Struggling to loose weight 😔

Have you been taking measurements or pictures? Sometimes the scale is a liar.

Kriss gives very good advice and support.

I'm going to try to add just a bit more analytic math-y-ness.

If you used a TDEE calculator to work things out, presumably you used settings that included your walking and training, to get an estimated Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), in calories. Presumably you (or the calculator) then subtracted some calories from that number, to get a calorie goal, which you then entered into MFP.

For example (just making up numbers), perhaps the TDEE calculator thinks your average estimated TDEE (including all the exercise) is 2000, and it subtracted 20% (400) to give you a goal of 1600.

That's not the standard way of using MFP, but it should work. The catch is that, in effect, you've averaged your planned activity and exercise into your calorie goal. Doing so is fine, as long as you've evaluated your activity level and exercise accurately, and you actually perform the planned/intended exercise. That should work.

However, it doesn't seem to be working for you, right?

The MFP method, as Kriss said, is different. MFP asks you to set up your profile with an activity level that just includes your daily routine (job, home chores, that sort of thing), but not your intentional exercise. MFP estimates your NEAT (non-exercise activty thermogenesis), which is the estimated number of calories you'd burn daily without doing any exercise. It then takes what you enter as your weight loss rate target (a pound of loss per week, say), and subtracts calories from your NEAT estimate to allow for weight loss. When you exercise, you log the exercise, and eat back a reasonable estimate of those calories at the time the exercise happens (or you can save some for later, but let's keep this simple ). That keeps your "calorie deficit" - the number of calories subtracted to allow for weight loss - at the same number, exercise or no exercise, if the estimates are fairly accurate.

So, maybe MFP would estimate that your NEAT is 1900, and if you said you wanted to lose a pound a week, it would subtract 500 (because a pound of fat is roughly 3500 calories, divide by 7 to get a daily deficit). It would therefore give you a goal of 1400. Then, let's say you do 200 calories of exercise every single day and log it, which would put you at the same 1600 goal.

Basically NEAT + Exercise = TDEE.

Sometimes one method or the other works out better for a particular person. For example, I like the NEAT method, because my exercise is quite variable (and weather dependent, in some seasons), so not very predictable.

Either method should give similar results, though there might be some variation between different sources just because they use different research-based estimating formulas, have different number of possible activity levels, etc.

Unless you're quite petite, I would expect that eating 1600 calories daily, with your exercise/activity, should result in weight loss.

However, you're not seeing the results you expect. Water retention, as Kriss said, could be an explanation. This is a good explanation about that:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

Another possibility is that there's a food logging issue of some sort. This is not a criticism: Logging food accurately is a skill, and it takes a little time and practice to refine that skill. If you'd be willing to temporarily set your food diary to public (within MFP), some of the experienced folks could take a look, and see if anything jumps out as a possible source of variation.

Your underactive thyroid should have very negligible impact (i.e., basically none), if your thyroid condition is properly medicated. (I'm severely hypothyroid, medicated properly, and lost weight pretty much like anyone else does, for example.) If you're under-medicated in some way (it can be complicated!), there is a possibility that you might have to eat slightly fewer calories than a non-hypothyroid person to get the same weight loss result, but that "calorie penalty" should be no more than about 5%. This is an excellent thread about hypothyroidism and weight loss, which I highly recommend (written by a scientist in the field, who is himself hypothyroid, and who lost weight using MFP):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10767046/hypothyroidism-and-weight-management/

Best wishes!

As posted on another thread today:

Your activity level in MFP does not include intentional exercise (gym classes or specific workouts), but is based on how active you are in your normal day to day activities. How many steps do you get on non gym days?

You should log specific exercise separately and eat back at least some of the extra calories you get for that.

And as said above, don't pick the highest rate of loss per week unless that's really suitable for your current weight and the amount you have to lose.