PLEASE, I'm so upset and I have tried everything and I can't seem to lose weight
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@Oilers846507
Hi Hannah,
I'm replying because I have exactly the same amount as you to lose, not because I am perfect and know all the answers. But reading your post a couple of things jumped out.
If you work out at home, you are far less likely to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. If you get a trainer or join a bootcamp or some circuits classes, you might find you should be exercising way beyond your current levels. It should feel hard - almost too hard - at some point in every session. If you're not cursing inside, it's not pushing you enough to burn the fat.
I also agree with everyone here: Measure your food! A portion of muesli looks like a sprinkle topping. A bowlful of muesli is about 5-8 portions! Peanut butter is incredibly high in calories. A teaspoonful of it scraped over wholewheat toast is very different from a generous smear of it. As in, about 300 calories difference. Your description of your food intake doesn't describe many veg. Why not try basing each meal around three unprocessed veg or low-sugar fruits (berries, melon).
Are you drinking loads of water? Water retention can keep you carrying an excess of 5lbs or more.5 -
Oilers846507 wrote: »No I am not measuring my food, I just try to estimate. For the most part I log it in a journal and usually, snack bars for instance have the calories on the back. Do you think measuring will make a difference?
For the vast majority of folks who "can't lose weight," this is THE problem. We are terrible at eyeballing. The most important tool for weight loss is a food scale which can be gotten in a big box store for less than $15. You can save that just by not buying protein bars and other special "diet" foods.
You can lose weight eating regular food in a regular way. All you need to do is figure out how many calories to eat. Then eat well while limiting calories.
You are correct about exercise. Exercise alone is a terrible way to try to lose weight. It does work to raise your calorie needs a bit, improves your health, and makes you feel better so it is a good thing. However, the ONLY way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than one expends.
You don't need to eat special food. You don't need to eat a certain number of meals a day. You don't need to do intermittent fasting, OMAD, clean, paleo, keto, gluten free ... None of these is a magic bullet. Some folks do them because it helps them stay on track but none of them is necessary for weight loss.
You've gotten lots of good advice above. So stick around. Get a food scale as soon as you can. And we'll be here to share in the journey with you.
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Another vote for weighing your food.
It seems like a lot of effort at first. But anything new has a learning phase and ultimately, its NOT a big deal.
Kitchen scales are cheap and easy to come by. Look for one that has a tare or zero button, and if possible holds up to 30 pounds or so. I just replaced my home/kitchen scale with one from Amazon. And brought my 'old' home scale to use at work. The tare/zero function makes life easy. Put plate or bowl on scale, zero it out. Put food on plate. Note weight. Zero. Repeat.
I also have a small dry erase board on the side of my fridge - makes it easy for taking notes about weights of foods. I prelog then go back and edit quantities to be more specific.
WIthout weighing your food, and only estimating: you think you're eating 1300 but it almost certainly is not so. The peanut butter you put on your toast? Could be 100 calories or 300 calories, or more. Precision is more important with calorie dense foods (like peanut butter). On the other hand, whether you put 30 grams or 60 grams of spinach in your salad, not a big difference in calories.5 -
Here's what jumped out at me:
- I'm not sure whether you're eating too many calories, or not getting enough. When we don't eat enough, our bodies go into conservation mode and hang onto whatever they can instead of letting us lose weight. Either way, I agree with everyone else that you should get a food scale and weigh your food. Use actual measuring spoons and cups so you know what you're really working with.
- It doesn't look like you're getting a ton of fiber. Fiber cleans us out, so if you want to drop some weight, making sure you have plenty of fiber in your diet is helpful. It looks like you have virtually no vegetables in your diet. I'd try to up those.
- While exercise is important, I have really come to believe that a lot more can be done just by changing diet than you think, and that's really the place to start.
- If you're an emotional eater (like I am), see if you can make any progress dealing with the issues that caused you to gain the weight in the first place.
Best of luck!4 -
Enter your details in to the Guided Setup screen.
Select to lose at a rate of 1lb a week to start with (as you only have 30lb to lose, anything faster is too aggressive).
See how many calories MFP gives you and eat that many.
Log any purposeful exercise and eat 50-75% of those calories too. (this is how MFP is designed)
Weigh everything you eat or cook with or add as a dressing and measure everything you drink. Log it all.
Make sure the entries you select match the info on the packaging / look reasonable. Some things may have changed since the entry was created and some are just very dodgy entries.
Give it 6 weeks of being consistently weighing and tracking everything then see how you're doing. This gives you a couple of weeks to settle in to it plus one full menstrual cycle.3 -
saltysparkle wrote: »Here's what jumped out at me:
- I'm not sure whether you're eating too many calories, or not getting enough. When we don't eat enough, our bodies go into conservation mode and hang onto whatever they can instead of letting us lose weight. Either way, I agree with everyone else that you should get a food scale and weigh your food. Use actual measuring spoons and cups so you know what you're really working with.
- It doesn't look like you're getting a ton of fiber. Fiber cleans us out, so if you want to drop some weight, making sure you have plenty of fiber in your diet is helpful. It looks like you have virtually no vegetables in your diet. I'd try to up those.
- While exercise is important, I have really come to believe that a lot more can be done just by changing diet than you think, and that's really the place to start.
- If you're an emotional eater (like I am), see if you can make any progress dealing with the issues that caused you to gain the weight in the first place.
Best of luck!
The conservation mode that you are referring to does not exist. Your body cannot create energy from air so if there is an energy shortage it MUST use stored energy or we die. There is a mild downshift in BMR after a person has been in a calorie deficit for long enough but it is not the same thing.
Removing food waste weight is not the goal. More fiber may be beneficial though.
Modifying food habits - specifically eating in a calorie deficit is the way to lose weight. Exercise is important for fitness.
We should all address the issues, mindset, and habits that lead to weight gain.20 -
You haven’t tried everything. You haven’t weighed all your food and counted your calories to put yourself into calorie deficit for even a day, let alone weeks and months that it can take to lose 30 pounds. I don’t know why, except maybe it seems tedious and not as glorified as working out every day and drinking fancy protein shakes that have god knows how many calories in them. Now you’re becoming frustrated at your body and that’s not a comfortable way to live. You’re in the right place to address this matter. I learned a lot from the people on this forum and now am @ 25 pounds lost. I wish you luck in your weight-loss journey.10
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Oilers846507 wrote: »Dogmom1978 wrote: »Are you weighing and measuring your food? That’s the first place to start.
If you are, are you checking the entries in MFP to verify they are correct??
CICO is all it is. If you eat in a deficit you will lose weight. For me, exercising is required to be in a deficit, but I could skip exercise and just eat less if I absolutely had to.
No I am not measuring my food, I just try to estimate. For the most part I log it in a journal and usually, snack bars for instance have the calories on the back. Do you think measuring will make a difference?
Good news! You haven't tried everything.
I understand why you said it, because several years ago I also would have told you that I had tried "everything" to manage my weight. But once I began logging with the aid of a food scale, I was finally able to achieve my goals. You've gotten some great advice in this thread.9 -
I'm not an expert but it seems to me you're getting too many carbs or too much sugar. You may want to try and go to all whole foods and see if that helps and stay away from the nutbars. Nutbars and Peanut Butter seems like that would be a lot. Also what kind of rice are you having and how much of it? If it's white rice, a half of a cup is about all you should have because it's high in carbs. Then there's bread on top of that which is high in carbs. I'm not saying don't have carbs but it should be limited. You get carbs from vegetables, fruits, grains, etc. Too many is not good so I'd stick to healthy carbs coming from vegetables and fruits and leave the others to having once in a while.0
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bmattimore wrote: »I'm not an expert but it seems to me you're getting too many carbs or too much sugar. You may want to try and go to all whole foods and see if that helps and stay away from the nutbars. Nutbars and Peanut Butter seems like that would be a lot. Also what kind of rice are you having and how much of it? If it's white rice, a half of a cup is about all you should have because it's high in carbs. Then there's bread on top of that which is high in carbs. I'm not saying don't have carbs but it should be limited. You get carbs from vegetables, fruits, grains, etc. Too many is not good so I'd stick to healthy carbs coming from vegetables and fruits and leave the others to having once in a while.
Macros don’t really matter at this point since the OP isn’t eating in a deficit in the first point. Anyone who “guesses” how much they are eating (and is overweight) is guessing too low and eating more than they think; else we wouldn’t BE overweight in the first point.
While eating healthier will make people feel better, it isn’t NECESSARY to lose weight. The ONLY thing necessary to lose weight is to eat in a deficit. I COULD lose weight by eating cupcakes each and every day and nothing else, provided I ate fewer calories than I need to maintain. I would feel awful, have no energy, have migraines, be cranky, etc, BUT I would lose weight.
I am NOT advocating for ANYONE to do that. I’m just pointing out that you could. I personally have tried to change my eating habits and incorporate healthier items while still eating what I love in smaller portions.
The OP JUST needs to weigh and accurately account for her calories in order to lose weight (provided she can stay in a deficit while actually tracking).12 -
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KrissDotCom wrote: »
The oil thing is so true. I'd slacked off of measuring oil when I put it in a pan, because I *thought* I was nailing a tablespoon.
Noooope. I started measuring it again after my food scale died -- I'd realized it had gone bad when what it told me was 8 oz of pasta was obviously far more than 8 oz of pasta -- and I'd easily been underestimating it for *months*.5 -
collectingblues wrote: »KrissDotCom wrote: »
The oil thing is so true. I'd slacked off of measuring oil when I put it in a pan, because I *thought* I was nailing a tablespoon.
Noooope. I started measuring it again after my food scale died -- I'd realized it had gone bad when what it told me was 8 oz of pasta was obviously far more than 8 oz of pasta -- and I'd easily been underestimating it for *months*.
This is me with any type of grain or cereal. I just can't recognize what 1/2 a cup of grains (or the equivalent in grams) looks like and I don't think I ever will.4 -
rheddmobile wrote: »Because you are petite, your tracking has to be accurate, since you don’t need as many calories as a taller person.
There are some foods you can safely estimate because they are low in calories and a difference won’t matter much. Peanut butter is not one of those foods. An official “serving” of peanut butter is tiny compared to what a normal person puts on a sandwich, and a “tablespoon” of peanut butter measured using a measuring spoon is about twice as much as a proper tablespoon by weight. If you are eating peanut butter every day and not weighing it, you are probably getting two or three hundred extra calories right there, not even accounting for your other food! Weigh it, every time, until you see the results you would like.
Also don’t forget to count extras, such as whatever butter or sauce you have to cook and put on your rice and meat. Calorie dense foods such as butter and cooking oil are easy to forget about, and can easily have more calories than the rest of your meal combined.
It was a sad, sad day when I first weighed peanut butter on a food scale and realized just how small 2 T was.
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kshama2001 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »Because you are petite, your tracking has to be accurate, since you don’t need as many calories as a taller person.
There are some foods you can safely estimate because they are low in calories and a difference won’t matter much. Peanut butter is not one of those foods. An official “serving” of peanut butter is tiny compared to what a normal person puts on a sandwich, and a “tablespoon” of peanut butter measured using a measuring spoon is about twice as much as a proper tablespoon by weight. If you are eating peanut butter every day and not weighing it, you are probably getting two or three hundred extra calories right there, not even accounting for your other food! Weigh it, every time, until you see the results you would like.
Also don’t forget to count extras, such as whatever butter or sauce you have to cook and put on your rice and meat. Calorie dense foods such as butter and cooking oil are easy to forget about, and can easily have more calories than the rest of your meal combined.
It was a sad, sad day when I first weighed peanut butter on a food scale and realized just how small 2 T was.
THIS! I was OMG, is that all I get?!?!3 -
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kshama2001 wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »Because you are petite, your tracking has to be accurate, since you don’t need as many calories as a taller person.
There are some foods you can safely estimate because they are low in calories and a difference won’t matter much. Peanut butter is not one of those foods. An official “serving” of peanut butter is tiny compared to what a normal person puts on a sandwich, and a “tablespoon” of peanut butter measured using a measuring spoon is about twice as much as a proper tablespoon by weight. If you are eating peanut butter every day and not weighing it, you are probably getting two or three hundred extra calories right there, not even accounting for your other food! Weigh it, every time, until you see the results you would like.
Also don’t forget to count extras, such as whatever butter or sauce you have to cook and put on your rice and meat. Calorie dense foods such as butter and cooking oil are easy to forget about, and can easily have more calories than the rest of your meal combined.
It was a sad, sad day when I first weighed peanut butter on a food scale and realized just how small 2 T was.
That was the face I made when I got my new food scale. I dutifully weighed out the same 10 gm of crackers I'd had as a snack a few days before, and it was ... a much much smaller amount. Same with the cheese I put on them.
I had a big sad.
(On the upside, it then also explained the random AF blood sugar spikes I was getting that neither me nor my doctor could figure out. Turns out when you're not entering the right amount of carbs in your insulin pump, you're gonna spike.)9 -
Yep Weigh and measure. I measure liquids and yogurt and weigh everything else. And log it. I hate that part but I have to do it. It let's me keep track of calories and also keeps me on track to keep down the carbs and up the protein. I'm also short and it doesn't take many excess calories to keep me chubby.
Also keep in mind that you are looking for a lifestyle change not just a quick fix.
You came to the right place to figure this out for you.
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@Oilers846507
If you work out at home, you are far less likely to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. If you get a trainer or join a bootcamp or some circuits classes, you might find you should be exercising way beyond your current levels. It should feel hard - almost too hard - at some point in every session. If you're not cursing inside, it's not pushing you enough to burn the fat.
This sounds like a sure-fire way to get burned out and quit after a few weeks. You burn fat with moderate levels of activity, doing exercise you enjoy.13 -
Definitely weigh!
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