Why isn’t it working?!?

lindseyemoriarty7774 · March 2018

Been using the app for 2 months.
Hit my goal majority of the time.
Had a baby 8 months ago - ate poorly and didn’t work out.
I am no eating healthy and working out and wear a Fitbit and hit 10k steps 80% of the time.
Not ONE lb lost

DamienAngelica · March 2018

Because you aren't eating at a calorie deficit, that's why.

ladyhusker39 · March 2018

If you haven't gained or lost in 2 months you're eating at your maintenance calories. To lose you'll need to cut back on your calorie intake and/or increase your calorie burn. I'd recommend looking at your diary for inaccuracies and easy places to start cutting back.

musicfan68 · March 2018

How are you tracking your calories? You need to weigh all solid/semi-solid foods to get accurate calorie counts. "Eating healthy" means nothing in terms of weightloss. I ate healthy for years and still gained 40-50 lbs. You need to eat at a calorie deficit to lose.

diannethegeek · March 2018

Stalls can be frustrating! Some more details might help or opening your diary if you're comfortable with it. Otherwise these are my generic ideas:

1. If it's been less than 3 weeks or so, don't sweat it! Normal fluctuations happen and unfortunately sometimes we stall for a week or two even when we're doing everything right. Give your body some time to catch up with the changes you're making.

2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.

3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.

4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.

5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.

6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.

7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.

8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.

9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.

JMcGee2018 · March 2018

You're eating too much. How do you count your calories?

seccotine · March 2018

check your settings. If you estimated that you are very active AND still count the exercise calories from your fitbit, you are at maintenance. My trick: my settings are at "sedentary" which means that I can eat back some of my exercise calories.

natruallycurious · March 2018

There are two things I think could be happening, and it may be one of them, or both. You're likely either underestimating calories eaten, or over estimating calories burned. Everyone's bodies are different, so using the general calorie burned estimates can be misleading. Even your body breakdown can effect that. For instance, I burn more calories throughout the day now even when I'm not active than I did when I started losing weight, because I've built up muscle, and muscle burns more calories than fat. I would try making sure you measure everything you eat carefully and maybe not eat exercise calories back for a couple of weeks to see if that makes a difference.

To clarify, I wouldn't eat back exercise calories from walking the 10k steps in a day if you're using the fitbit adjustment. If you go out and go for a run or something, I would maybe eat back around 50% of your exercise calories.

JMcGee2018 · March 2018

natruallycurious wrote: »

There are two things I think could be happening, and it may be one of them, or both. You're likely either underestimating calories eaten, or over estimating calories burned. Everyone's bodies are different, so using the general calorie burned estimates can be misleading. Even your body breakdown can effect that. For instance, I burn more calories throughout the day now even when I'm not active than I did when I started losing weight, because I've built up muscle, and muscle burns more calories than fat. I would try making sure you measure everything you eat carefully and maybe not eat exercise calories back for a couple of weeks to see if that makes a difference.

To clarify, I wouldn't eat back exercise calories from walking the 10k steps in a day if you're using the fitbit adjustment. If you go out and go for a run or something, I would maybe eat back around 50% of your exercise calories.

Her fitbit will calculate those calories for her and adjust appropriately without her entering in any exercise. If she sets her activity to sedentary on both MFP and her fitbit, the calorie adjustment should give her the right amount to eat for her activity that day. The only thing that might change this would be certain exercises like cycling (which fitbits don't pick up well/at all), in which case she should enter that in. If she wears her fitbit on her run and enters the run in as a separate exercise, she will end up double-dipping due to the fitbit adjustment.

Why isn’t it working?!?

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