.
I think it would also be useful to consider how much slowing we're talking about here. I haven't seen the research but I anticipate it would be less than 300 calories a day, tops. So, one muffin or so. Not a big deal.
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adambrown01 wrote: »
I just have to point out, for the benefit of all lurkers, that any weight gain a person experiences in 1 or 2 days of overindulgence is not fat. It is water retention from the sudden influx of sodium & carbs and the extra volume in your gut. It goes away on it's own in a few days. I hate when people "fall off the wagon" one day or a weekend, see the scale go up, and assume they've ruined their progress.
Sorry- just a pet peeve of mine.12 -
brendanwhite84 wrote: »There is some research that shows that your metabolism can slow eating at a deficit, but it doesn't stop, and eating at maintenance for a while seems to reverse this.
I think it would also be useful to consider how much slowing we're talking about here. I haven't seen the research but I anticipate it would be less than 300 calories a day, tops. So, one muffin or so. Not a big deal.
That amount is about right for people who just restricted calories and people on a very low calorie diet. The people who lost with exercise and less restriction actually showed less decrease in their metabolism.
ETA: Although in the most current study they applied about 33% calorie restriction for two weeks, and then maintenance for two weeks (over a period of something like 30 weeks w/out exercise as I understand it) showed that the reduction in metabolism completely reversed. So diet breaks FTW.0 -
...maybe I should contemplate surgery...
Please don't. This follows the same fallacy as all of the named diets. You are being tricked into losing weight by taking a short cut. Your body will be losing weight because you have surgically altered your intestines. Then what happens? You still don't know how to diet after you have the band taken out and you gain your weight back. My own mother has had 3 surgeries to lose weight and she gained it back every time. Now, FINALLY, she is just dieting and counting calories and she is down 50 pounds and keeping it off by being smart and not lazy.maybe I should stop having tantrums and put on my big girl pants and do something!
Yep. You should. Seems to me you know in the back of your head what you should do. You just don't want to do it. Educate yourself about what you're getting into. You know how to use MFP to log your food but you get upset when using it because.... why? Because you're eating really complicated meals with a ton of ingredients and it takes a really long time to log your food and create recipes? Well, eat simpler recipes then. Is it because you're weighing your food and portioning sizes and you spend hours and hours in the kitchen? Well, eat simpler recipes then.
The trend I'm seeing here from your post is that you lose your patience. Then be smart about why you are failing and find a way to keep going. Ask for help instead of giving up. Also please quit subscribing to fad diets - I promise they will let you down.
(PS: sorry for taking a post to detract from the OP).2 -
adambrown01 wrote: »I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah
All due respect - this is what's wrong with your diet. If I had to bet these "diets" did not teach you how to actually eat healthy. If someone does that portion of the "diet" for you and just flat out tells you what to eat - then you are doomed to fail. You HAVE TO know what your body is going to do when you eat certain things. That is precisely where MyFitnessPal comes in. If you log every single thing you put in your mouth, its almost guaranteed that you will lose weight. (Of course this excludes a certain few people with outlier genetics and various other conditions).
You don't even have to have a diet in mind. Just start logging what you are eating and weigh yourself REGULARLY. You will start to see trends. IE: Yesterday and the day before I ate a bunch of crap, went over my calorie goal and now I'm up 1-2 pounds. IE: I did really good on my calorie goal for the last 2 weeks and I'm down 3 pounds!
Things that have taken me a long time to learn:- Forgive yourself for screwing up.
- It's okay to crave and eat things that are bad for you (just dont do it regularly)
- Weight loss takes a long time.
- Motivation is fleeting. Fight through your desperation.
- You WILL GAIN WEIGHT BACK. It's ok. We all do. It's ok. It's ok. It's ok. You can lose it again. Don't give up.
Just correcting your last point: you will gain weight back IF you return to your old eating ways. There are many people on here who have maintained their losses for years because they learned how to eat the fewer calories their body now requires.5 -
As others have said, CICO isn't a plan, it's a description of the physics behind weights loss. If you burn more calories than you eat you will lose weight. Nutrition is a completely different subject, and that's where all the diet plans come in. Some foods are going to make you feel better than other foods. Unfortunate lay popular plans like Keto, Paleo, Mediterranean etc tend to be one size fits all, and expensive and difficult to maintain. But they do sell books, and in many cases do help you learn to make better food choices in the long run. There's no denying that salmon and fresh vegatables are going to be nutritionally better than potato chips and corn dogs.
But it can all be very overwhelming, and trying to do it all at once is a recipe for failure. I suggest logging for a while, even before na6king any serious changes to your diet.
Weigh (with a scale is best) everything you eat, why you are eating it (i.e, lunchtime, hungry, kindof bored, out with friends, watching tv) and how you are feeling right before, right after and an hour after (hungry, comfortable, normal, full, very full bloated, drowsy).
This give's you a baseline pattern for your normal habits and routine. From there, it's just a matter of experimenting. Are you very full after dinner? Cut back on a few things. Does lunch leave you bloated and gassy after an hour, try less or no mayo, abd see if there's something you don't mind dropping each meal (fries, or cheese, or maybe only 2 tacos instead of 3).It's amazing how quickly these small and easily sustainable changes will add up to big calorie cuts. Only cut one or two things at a time, until they become habit though. That way they become individual habits instead of one big "diet". So when you backslide you won't drop everything at once, just one or two habits, that you can fix again more wasily.
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adambrown01 wrote: »I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah
Things that have taken me a long time to learn:- Forgive yourself for screwing up.
- It's okay to crave and eat things that are bad for you (just dont do it regularly)
- Weight loss takes a long time.
- Motivation is fleeting. Fight through your desperation.
- You WILL GAIN WEIGHT BACK. It's ok. We all do. It's ok. It's ok. It's ok. You can lose it again. Don't give up.
^^ this apart from the last one. I lost weight 5 years ago and never regained. So no, not everyone regains.
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LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »adambrown01 wrote: »I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah
Things that have taken me a long time to learn:- Forgive yourself for screwing up.
- It's okay to crave and eat things that are bad for you (just dont do it regularly)
- Weight loss takes a long time.
- Motivation is fleeting. Fight through your desperation.
- You WILL GAIN WEIGHT BACK. It's ok. We all do. It's ok. It's ok. It's ok. You can lose it again. Don't give up.
^^ this apart from the last one. I lost weight 5 years ago and never regained. So no, not everyone regains.
I think it is more general as in sometimes even with the best plan ever you gain back a few pounds now and again, ehether it is a temporary setback, or just that time of month, it is inevitable. But don't be discouraged when that happens, because if you stick to your nee habuts it will fix itself1 -
Hi I'm back yet once again I'm 47 and I'm a mom and a wife I weigh 313 and just can't seem to stick to anything. I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah I'm just starting to feel hopeless. I'm so confused as to what works I heard calories in vs calories out is all a myth
Tia Tammy
The people who say CICO is a myth fall into two basic camps:
1) Those connected to weight loss plans where there's money to be made attempting to confuse people so they think they need complicated advice/guidance to lose weight.
2) People who mistakenly think CICO is "diet". It's not. It's a math equation. Nothing more. Nothing less.
CI = CO is maintenance
CI > CO is weight gain
CI < CO is weight loss
How you achieve the calorie balance is where the idea of "dieting" comes in to play in terms of particular ways of eating (CI) and/or exercising (CO).
The math equation gets shortened to CICO for simplicity and because the middle symbol you add will depend on your goals.
I also notice that CICO often gets confused with "Calorie Counting" which is something totally different. It's simply a way of determining your CI relative to your CO. You certainly don't need to count calories to lose weight; most people never do.
But I for one (and there are many others here) find it very helpful in ensuring that we stay in a calorie deficit to lose weight. I personally have lost 35 lbs eating whatever I want within my calorie goals. You may or may not want to employ a particular WOE (way of eating) to get there. It depends on what you enjoy and can sustain over the long term.
I hope this somewhat messy explanation helps a bit.4 -
ladyhusker39 wrote: »Hi I'm back yet once again I'm 47 and I'm a mom and a wife I weigh 313 and just can't seem to stick to anything. I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah I'm just starting to feel hopeless. I'm so confused as to what works I heard calories in vs calories out is all a myth
Tia Tammy
The people who say CICO is a myth fall into two basic camps:
1) Those connected to weight loss plans where there's money to be made attempting to confuse people so they think they need complicated advice/guidance to lose weight.
2) People who mistakenly think CICO is "diet". It's not. It's a math equation. Nothing more. Nothing less.
CI = CO is maintenance
CI > CO is weight gain
CI < CO is weight loss
How you achieve the calorie balance is where the idea of "dieting" comes in to play in terms of particular ways of eating (CI) and/or exercising (CO).
The math equation gets shortened to CICO for simplicity and because the middle symbol you add will depend on your goals.
I also notice that CICO often gets confused with "Calorie Counting" which is something totally different. It's simply a way of determining your CI relative to your CO. You certainly don't need to count calories to lose weight; most people never do.
But I for one (and there are many others here) find it very helpful in ensuring that we stay in a calorie deficit to lose weight. I personally have lost 35 lbs eating whatever I want within my calorie goals. You may or may not want to employ a particular WOE (way of eating) to get there. It depends on what you enjoy and can sustain over the long term.
I hope this somewhat messy explanation helps a bit.
I didn't think it was messy at all... quite good, in fact
Out of laziness, I have referred to CICO as if it were a "plan", but it's not- it's just the mathematics of how weight loss occurs. If keto is a person's dream diet, there's no reason they shouldn't use it to accomplish the math, but most people find it easier to focus on the math alone and eat however they want.1 -
LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »adambrown01 wrote: »I have done keto,Paleo,whole 30, WW blah blah
Things that have taken me a long time to learn:- Forgive yourself for screwing up.
- It's okay to crave and eat things that are bad for you (just dont do it regularly)
- Weight loss takes a long time.
- Motivation is fleeting. Fight through your desperation.
- You WILL GAIN WEIGHT BACK. It's ok. We all do. It's ok. It's ok. It's ok. You can lose it again. Don't give up.
^^ this apart from the last one. I lost weight 5 years ago and never regained. So no, not everyone regains.
I think it is more general as in sometimes even with the best plan ever you gain back a few pounds now and again, ehether it is a temporary setback, or just that time of month, it is inevitable. But don't be discouraged when that happens, because if you stick to your nee habuts it will fix itself
Thanks for correctly interpreting my vague bullet point.
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Shugahhfatt wrote: »the body is not a calculatorand yes you cal lose weight at first eating less but it crushes your metabolism...if I did what mfp suggested I would gain weight! lol
So what do you suggest0 -
Shugahhfatt wrote: »the body is not a calculatorand yes you cal lose weight at first eating less but it crushes your metabolism...if I did what mfp suggested I would gain weight! lol
OP, I just want to point out that the "woo" button is a bad thing- basically unscientific- not "Woohoo! What an awesome comment!"
Can someone post that chart that breaks down how different diets cause you to lose weight?
Let me know if someone post the chart0 -
Shugahhfatt wrote: »the body is not a calculatorand yes you cal lose weight at first eating less but it crushes your metabolism...if I did what mfp suggested I would gain weight! lol
OP, I just want to point out that the "woo" button is a bad thing- basically unscientific- not "Woohoo! What an awesome comment!"
Can someone post that chart that breaks down how different diets cause you to lose weight?
Let me know if someone post the chart
Look at @try2again's post, 16 posts up from yours.2 -
Shugahhfatt wrote: »the body is not a calculatorand yes you cal lose weight at first eating less but it crushes your metabolism...if I did what mfp suggested I would gain weight! lol
So what do you suggest
I am not the poster in question, but maybe I can address this a little bit.
First off, the idea that a person won't lose weight or will even gain weight due to eating too few calories (an idea commonly referred to as "starvation mode") is bogus. This is why this post has received so many "woos".
However, prolonged calorie restriction does impact our hormone levels and this, as well as the fact that as we become smaller, we burn fewer calories, can negatively impact our metabolism to a degree, causing our weight loss to slow down. It will not prevent a person who is in a true calorie deficit from losing weight, nor cause a person to gain weight. The remedy for this is what is known as a diet break. This is not a careless, free-for-all kind of break, but a week or 2 eating at maintenance calories in order to restore hormone levels. If you would like to know more, here is the link. The subheading "Why Take a Full Diet Break: Physiological Reasons" explains it in more detail:
https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html/
However, I'm guessing this is actually more than you want or need to know right now. All you really need to know is that losing weight requires that the calories you take in from food need to be less than what you burn in a given day through your normal activities and any purposeful exercise. Fill out your MFP profile, choose a *reasonable* weekly weight loss goal, and choose the activity level that applies to your typical day, not including exercise. Eat the calories MFP gives you, ideally from a balanced diet that keeps you satiated & happy. Focus on accurate logging (weighing & measuring what you eat, choosing accurate database entries, and utilizing the recipe builder for homemade dishes). If you choose to exercise, log it and eat back about 50% of the calories it gives you (calorie burns in the database tend to be inflated). That's it. After you've been at it for a few months, maybe come back and revisit the diet break idea. 1 -
Surgery isn't the answer. I had surgery in 2001, lost 70 pounds and gained to my highest weight over the years to 317 pounds. I got back down to 225 by seeing a nutritionist and then gained back to 275 pounds where I have been for a few years. I am working on getting back on track and have been slowly losing. I am down about 9 pounds so far. As someone said, anything worth fighting for doesn't come easy. There is no easy way to do this.4
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