Stalled for weeks and I'd just gotten started! Diary public. Advice?
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Let's PRETEND that I weigh everything, even my La Croix
, and I am eating exactly 1200 calories a day, each and every day. In pretend world, NOW what would you think the issue could be?
In the pretend world of an adult woman consuming precisely 1200 calories each day and neither losing nor gaining over a month of time, the issue is definitively that 1200 calories is your maintenance calories.
Now, if that's 1200 calories of carbohydrates, it's one thing,
but if it's 1200 calories of protein, there's another thing I call the TEF fairy which magically gives your body 70% of the energy available in protein because 30% of it got used digesting the protein.
And if the TEF fairy is giving you 900 calories and you're still not losing or gaining in this pretend land, your maintenance in the pretend land is 900 calories. I suck at pretending.7 -
jasondjulian wrote: »"First off, you can NOT be logging everything correctly, as you've barely broken 1000 calories per day on most days. If you were truly only eating 900 ish cals perday you should be shedding weight like a cat sheds it's winter coat. "
THAT IS MY POINT EXACTLY!!!! But I AM logging everything, and as we have discussed AD NAUSEAM I weigh all meat and some produce, others selecting from the mfp database as best as I can (such as "large banana").jasondjulian wrote: »"Some of your meals are completely missing, and some are looking really nutritionally void."
There are NO meals missing except dinner on January 27, 2018 which was my husband's birthday and I decided not to log that evening. That is not in the range of when the weight loss has stalled, so don't even worry about that. There are ZERO MEALS MISSING. If it says all I ate was some chicken, that is all I ate.jasondjulian wrote: »"Nutritionally void"
I eat fresh veggies, fruit, an egg, and lean meats every day. It's a hell of a lot more nutritional than doritos and pizza, so I'm not worried about it.jasondjulian wrote: »"Also, try to eat your calorie goal... if you can. Consuming less than 1000 cals/day is not good for you."
but you just told me I'm shite and clearly eating far more than I claim, so which one is it??
Thank you.jasondjulian wrote: »"Good luck!"
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I'm sorry. I'm getting snarky. I'm having a really bad day today and this whole weight thing isn't helping. I'm sorry for being rude, Jason.3
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »In the pretend world of an adult woman consuming precisely 1200 calories each day and neither losing nor gaining over a month of time, the issue is definitively that 1200 calories is your maintenance calories.
Now, if that's 1200 calories of carbohydrates, it's one thing,
but if it's 1200 calories of protein, there's another thing I call the TEF fairy which magically gives your body 70% of the energy available in protein because 30% of it got used digesting the protein.
And if the TEF fairy is giving you 900 calories and you're still not losing or gaining in this pretend land, your maintenance in the pretend land is 900 calories. I suck at pretending.
Haha! Well if we have fairies in my pretend land, can we please just have a magic weightloss fairy that can make us all skinny overnight?
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Your so funny1
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I'm sorry. I'm getting snarky. I'm having a really bad day today and this whole weight thing isn't helping. I'm sorry for being rude, Jason.
No sweat, this stuff is frustrating and can be difficult, nothing taken personally.
To clarify, i stated that your food diary looked like crap to me, not that you- as a person, were a piece of crap (shite as I spelled it to avoid any word filters). There was just so little food actually logged, and it was bits here and there, and those Lindor truffles sure didn't help. It's one thing to have them as a treat when you're hitting all your calorie and macro goals, but you weren't.
I can't go and re-check your diary for that week because you now have it set to friends only, but on pretty much every day you had calories and macros left to consume, as it stated at the bottom on the "remaining" bit.
Fresh fruits and vegetables is great, but your meals did not seem diverse in and of themselves... I ate a handful (85g exactly, actually) of baby carrots this morning after I got up ... if I had a single grilled chicken breast (say, 4oz or roughly 100-112g) for lunch ... you can't say I ate lean meat and vegetables so my diet is awesome and good to go.. only kinda. It's got nutritional holes.. that is what I saw in your week's diary when I looked.
As to the whole eating less than 1000cals/day and not losing weight, that's where you can NOT be logging correctly or accurately. If you aren't dropping weight (and I'd presume it to be dangerously fast as this is slowly starving oneself), then the only answer is that you are truly consuming more than that- but it is not reflected in the logging. Because science. Seriously, Laws of Thermodynamics and all...
And the large banana thing, that should never be. You have a food scale, weight the banana. There are indeed MFP entries for banana's using their weight/mass in grams ... OK, so your banana weighed 90grams, but the one entry you want to use says 118g (I'm looking right at it in the app now), then log it as 3/4 of that entry... 75% of 118g is 89g, pretty damn close to 90. Much better than "large, medium, etc..". That could be the difference between a 2oz banana and a 5oz one.. now, still not a lot of calorie variance on an actual banana, but more calorically dense foods that's gonna ad up.
Oh, and when I said try to eat your calorie goal, yet having implied that you were eating more... I meant eat at your calorie goal for real. Those aren't mutually exclusive statements. Eating at your actual calorie goal and not eating more (because you don't know that you are because the logging is inaccurate) will put you in a known calorie deficit; and when you know exactly what you are consuming, you can adjust from there.
So if your weight has remained largely the same for weeks and weeks, within your daily fluctuation range, then there are only a few answers to what is occurring. One is that you are actually eating at maintenance, another is a hormone imbalance that needs a doctor to check out, or it's temporary and will start to decrease over time- which tends to happen a lot.
There are a lot of variables here, but they all hinge on knowing as accurately as possible how much energy you are consuming vs expending. Until that can be established, +/- say 10%, it's extremely difficult to give anyone anything other than "maybe's" and "it depends" statements.
I still wish you luck.5 -
Lots of great advice here but the theme is just tighten up your logging. Every single thing needs weighed and logged. You will make progress - it takes time to get rewarded for effort but it will reward you in the end.
All the best.2 -
I am reading The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss by Dr. Jason Fung and it is explaining a lot!! I'm only on chapter 5 but I have a much better understanding of what is going on now. Should you agree with his science, the "calories in, calories out" that everyone on MFP lives by is simply not true. Very interesting, to say the least.
Thank you all for the advice. I've shut my diary back to friends only, since it's full of shite anyway. I've not changed anything except what I said in the OP and the scale finally started moving again this weekend. Still reading, learning, trying, and at least for now, moving forward.
Best wishes to all!8 -
janejellyroll wrote: »Wait... from this youtube discussion, I've learned that "woo" is bad? So if someone clicks the reaction "woo" that means they don't believe you? I think I've clicked it a time or two thinking it was like "Woooooo!!!! GO YOU!!!!" OOPS!
People use it for both. It's inherently confusing!
LOL! Well I'm glad I'm not the only one!!!
On mobile the little emoji has a very definite "wtf" face.1 -
OP, seriously, you CAN blame 3 weeks on hormones.
Be patient. The fact that you did lose weight at first means that you ARE eating at a deficit.4 -
I am reading The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss by Dr. Jason Fung and it is explaining a lot!! I'm only on chapter 5 but I have a much better understanding of what is going on now. Should you agree with his science, the "calories in, calories out" that everyone on MFP lives by is simply not true. Very interesting, to say the least.
Thank you all for the advice. I've shut my diary back to friends only, since it's full of shite anyway. I've not changed anything except what I said in the OP and the scale finally started moving again this weekend. Still reading, learning, trying, and at least for now, moving forward.
Best wishes to all!
Please be aware that Fung is not well thought of in scientific communities and his research and theories are often quite ridiculous.6 -
No worries, I knew someone would say that. Every doctor is a god to someone and a quack to someone else.2
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No worries, I knew someone would say that. Every doctor is a god to someone and a quack to someone else.
Yeah, but there are tools we can use to determine who is working from a solid foundation of science and research and who isn't. We don't just have to throw up our hands and exclaim that everyone has their own truth and it's impossible to tell what is going on . . .4 -
I have a slightly different thought — I don’t think that at your height and weight you actually lost 11 lbs in a month. I think you had some water weight fluctuation initially and now your weight “stalling” actually reflects some true fat loss. You are close to your ideal weight, and losing 2-3 lbs per week close to your ideal weight as you did initially is really hard to do.
This happens to me a lot — I either suddenly lose a bunch and then stalk there or I lose nothing for a month and then a couple pounds comes off overnight. Your progress overall — from where you started to today — is very good. I’d just keep doing what you are doing.2 -
janejellyroll wrote: »Yeah, but there are tools we can use to determine who is working from a solid foundation of science and research and who isn't. We don't just have to throw up our hands and exclaim that everyone has their own truth and it's impossible to tell what is going on . . .
I'm not. I'm reading the book and judging for myself. I'm just not going to get into a debate about it at least until I've finished the book, and even then I'm not going to debate it with someone who has not read the book. That would be a royal waste of time.
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smnovosad1 wrote: »I have a slightly different thought — I don’t think that at your height and weight you actually lost 11 lbs in a month. I think you had some water weight fluctuation initially and now your weight “stalling” actually reflects some true fat loss. You are close to your ideal weight, and losing 2-3 lbs per week close to your ideal weight as you did initially is really hard to do.
This happens to me a lot — I either suddenly lose a bunch and then stalk there or I lose nothing for a month and then a couple pounds comes off overnight. Your progress overall — from where you started to today — is very good. I’d just keep doing what you are doing.
Thank you! I appreciate the feedback. I think you are likely correct, being that I'm now 14 pounds down on the scale but my clothes do not fit any differently.0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »Yeah, but there are tools we can use to determine who is working from a solid foundation of science and research and who isn't. We don't just have to throw up our hands and exclaim that everyone has their own truth and it's impossible to tell what is going on . . .
I'm not. I'm reading the book and judging for myself. I'm just not going to get into a debate about it at least until I've finished the book, and even then I'm not going to debate it with someone who has not read the book. That would be a royal waste of time.
The people I've run into here who are critical of Fung are familiar with his work. I don't think anyone is trying to criticize ideas they aren't familiar with. There have been multiple threads here where people have tried to convince others that CICO doesn't describe how the body stores and processes energy and, as a result, several frequent posters have become familiar with Fung's work and his claims.
My point is that even if every doctor is criticized by someone, there are valid critiques and invalid ones. That everyone receives criticism at some point isn't a defense against a specific critique.1 -
This has been a very wide ranging discussion.
But your starting point of great losses included the flu and was accomplished on very few calories regardless of how accurately they were counted.
It would be NORMAL for that weight loss to stall/appear to stall for a very long period of time as a whole bunch of non fat related weight adjustments took place subsequent to your apparent strong start that included a bout of flue:
--less waster in system due to reduction in food
--water weight losses due to flu
--increased water weight due to exercise
--increased water weight due to cortisol because of the stress of not seeing the scale do what you expect
--hormonal down-regulation due to excessive deficit if the logging of 900 Calorie days is accurate
--partial replenishment of depleted glycogen if it is not accurate and calories were sufficient for such.
--potential interaction with time of the month.
In brief, even at 5ft 2" dropping to below 1200 accurately counted calories seems counterproductive to me and not a great long term solution.
Plugging your numbers in a trending weight application and looking at your progress over time periods of 4 to 6 weeks and comparing your numbers today with your numbers a month ago in conjunction with creating a small deficit seems to me to be the better path forward.
With "fung" you will, again, drop water weight. That water weight will, again, come back as soon as you replenish your glycogen stores.
Really evaluate your TDEE. Try to create a 15% to 20% (at most) deficit from that. This may well be under 500 Cal a day.
It is very difficult to see the progress (even though it is there) if you have a <500Cal deficit and are also exercising and also have weight fluctuations due to hormones or eating out or pretty much the cat sneezing in the next room (and we all do).
Trusting your accurate logging goes a long way towards giving you confidence in what you do.2
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