What am I doing wrong

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rscott1571
rscott1571 Posts: 5 Member
in Getting Started
I’m well under my daily calories and struggling to lose 2lbs a week! What’s up with that??

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  • cheryldumais
    cheryldumais Posts: 1,907 Member
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    Depends on how much you have to lose. Almost everyone comes into MFP wanting to lose 2 lbs a week. Many can't lose that fast because they don't have that much excess weight to lose in the first place. When I started I had 100 pounds to lose. I chose 2 lbs a week naturally and it gave me 1200 calories a day. That's the lowest it gives women and men 1500 is the lowest. So even if I had stuck to that there was no guarantee I would have lost 2 lbs a week unless I had needed 1000 calories a day more to maintain (I didn't). If my maintenance calories are 1700 then I will only lose 1 lb a week no matter what I key in to the system. It will never recommend 700 calories a day for me because that is dangerously low and I wouldn't get the nutrients I need to survive. So your choices are to either exercise more to burn more calories or be satisfied losing a bit slower. I managed to reach goal weight but it took me a bit longer. It was totally worth it.
  • rscott1571
    rscott1571 Posts: 5 Member
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    I just don’t eat my exercise calories back, I’m walking on the treadmill for 1 hour everyday. I always hit 10,000 steps a day. This week I only lost 1 pound! It’s disappointing
  • cheryldumais
    cheryldumais Posts: 1,907 Member
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    I feel your pain. My average the first year was 1.7/week and the last 20 lbs took me a year to lose! That's less than a half pound a week. But the longer it took me the more I learned which has helped me immensly in my maintenance. Now I know exactly how much I can eat to keep the weight off and I'm accustomed to the lower calories and feel I can do this for life.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    how much weight do you have to lose? really, a goal of losing 2lbs/week is too much for most, unless you have 75+ lbs to lose
  • Ddub2020
    Ddub2020 Posts: 16 Member
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    I will be happy it I lose one pound this week.
  • Ddub2020
    Ddub2020 Posts: 16 Member
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    Make sure you are counting liquid calories. In the past I failed to do that when trying to lose weight.
  • rscott1571
    rscott1571 Posts: 5 Member
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    Thanks to all replies! I need to lose 25-30 lbs. I weight all meals and enter liquid calories. The older I get the harder it seems to be! I was a gym rat in my 30’s and could lose weight in no time, now ..... it’s a struggle!
  • rscott1571
    rscott1571 Posts: 5 Member
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    I’m 57 years young
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    rscott1571 wrote: »
    Thanks to all replies! I need to lose 25-30 lbs. I weight all meals and enter liquid calories. The older I get the harder it seems to be! I was a gym rat in my 30’s and could lose weight in no time, now ..... it’s a struggle!

    with only that much to lose you should set your weekly goal to lose 1 lb/week
  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,399 Member
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    With 25-30 lbs to lose you should be losing 1/2 lbs per week. You're doing just fine. The last 25 lbs go slowly and you have to be precise with your weighing and logging of food. Good luck.
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
    edited April 2019
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    rscott1571 wrote: »
    Thanks to all replies! I need to lose 25-30 lbs. I weight all meals and enter liquid calories. The older I get the harder it seems to be! I was a gym rat in my 30’s and could lose weight in no time, now ..... it’s a struggle!

    The impression that it's harder to lose weight as we age is typically the result of unacknowledged changes in our activity level, not an inherent weakness of older age. I used to think that too- I lost weight so easily in my 20s & 30s... what happened? Then I remembered, in my 20s & 30s I was working jobs that probably had me getting 20,000 steps some days, regularly lifting & hauling up to 50 lbs, and at least some of that time, walking or biking to work. Now, at 50, I'm a SAHM that sometimes doesn't hit 5000 steps a day in my small house, in a rural area where most things are not in walking distance. I just never thought of myself as being that active when I was younger because I didn't purposely exercise, it was just my life. But life changes ;)

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