3 weeks and no change

turc215 wrote: »

Hi, I’ve started using MFP to try to lose weight for my wedding. I’m 135lb and I’d love to get down to 125lb. I’m very active: I hike 3-4 days per week, do the peloton bike 3-4 days per week, do lagree resistance training 3 times per week and then some hiit training. I like to mix it up but I typically do 2 hours per day 6-7 days per week.

I’ve tried a few things on MFP. I’ve tried just eating 1600 calories per day straight up. I’ve tried setting my goal to 1200 calories per day and then eating some (not all) of my exercise calories back. I haven’t lost any weight. I’m feeling frustrated.

You don't say how tall you are, but unless you are quite short, you are already a healthy weight, so just looking to lose vanity lbs. This will most likely happen slowly - around 0.5lbs per week. That small amount can easily hide behind water weight fluctuations on the scale, especially if you keep changing things up every week.

Set your goal to lose 0.5lbs per week, eat the calories that MFP gives you, log your exercise and eat back some of those calories. Use a food scale and double check that the entries you are using in the database are accurate calorie-wise. And try not to watch the scale. With so little to lose, that is almost sure to be disappointing.

Check out this thread too:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10084670/it-is-unlikely-that-you-will-lose-weight-consistently-i-e-weight-loss-is-not-linear/p1

Depending on your height, you are likely at or near a healthy weight already. If you are already in the optimal BMI range for your height, then you should look into recomp to lose fat and build muscle, rather than focusing on weight loss.

In addition, you're going to have to be more patient. In three weeks, you've already changed your calorie goal at least once. It's unclear how long you've been doing this level of exercise, but it sounds like at least some of it is new. Three weeks is not enough time to tell whether or not a weight loss plan is working, especially if you've added new exercise (which causes water retention), have a menstrual cycle (also causes water retention), and/or don't have very much to lose (meaning you have a very small deficit and weight loss will happen very, very slowly).

If you are committed to losing weight, then set MFP for a 0.5 lb/week rate of loss, consistently stay within your calorie goal, weigh all the food you can possibly weigh, be patient, and recognize that even 0.5 lb/week might be an unreasonably fast pace of loss for you.