Extremely slow progress! What is going on?!

What is your height and weight?
How long have you been at this deficit and not losing weight?
What kind of exercise are you doing to have an almost 3000 cal TDEE, and how long have you been at that exercise/activity level?

Rocio12 wrote: »

I am 5”2 183 lbs. I be been at this deficit for 5 wks. I use my peloton bike and cycle 30 min 4-5 days. I also do upper body strength classes and lower body strength classes. I do 20 min yoga twice a week. These classes are 20 min max.

Your sedentary TDEE would be just under 1800 cals. I doubt 30 minutes on your bike would give you 700+ calories. I'm not familiar with the Apple watch, but I think at least part of the problem is your exercise calories are exaggerated and you're only in a small deficit at best at 2000 cals.

I would try dropping your calories a little and make sure your logging is accurate and consistent - double check the database entries you're choosing have the correct calories, make sure you are weighing your portions properly, and that you're logging everything ever day.

Your bike calories are way too high. 60 minutes on the bike, covering 22 miles, burns less than 300 calories for me.

Rocio12 wrote: »

I am 5”2 183 lbs. I be been at this deficit for 5 wks. I use my peloton bike and cycle 30 min 4-5 days. I also do upper body strength classes and lower body strength classes. I do 20 min yoga twice a week. These classes are 20 min max.

With regrets, I'm in the camp of those who think your calorie goal is an over-estimate, and/or your exercise calories are overestimated. I'm not trying to be mean or harsh or braggy here, but I will be frank about why I think that: It's based on personal experience.

I started out at exactly your weight, 183, though I'm a little taller at 5'5", and lost down to my current weight, about 130. Almost 5 years of careful tracking tells me that I'm an improbably good li'l ol' calorie burner, beyond what most women experience. I burn around 25-30% more calories daily than MFP (or my own good brand/model fitness tracker, BTW) estimates. (If I knew why, I'd tell you. )

The thing is, even with all of that, 1900 net would only be a tiny deficit for me - around a hundred calories, maybe just a touch more. A 100 calorie deficit would mean over a month to lose a pound of fat. It would've been a little bigger deficit at 183, by an estimated roughly 300 calories. But let me underscore: For some lucky reason, I'm documented to be on the high-burning end of the normal bell curve for my size, where by definition most people are not. You might be on the high end, too, but it's unfortunately not probable.

Also, I've taken spin classes for a long time, and I've been a short-endurance athlete for a long time (even while obese), like over 15 years, so at this point I can/do push intensity in a spin class. A 45-minute intense spin class, at 183 pounds, was good for maybe 425 calories, on my highest (most intense) days, in my estimates.

If you're relatively new to this exercise, or you have a max heart rate that differs from the usual age-based estimates (which is not unusual), a heart rate monitor is likely to overestimate calories for many cardiovascular activities. A very fit person's heart beats fewer times per minute to deliver the same amount of blood and oxygen, compared to a much less fit person, whose heart needs to beat more often because the blood/oxygen volume per beat is less. (It's a training effect.) It's oxygen consumption that tracks more accurately with calorie burn, not the heart rate per se. Heart rate is a proxy, and it can mislead.

Strength training burns neglible calories, and any heart-rate-based device is likely to dramatically overestimate them (it's still worth doing, but mostly not for the outright calorie burn of the activity). A realistic (METS-based) estimate for strength training for 20 minutes at 183 pounds would be 83 calories. Twenty minutes of basic hatha yoga (same estimating method) would be 69 (other, more intense yoga might be more). Depending on fitness level and the yoga positions involved, a heart-rate-based device stands a good chance of overestimating those, too, unfortunately. Various forms of physical strain and intra-body pressure will increase heart rate, without increasing calorie expenditure.

To burn 1000 calories via exercise, at 183 pounds, I'd have to go for a full hour on the rowing machine at a pace that's around 145 calories per hour beyond maximum I've ever been able to sustain in a 2k race (so something I've sustained less than 9 minutes, couldn't possibly go longer; it was around 855 calories per hour, based on well-respected power metering, weight adjusted, on that machine). This is my sport, and I'm not terrible/slow at it, on an age group basis. I've medaled in races. Now, rowing is not the very most calorie-intensive exercise, but it's fairly high on the list of them.

Bottom line: One thousand exercise calories is really a lot.

The point of all of this is not to be Braggy McBraggerson, it's to justify why, based on personal experience, I think your goal may be too high (depends on how active your daily life is, outside of exercise), and that your Apple watch is almost certainly overestimating exercise calories, if that 1000 calories is just exercise (not a combination of exercise and daily life activity).

I lost most of 50 pounds at 1400-1600 net calories, so 1600-2000 gross, most days, FWIW. Not saying that would be right for you, but I'm thinking you should rethink/adjust your numbers somewhat. I think you've found your approximate maintenance calories at your current weight.

Here's some background (oldies but still true) about why I'm saying what i am about heart rate monitors and exercise estimates:

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472
https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

ETA: I'm not sure why vegan was capitalized? Speaking as a long term (45 year) vegetarian, dietary styles have little to do with calorie requirements. I wish.

You have some good data, now. You can make this work, with the right adjustments.

Wishing you much success! :drinker: