HELP! What am I doing wrong?

knudsenbryan wrote: »

I have been now using MFP for a little over 3 weeks and have been consistently leaving calories on the table. I have actually ended up gaining weight. I do have a FitTrack Pro scale that is tracking my weight, BFP, muscle mass, etc etc. I do 90 min of fight training 2 days a week which consist of a lot of HIIT workouts and then the other two days a week, i typically do about 40 min of HIIT and resistance band workouts. So I only workout 4 out of the 7 days a week. I am 5'8, 155.6 but would like to get back down to 145, trim/cut. If I am constantly leaving 300-900 calories left to consume at the end of the night, constantly consuming 150-180 grams of protein, and burning about 1200-1500 calories on days i workout, why am I not loosing weight? Is it I am gaining muscle and replacing the fat? If so, I am not seeing that reflected on my scale. Any help or insight at all would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you!

How are you getting your 1200-1500 calorie workout estimate? It seems really high for a 40 minute workout.

Are you using a digital food scale and logging everything? Are you checking your food choices when you add them to be certain the numbers are correct? Are you having "cheat" days?

And, yeah. Cut that calorie burn way down on that exercise. I figure 300-400 for an hour of moderate cardio, lots less for resistance (weights.)

knudsenbryan wrote: »

@cmriverside @oilphins @33gail33 @steveko89

Thank you all. I use an apple watch to track my exercise and have it an at all times except for when I am sleeping. My apologies as I was not clear on my calorie burn. I meant for the total day, my watch says I have burned 1200-1500 a day on days i workout. I also walk my dogs for 3 miles everyday which also adds about 300 calories burned on these walks walking about 4/mph. When i am working out, on average i burn about 100 calories every 10 minutes. So on days i am fight training, i will burn 900-1100 calories being that is a 90 minute workout and and on the other days it will be 300-600 calories depending on how long i workout. I put my watch on the HIIT workout when i am working out for how my calorie burn is being calculated.

As far as tracking my weight with my food scale, i weigh myself on Tuesday and Fridays. No particular reasons why, i just picked those two days to be consistent.

They meant weighing your food. You could be overestimating the food you log/eat.

knudsenbryan wrote: »

glassyo wrote: »

knudsenbryan wrote: »

@cmriverside @oilphins @33gail33 @steveko89

Thank you all. I use an apple watch to track my exercise and have it an at all times except for when I am sleeping. My apologies as I was not clear on my calorie burn. I meant for the total day, my watch says I have burned 1200-1500 a day on days i workout. I also walk my dogs for 3 miles everyday which also adds about 300 calories burned on these walks walking about 4/mph. When i am working out, on average i burn about 100 calories every 10 minutes. So on days i am fight training, i will burn 900-1100 calories being that is a 90 minute workout and and on the other days it will be 300-600 calories depending on how long i workout. I put my watch on the HIIT workout when i am working out for how my calorie burn is being calculated.

As far as tracking my weight with my food scale, i weigh myself on Tuesday and Fridays. No particular reasons why, i just picked those two days to be consistent.

They meant weighing your food. You could be overestimating the food you log/eat.

Oh gotcha. No I do not and have not done that. Where would i begin to find out what i weight i should be eating?

Food scales are important tools to verify accurate portion sizes (and therefore calories consumed). Prepackaged foods can vary +/- 20% on their stated weights and things like peanut butter that primarily state serving size volumetrically, can be very hard to measure in that fashion. It can take a little extra effort to weigh and find an appropriate database entry with grams listed but the accuracy you get is well worth it IMO.

1. Use a food scale/volume measurements to make sure what you are logging is what you are actually eating. It's super easy to be waaaay off. You don't have to religiously measure forever, but you need to do it ALL the time starting out to figure out what the correct portion sizes look like.
2. I mean...I am a big believer that if you are not losing or are actually gaining weight then you simply aren't burning more calories than you are consuming so either what you are logging is incorrect or what you are logging as burned calories is incorrect.

Have you used a TDEE calculator before? I'd do that if I were you --- you will have to choose an 'activity level'...and that's up to you and what you think makes most sense but I usually use 'sedentary' bc I have a desk job and am sedentary other than when I'm working out --- but I log my workout calories then. If you included your workouts in your activity level then you don't need to log them in MFP. It can get a little confusing.

But basically -- your daily calorie goal (net) should be somewhere in between your BMR and TDEE in order to lose weight.