Looking for guidance from other SHORTER women

hello, I'm a 32 single mother of a 3 year old.
I'm 4'11" and currently weigh 113lbs.
I'm trying to get back to 100lbs and lose some fat before then focusing on building up muscles.

What have you other women around 5ft or shorter found that works for you to lose when the treadmill is your only workout option?
How much do yall eat a day?

All these online macro calculators just seem so high for me. Some say to maintain I should be eating 1300-1800! I KNOW that will make me gain.
I've decided on the 30c/40p/30f which with 1200 calories is about 83c/110p/37f. Sound okay to start? Too high for my size and only doing cardio?

**long back story/history**
At my fittest was literally the month I got pregnant. I was eating about 1300-1400 calories average. I worked out everyday with weights and ran/walked 3-5miles a day. And I felt great.
I was 99lbs, had a 4 pack but lost my butt (because initially all I did was cardio before I started really researching fitness). But I was ok with that to lose overall weight and was literally just really getting into weight training to build my butt back up, then got pregnant and let ALLLL fitness and eating right go out the window! 🤦‍♀️

Now I've held at 113 for about a months on ~1200 calories/day. I havnt done weights since covid stopped me from going to the gym (but to be honest I had only just started a few months prior). I was 105lbs from last October to this March (on a avg 1000-1200 calorie/day). I literally don't know what happened. Only thing that changed is in March I took a month off (due to covid), then after the 1st day back at work I ballooned up immediately. Like the next day my stomach was severely bloated out. Figured it was stress (my job is stressful) but the weight kept coming (stoped at 117lbs) and now I'm having the hardest time getting it back down!

I consider myself average-skinny fat.
I'm trying to refocus my eating and figure my macros out again but idk where to start. I did just get a treadmill. So I've been doing incline walking for now and easing back into jogging. Eventually I plan on buying weights to do weight training again.

Sorry so long! Input?

Replies

cnjg6677

I am 4”11 also but I’m 43 and I only walk 15 min a day and eat 1200-1300 calories a day and have maintained at 99.5 lbs for 2 years hope this helps

Shortgirlrunning

I’m 5’0” and 138 lbs.

I’m a runner but prefer running outside to the treadmill. I also do strength training. Strength training shouldn’t be ignored until you reach your goal weight. It can help with weight loss and there are a lot of body weight exercises you can do if you have no equipment. FitnessBlender is my favorite for video workouts.

I eat 1200 calories on a no exercise day. I lose about a 1 lb a week. Your weight loss would probably be slower than that since you are shorter and pretty close to your goal.

ExistingFish

I'm 5' and I'm currently at 123lbs, trying to get back down to 113 eventually.

I was 113 in March. Covid happened to me too and I shot up to 123! I can't seem to go back down, I watch my calories, I work out, the scale is not budging.

I'm eating 1450 and eating back exercise calories. I should be losing 0.5lbs a week but I'm not.

Strudders67

Start building muscles at the same time as losing weight; you're unlikely to regret starting now. Being short and a healthy weight already, it'll be slow to lose a few pounds anyway. Look at body weight exercises if you're unable to go to the gym.

One thing you'll read on here, a lot, is that you don't need to exercise to lose weight / weight loss happens in the kitchen. Exercising is good for muscle tone, fitness levels, general well-being and 'earning' extra calories to eat but, if you're over-eating, your exercise won't help much with weight loss.

To lose almost 40lbs, I was eating 1200 a day, which is the minimum MFP will set anyone and is the minimum recommended for females, even us shorties. I'm now fluctuating at 108-110lb and in maintenance on 1340 a day. To lose half a pound a week, you need a deficit of 250 from your maintenance calories. However, with a deficit of considerably less than that, particularly for the last 10 lbs, not surprisingly, my weight loss was slow. My bathroom scales seemingly wouldn't move for ages and then suddenly I'd drop a bit. On the plus side, as my maintenance cals aren't much higher, it was a lot of practice for what I'd be eating like once I'd lost the pounds.

Make sure your logging is accurate. Weigh every solid / measure every liquid that you consume or use in cooking. Ensure that the entries you select from the database are accurate as many are out of date or just entered incorrectly.

The macros that MFP default to are fine for most people but consider the protein and fat numbers to be minimums, especially if you're doing any strength building/ weights.

All the calculators that you're looking at could have different ways of measuring. MFP is designed such that it calculates your maintenance figures and builds in a deficit based on the rate of weight loss you selected (with the caveat that it will never give anyone below 1200 to eat); you log your intentional exercise separately and eat back those calories as well. Other trackers look at your exercise and build that in to a daily allowance, which is fine if you do exactly the same thing, every day / week and just want a constant calorie number to eat towards, but may be less accurate if your exercise changes regularly. I'm happy tracking my exercise separately as it varies daily and week-to-week. If I've done an 8 mile walk, I want to eat more than on days when I don't leave the house.