I know there's a million of these...but I'm not losing weight...

If you keep changing your calorie intake, how will you know if you're in a calorie deficit?

You're making this more difficult than it has to be.

Go by the calories mfp assigned you. If you hit a plateau, it's normal. Don't change things up. Be patient and you'll bust the plateau.

Just to bolster what's already been said:

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

OP, do you weigh your food? You say you portion it out and are strict on counting, but I would guess that you are counting incorrectly if you are not weighing your food, and eating way more calories than you think. You are probably not in the calorie deficit that you think you are.

Music4life42 wrote: »

I started out at 310. It's been a few months (I think), and I've lost about 20 pounds. Last week I gained 2. This week I lost under a pound.

I know about platoes (however its spelt), but I follow a zig zag diet where I fluctuate my calories so my body doesn't get used to it. I also am 1000 calories down a day.

Only thing I'm doing is counting calories, I'm eating whatever I want, but I portion it out and am strict on counting. I don't exercise, but the calorie calculator I use has already factored that in.

I'm also taking NAC supplements (started last week) to help with insulin resistance.

Long story short; I'm lazy and like to eat whatever foods I want...but I'm strict at counting calories (it's kinda like an obsession). How do I keep losing weight?? Like, don't fat people lose weight faster than a skinny person trying to lose the last few pounds?

TDEE calculators readily available all over the web show that for every pound lost, TDEE reduces by 4-6 calories. Or put another way, for every 10 pounds lost, the same person - same gender, age, height - gets 50-ish less calories to eat. And the reverse is true - for every 10 pounds more that you weigh, your TDEE is ~ 50 calories higher.

So, a person who's 100 pounds overweight is gonna get approximately 500 calories more to eat than a properly weighted person of the exact same age, gender, and height. At first. As the weight comes off, the TDEE comes down, and the calorie target must either be adjusted, or expectations for weight loss must be adjusted. One of the two.

I have much experience with a very very obese family member who believes that you have to reduce your caloric intake as you lose weight -- so that your weight loss doesn't slow down. She sees it as a race to a finish line, in which you must never let up.

I think that is wrong thinking -- certainly wrong for me, and maybe for many people. What it ends up doing is, as you lose weight, your "reward" for all your hard work at every step of the way is less food and more deprivation alllllll the way down to your target weight. Whatever way of eating you've come up with to hit your numbers comes under increasing strain (afternoon snack - out. 600 calorie budget for dinner -> 480 calories. Etc.) and starts to collapse because your new calorie level can no longer support it, and meanwhile you're getting ever hungrier until one day you just ... stop dieting because it's too depriving and stressful. And then you probably go binging, leading to giving back the hard won gains.

Which is exactly what has happened to this person, year after year after year.

The alternative is to develop good, long term habits around a stable, reasonable calorie level (for instance, what MFP gives you at the start of your journey) and then let yourself come in for a "soft landing" as you lose the weight. The pace of weight loss will slow but you will never be penalized for your success by getting less food. You'll never have to convert a meal into a snack to hit a reduced calorie target, or eliminate a scheduled snack, or make any other changes to your WOE. It's rinse and repeat, with a system you are (presumably) okay with, all the way down to the target weight.

This is why I have not reduced my caloric quota by one calorie despite losing almost 50 pounds. My weight loss is slowing and I just do not care. I've learned to embrace my 1600 calories and figured out how to organize a satisfying food day around it, so why make it 1500, or for that matter 1599?

tl;dr: If you have a good calorie target that you have been able to hit and have trained yourself to be disciplined about it, and it's causing weight loss, then you have nothing to worry about. Keep doing what you're doing and you will continue to lose weight, gradually slower as you get thinner.

NovusDies wrote: »

lgfrie wrote: »

Music4life42 wrote: »

I started out at 310. It's been a few months (I think), and I've lost about 20 pounds. Last week I gained 2. This week I lost under a pound.

I know about platoes (however its spelt), but I follow a zig zag diet where I fluctuate my calories so my body doesn't get used to it. I also am 1000 calories down a day.

Only thing I'm doing is counting calories, I'm eating whatever I want, but I portion it out and am strict on counting. I don't exercise, but the calorie calculator I use has already factored that in.

I'm also taking NAC supplements (started last week) to help with insulin resistance.

Long story short; I'm lazy and like to eat whatever foods I want...but I'm strict at counting calories (it's kinda like an obsession). How do I keep losing weight?? Like, don't fat people lose weight faster than a skinny person trying to lose the last few pounds?

TDEE calculators readily available all over the web show that for every pound lost, TDEE reduces by 4-6 calories. Or put another way, for every 10 pounds lost, the same person - same gender, age, height - gets 50-ish less calories to eat. And the reverse is true - for every 10 pounds more that you weigh, your TDEE is ~ 50 calories higher.

So, a person who's 100 pounds overweight is gonna get approximately 500 calories more to eat than a properly weighted person of the exact same age, gender, and height. At first. As the weight comes off, the TDEE comes down, and the calorie target must either be adjusted, or expectations for weight loss must be adjusted. One of the two.

I have much experience with a very very obese family member who believes that you have to reduce your caloric intake as you lose weight -- so that your weight loss doesn't slow down. She sees it as a race to a finish line, in which you must never let up.

I think that is wrong thinking -- certainly wrong for me, and maybe for many people. What it ends up doing is, as you lose weight, your "reward" for all your hard work at every step of the way is less food and more deprivation alllllll the way down to your target weight. Whatever way of eating you've come up with to hit your numbers comes under increasing strain (afternoon snack - out. 600 calorie budget for dinner -> 480 calories. Etc.) and starts to collapse because your new calorie level can no longer support it, and meanwhile you're getting ever hungrier until one day you just ... stop dieting because it's too depriving and stressful. And then you probably go binging, leading to giving back the hard won gains.

Which is exactly what has happened to this person, year after year after year.

The alternative is to develop good, long term habits around a stable, reasonable calorie level (for instance, what MFP gives you at the start of your journey) and then let yourself come in for a "soft landing" as you lose the weight. The pace of weight loss will slow but you will never be penalized for your success by getting less food. You'll never have to convert a meal into a snack to hit a reduced calorie target, or eliminate a scheduled snack, or make any other changes to your WOE. It's rinse and repeat, with a system you are (presumably) okay with, all the way down to the target weight.

This is why I have not reduced my caloric quota by one calorie despite losing almost 50 pounds. My weight loss is slowing and I just do not care. I've learned to embrace my 1600 calories and figured out how to organize a satisfying food day around it, so why make it 1500, or for that matter 1599?

tl;dr: If you have a good calorie target that you have been able to hit and have trained yourself to be disciplined about it, and it's causing weight loss, then you have nothing to worry about. Keep doing what you're doing and you will continue to lose weight, gradually slower as you get thinner.

Are you not able to increase your activity to offset some of the deficit decline?

I probably could, but I don't see a need to. I do 30-35 mins of cardio every morning. By minute 35, I am ready to call it a wrap. Much like with the food, I feel like I have a Way of Exercising that works for me. If I had to do, say, an hour everyday, it might get tiresome or lead me to skip days or whatever. My whole philosophy on this in a nutshell is "if it ain't broke don't fix it". I saw my weight loss slow down at around 30 lbs lost and made a calculated decision to just ignore it and plod along. It's slowed further still, and still I just plod along LOL I think I can happily plod all the way to my target weight doing 1600 cals and 30 minutes cardio per day, and if it takes a few extra months because my TDEE is declining, so be it. Better to just plod along than to discover that 1500 calories leaves me unsatisfied or 60 minutes of cardio makes me start avoiding the machines.

Also, I tore my Achilles tendon 4 years ago very stupidly, doing excessive treadmill to try to drive fast weight loss. That was a huge learning experience for me about setting realistic goals and being moderate in pursuing them, in addition to the fact that according to the Dr I now have a very weak Achilles tendon that could rupture if I overdo it, leading to possibly never getting on a machine again. So I have to err on the side of not overdoing it with the exercise.