Body scans

Photogdave wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

Increased strength early on is only due in part to muscle gain (muscle gain generally is slow) but in most part due to neurological adaptation (better activation of your muscles).

I'm also wondering if metabolic rate refers to BMR (basal metabolic rate). If so, you shouldn't use that to determine your eating goal. Staying a couple of hundred calories under it (around 1650) sounds a bit low for someone your weight. For weight loss, you need to stay a under your TDEE, not your BMR. The greater the difference between your TDEE and your actual intake, the harder it will be for your body to gain muscle. But considering you haven't lost a lot of weight since you started, it's probably not an issue (perhaps you're underestimating your intake?).
In that same vein, gaining muscle requires sufficient protein intake, so make sure you're consuming enough.

As for the scan itself, there will certainly be a margin of error which, considering how small the supposed increase of fat mass is, is certainly a possible explanation. I wouldn't let it discourage you, the way you look and how your clothes fit might be a better way to judge your progress. The scans might give extra info, but more long-term over a series of scans, rather than taking each individual scan as gospel.

The trainer that did the initial scan said it was BMR, and to stay under that. She is now gone.

I find myself kinda hoping she was fired, because that's sooo wrong 😬, as others have explained.

Lady yesterday said she thinks I’m not eating enough. I use this app to enter my food in and monitor macros the best I can.

I agree with "lady yesterday". When I regularly eat 1850 plus all exercise calories, I lose weight slowly, as a 65 y/o 5'5" 125 pound woman. Even granting that I'm a mysteriously good li'l calorie burner for my demographic, you're 100% more male, for sure heavier, likely substantially taller, have more muscle mass, are probably younger.

Not sure how else I can eat more without forcing food. I’m not hungry.

Calorie dense foods. Full fat dairy, if you eat dairy. Fattier types of meat/fish. Nuts, peanut butter. More oil or butter in cooking and on veggies. Whatever you personally find less filling, that has more calories.

Hunger isn't a good guide. Too-low calories can increase stress-related water retention, confuse matters on the bodyweight scale (and probably the easily-confused InBody, too).

It’s really hard to eat properly around the area I work. Basically fast food everywhere
And a couple Meat+3. I frequent those and try to eat baked chicken, some sort of non fried meat. A green vegetable and maybe something black eyed peas or the like.

Even fast food has nutrition.

I hope you're not falling for the "good food/bad food" concept, about individual foods or food purveyors? There really aren't good or bad individual foods, other than poisons or allergens, IMO.

There can be better or worse overall diets, and nutrition is the key yardstick. Get a sufficient minimum of protein and fats, a boatload of varied & colorful veggies/fruits for micros and fiber, you're probably doing well. It's possible to eat all and only so-called "superfoods" but have poor overall nutrition.

All of which is standard portion and I usually don’t eat all of it.
I do monitor protein
In fact most days based on fitness pal I go over by a little

The percent-based view of macronutrients can mislead, in some cases. Even in cases where it works well, it's just a convenient approximation.

Specifically, if someone is eating too few calories, and the "right" percentage of those calories is protein, they're probably not getting enough protein.

You can get evidence-based recommendations for a protein minimum here:

https://examine.com/nutrition/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

The site is generally regarded as neutral; they don't sell supplements (they sell research-based nutrition reports, but offer some, like these, for free, with extensive cites of their protein research sources in that 2nd link).

IIRC, the default MFP protein percent is 20%, maybe? 20% of 1850 calories (or less) would be 92.5g protein (or less).

I eat more protein than that, as a li'l ol' lady vegetarian. A rule of thumb (which loosely accords with that (better) calculator) would be around a gram of protein daily per pound of lean body mass (LBM), or 0.6-0.8g per pound of healthy body weight is close enough to that for people who have no idea of LBM. Your InBody results are probably close enough to use for protein estimating purposes, which I think would put you around a 150g minimum?

Not real sure what to do
My initial purpose for gym was to gain muscle in order to more efficiently burn calories.

Not false IMU, but it's a slow road to a surprisingly small improvement, in direct terms. OTOH, muscle is good for lots of reasons, so if you're liking/tolerating the lifting, definitely keep it up.

I always forget numbers, but research suggests that, at rest, a pound of muscle burns something like 4 calories per pound per day more than a pound of fat (which is also metabolically active). That's not a big number, and it takes quite a bit of effort/time to add that pound of muscle, under the best of circumstances. (WRT calorie burn among other things, strength training is an investment in one's future.)

I have a personal theory, for which I can't provide research evidence, that people who are stronger tend to find movement/activity more fun, and burn more calories that way (i.e., they spend less time "at rest"). That's potentially more meaningful, IMO.

But I guess I need to do more cardio
Or stay the course and keep going

Cardio varies hugely, so much so that it's almost meaningless to discuss "cardio" as if it were all one thing.

That said, most cardio burns more calories per minute than most strength training, so offers a more meaningful short term boost to weight loss, if that's your goal.

"Cardio" is any kind of moving more that gets your heart rate up a bit. Sometimes people have the mistaken idea that "cardio" needs to be intense and exhausting to be useful. Nope.

In reality, for most cases, the highest total calorie burn is going to come from figuring out how much time you can spend doing that "cardio" (while maintaining good overall life balance, i.e., enough time and energy for family, job, other things important to you), then allocating that time to cardio.

Divide the time into a short warm-up, the main body of the workout where you work at the highest steady-state intensity you can maintain for that amount of time without causing excessive fatigue, then a short cool-down. You want to feel energized for the rest of your day (after maybe a very few minutes of "whew" feeling right after the workout). You shouldn't feel depleted or fatigued longer, post workout. That's counter-productive, bleeds calorie burn out of the rest of your day via fatigue.

Note that that's about calorie burn, just above. It's also a good place to start for building cardiovascular (CV) fitness. It builds base fitness.

If CV fitness is a goal, after a few weeks/months, it's good to start mixing in interval work or short intense work once or twice a week. Don't fall for the "HIIT every day" nonsense. (It's more fatiguing than necessary, some types increase injury risk via moving fast when fatigued, the "afterburn" (EPOC) is seriously over-rated, and no elite athlete became an elite athlete while working at their personal maximum intensity all the time (nor do they train that way now, as elite athletes)).

If your cardio fitness is limited to start, work up to that amount of time gradually. Over time, as you get fitter cardio-wise, you'll be able to increase intensity, frequency, duration or type of exercise (as your preferences allow), burn more calories that way if you wish.

Pick a cardio activity you enjoy, or at least tolerate cheerfully. An exercise we enjoy, so do routinely, burns 100% more calories than one we skip, because it's no fun, whenever we can make an excuse.

Keep in mind that cardio isn't just the classics, like gym machines (elliptical, treadmill, rower, stair climber, stationary bike, whatever), running or swimming. Those a fine, of course. But there are a zillion other options: Outdoor cycling, running, in-line skating; walks or hikes; dozens of kinds of dancing from ballet to square dance; martial arts; rowing, canoeing, kayaking; games (basketball, disc golf, tennis . . . .), lots more.

Best wishes!