Does the calorie deficit work?

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Replies

  • pauldalen1
    pauldalen1 Posts: 3 Member
    They are talking absolute hog-wash.

    CICO is the only way weight management happens (not just weight loss), it is physics, plain and simple.

    CI (Calories In) greater than CO (Calories Out) = Weight Gain
    CI equal to CO = Weight Maintenance
    CI less than CO = Weight Loss

    Your calorie burn will decrease as you lose weight, so you do need to adjust MyFitnessPal as you go.

    If you need any confirmation look to the Maintenance thread, there are people who have been maintaining their weight loss for years here. Also look to the non-bikini bodybuilders in your life that aren't overweight - how many of them eat 6 meals per day? I don't know any of my friends that are of healthy weight that are eating this way!

    Plateaus are not really a thing, it is generally a misunderstanding of fluctuations, impatience or people eating more than they think. Which I think has already been clearly explained in another thread you made.

    Weight loss doesn't happen like many people think it does, even if you log accurately, weight fluctuates up as well as down, because your body is not just made up of fat, it's mostly water, your mass is constantly in flux.

    If you are logging accurately and sticking to your (sustainable) calorie goal consistently you will lose weight just fine here.



    Except that the science doesn't support that. Countless studies have shown that it's far more complicated than that. The best evidence about weight loss is that insulin resistance has a causal relationship to weight gain. I've had a great deal of success in weight loss not by focusing on calories, but by managing my blood sugar levels and insulin levels.
  • Go_Deskercise
    Go_Deskercise Posts: 1,630 Member
    @nicolewalter16 - You have gotten some good advice from people here!

    I'm just here to say Hi to a fellow Kentuckian. I live in Georgetown but I'm from NKY in the Burlington/Florence area :)
  • nicolewalter16
    nicolewalter16 Posts: 22 Member
    Hi, I actually live in Walton, KY. So I am really close to Florence. Idk why MFP thinks my zip code is Beaver Creek lol.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,033 Member
    @yirara

    I guess I will open up my diary. It it is really scary for me to do that. I want to do it right so I should want to open it up and be told what I am doing wrong. But then again I am trying really hard and I'm afraid judgement will stress me out and get me to give up .

    Here goes nothing I guess

    Things like "Stir-Fried Chicken and Vegetables, 1 serving(s)", "Pita Pizza base (bread sauce cheese only), 1 serving(s)" and "ONE PAN Balsamic Chicken and Veggies, 1 serving(s) ": are those your own recipes where you've weighed the individual ingredients, added them to a recipe and weighed the entire cooked dish and then your individual portion?

    Aside from that, some elements don't seem to be weighed: eggs, apples, almonds... Your "one large egg" for 70 calories surprises me a bit: the entry I use for eggs ("Eggs, Whole, Raw" gives me a 49gram egg for 70 calories, which doesn't seem like a large egg to me.
    Apples and blueberries will show smaller differences in calories if you're not weighing them (but they can add up), but almonds are calorie dense, so I would weigh those instead of counting them.
    Your entry for oats has both volume and gram measurements - are you using a scale for that?
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,122 Member
    edited January 2021
    Lietchi wrote: »
    @yirara


    Aside from that, some elements don't seem to be weighed: eggs, apples, almonds... Your "one large egg" for 70 calories surprises me a bit: the entry I use for eggs ("Eggs, Whole, Raw" gives me a 49gram egg for 70 calories, which doesn't seem like a large egg to me.


    A whole large egg here (Ireland) would be about 72 cals per the nutrition info on the brand I buy. They aren't huge eggs (When I get the XL ones from the farmers market, I'd be logging 2 of my Aldi brand ones lol)
  • Dootzy1
    Dootzy1 Posts: 2,116 Member
    Not sure she has given you good advice. Biggest problem with CICO is that people don't give it enough time, and they are overly reliant on the scale. The trick is to find that "sweet spot", where you are maintaining a deficit, but not overly restricting to lose weight. I don't have the tech to follow weight trends, but just looking over the graph on MFP--- what numbers do over a month's time is more important than a daily number. In maintenance, this is what my weight has done in a year. Each line is one pound.
  • nicolewalter16
    nicolewalter16 Posts: 22 Member
    @tinkerbellang83 and @Lietchi thank you for the feedback on the weighing of items I will certainly make improvement on the types of things you pointed out.

    I do make a lot of my own recipes but that is why I like to feel I have a little extra padding in my numbers. Cooking is one of my passions and that is something I'm going to have to balance for my weight loss to be sustainable
  • The_Elephant_Man
    The_Elephant_Man Posts: 202 Member
    I was just informed by a family member who was a bikini body builder and is now a nurse that my using my fitness pal would not work "in the long run" because not all calories are the same and being in a calorie deficit won't matter unless you eat 6 times a day to increase metabolism. And told me that increasing metabolism is basically the only way to lose weight of keep weight off.

    This happened to happen during a hard day in my " suck period" I have been using my fitness pal for about a month and have got a plateau. I am trying to be patient but this hit very hard for me.

    Anyone know if she is right, if not why (got any good insights or sources, I like to be reassured with facts)

    @nicolewalter16 Yes, it works! I have lost 55lb so far and need to lose another 30lb just from counting calories. Just log everything you put in your mouth and stay below your calories goal each day and you will lose weight.
  • riffraff2112
    riffraff2112 Posts: 1,757 Member
    It definitely works. Accuracy, time and patience are the most important components but doing it will lead to results. Body weight does rise and fall, not necessarily due to intake/expenditure. It can be frustrating in the short term, but finding the right caloric intake for you will definitely work. Science is science...it really is as simple as taking in less than you put out.
    I much prefer counting calories because it places no limits on what you eat, as long as you can fit it in your budget.
  • nicolewalter16
    nicolewalter16 Posts: 22 Member
    @Lietchi I have found I can't be 100 % accurate with some recipes because I can weigh all the ingridents that go in and what goes on my plate but it won't be absolute. For example I like making Stir-Fried veggies I cna measure all the different veggies but when I portion out the 6 servings or what have you I can't gurantee each plate has the exact amount of each veggie. So it is more of an average.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
    SlSl12345 wrote: »
    @Lietchi I have found I can't be 100 % accurate with some recipes because I can weigh all the ingridents that go in and what goes on my plate but it won't be absolute. For example I like making Stir-Fried veggies I cna measure all the different veggies but when I portion out the 6 servings or what have you I can't gurantee each plate has the exact amount of each veggie. So it is more of an average.

    Measure the entire recipe in grams when complete. Put the weight in grams as your number of servings. Each time you take some, just weigh what you take. IE 200 grams would be 200 servings. Voila.

    Or, if you’re cooking just for you, it doesn’t matter much if each serving is exact because once you eat all of it, it will all have been accounted for in your diary. (More true if you’re eating it in the same week or so).

    exactly. just make sure you measure each ingredient in the same unit (all grams, for example). If you look at my diary you see my lunch was 130 servings of chicken salad. it was 130 grams.

    I'm making an apple pie later and you'll see that at the end of the day 150 servings of pie. (or whatever I dish up)

    Learn how to use that recipe builder to maximize the accuracy! It helps tremendously.