Activity level

You are above the very active setting... by a landslide.

There are two ways I can see this happening.

a) Set MFP to maintain; eat as if you're trying to maintain. Your extra activity which is not getting captured anywhere will still create a pretty good deficit.
b) as a rough estimate your extra, un-captured, activity burn is probably equal to the difference between sedentary and very active. you could create a custom exercise that gives you such an amount of calories (I would expect it to be in the range of 500 to 1000 Cal) Add it to your activity calories. Set up MFP as you normally would.

In both cases plug your daily weigh ins into a weight trend application or web site such as trendweight.com (you can use a freely available fitbit.com account to enter your weigh in information).

Adjust based on your trending weight changes over time.

Keep in mind that a 0.5 % of bodyweight per week change is sufficient for a 200lb person to become 154lbs in a year. And that losing more than 1% of bodyweight per week is probably unsuitable for most people who are not morbidly obese.

marvinhayles wrote: »

Cheers guys thank you! I’ve set it to very active. After work I go to the gym and lift weights for an hour to. I was only eating about 1700 calories a day but I was feeling faint and mardy. So I’ve upped it to 2000 but I still think that might not be enough. My health is good I’ve stopped smoking and cut my drinking down by 90% but I have a dodgy knee and hip from being big all my life. I’m desperate to get the weight off and have a healthier life. I’m sick of the pain!

You probably would feel quite faint on that, I'm female and nowhere near as active as that and I eat 2100-2400 and lose 0.6-1lb per week.

If you're an overweight Male walking 30000 steps per day and then going to the gym then you'll need a lot more than 2000. Where are you getting the figures from?

What are your stats (Age, Weight, Height)?

marvinhayles wrote: »

I use the step tracker on here. I’ve done some research and it usually under tracks apparently, so I used google and iPhone maps to track track the distance. I also work with a guy who uses one of those new fancy titbits and his says he does more. I’m having an easy day today I’ve only hit 15k with two hours left and I’ve still got the long treck home. As for my calories MFP says I should eat 2660 for a 2 lbs loss but that seems crazy high. I’m 17 stone 4, 5.11 and 32 years old.

That's not crazy high in the slightest.

I'm 35, 5 Foot 7 and 17 stone. My calorie burn on my active days (14000 steps and some rowing/strength training) is around 3500 calories for Maintenance. So would be 2500 to lose 2lbs per week.

These are your stats popped into a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator


BMR is what your body burns just by being alive, in your case 2070 calories

MFP's NEAT method uses a multiplier of your BMR to calculate your calorie burn without exercise, for Very Active this is factor of 1.75

So your calorie burn without exercise (and as @PAV8888 has already explained you probably exceed even because of how active your job is) is 3622 calories.

Your calorie deficit is determined by your rate of loss x 3500 calories (a pound of body fat is approximately equivalent to this amount) / 7 days. (2*3500)/7 = 1000 cal deficit per day.

Which gives you 2620 + any intentional exercise. Not high at all.

You are 5ft 11", young, and 242 lbs.

I started on MFP 33% older than you. At 5ft 7" and a tiny bit. And at a little bit below your weight. My first year on MFP I lost 72+lbs, EATING OVER 2500 Cal a day on average and averaging just UNDER 18,000 steps with no carrying of heavy things (the last part was NOT to my benefit; I am relating what happened, not what SHOULD happen)

*Accurately counted and measured* you better be eating in the 3500 Cal a day range if you don't want to end up flat on your back at some point with lack of energy and you will still lose like crazy.

Have you added up how many calories you were taking in with your drinks? You will probably end up eating MORE than before you cut down on alcohol... and still lose.

Calculate your target weight (very top of the normal weight range will do for now). Calculate calories for very active + exercise OR on any TDEE calculator just pick the most active setting--for that weight.

Start by eating at that and re-evaluate when you stop losing as fast.

bonus benefit: you get to practice what your food will look like when you will eventually try to maintain.
bonus #2: extremely fast loss and no maintenance = yo-yo. Yo-yo good to play with; but not good to live through! learning how to maintain weight and not hitting deficits exceeding 25% of TDEE and keeping weight loss to between 0.5% and 1% of bodyweight per week increases the chances of not yo-yo-ing right away. If nothing else it increases the time where you are achieving a meaningful reduction from your top weight... so all good!

You slowly need to work into your life a balance between food and activity without always hitting large extremes.

Why? Because you're 32. When you're 52 you will have a harder time relying on lifting weights all day and then lifting weights at the gym in the evening while having a drink ;-)

So yes. Looking good is good. Being healthy is even better. And slowly getting a handle on things is maybe not a terrible idea?

It SOUNDS LIKE <quick opinion based on scant evidence of a couple of posts so easily wrong> you hit everything hard: drink, food, gym, work, deficit, regain--thankfully you stopped that last one

One of the things you may want to work on is making the swings smaller.

Slow down a bit. Smell the roses. Give it some time instead of hitting things so hard you end up giving up for a while.

And consider that you CANNOT GO BACK. Your search is for new ways FORWARD.

Also don't think of this as GIVING UP stuff you're moving away from.

Consider that NEW THINGS / BEHAVIOURS YOU WANT are being introduced displacing OLD THINGS AND BEHAVIOURS YOU DON'T WANT AS MUCH anymore.

You can still have such old stuff sometimes; but, new more appropriate stuff are displacing them.