Why am I not losing weight? Feeling discouraged.

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  • chubber231
    chubber231 Posts: 41 Member
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    If you are relying on MFP for calories burned from exercise and are eating those calories back, you are netting far more calories than you think. I use a heart rate monitor to measure my calories burned and when I enter "treadmill walking", for example, the amount that populates is much higher than my own device measures.
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    Totally seconding the suggestion to log your cheat meal & drinks. It’s amazing how many calories restaurants cram into their food. One three course meal with drinks at a pub could easily add enough calories to push you to maintenance or at least very much diminish your deficit.
    Have a go at best guess logging your ‘cheats’ but I’m sure you’ll find the scales change for you next week anyway. :)
  • jannekejlang
    jannekejlang Posts: 6 Member
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    sijomial wrote: »
    The bike speed related estimates in the database are a pretty hopeless way to estimate calories burned while cycling.
    Strava (free app) would probably be better.

    For running the formula
    Bodyweight in pounds X miles run X 0.63 (efficiency ratio) gives you a net calorie estimate.

    I have found lots of people online don’t trust Strava either because it seems to overestimate calories as well.

    The running formula is helpful, thanks. But how do I calculate all my other workouts? Does anyone recommend a FitBit?
  • emilysusana
    emilysusana Posts: 416 Member
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    I use a Fitbit (an older model the flex 2). It has turned out to be dead-on accurate for me (after 14 weeks of careful tracking). That’s just me, though. I started our eating back only half my exercise calories, but I was gaining faster than expected, so now I’m trying to eat back all my calories in a week and I’m still losing at the predicted rate. The one thing Fitbit doesn’t really give me credit for is my strength training sessions, but I’m okay with that. They last about 40 minutes twice a week and don’t really show up on my Fitbit, so I just count them as bonus (or as something to cancel our any inaccuracies in my food logging!).

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