BMR BMI and calories

Take heart. Calorie counting works. But not the way most people would like. Particularly not as fast as most people would like. Congrats on the loss so far, its a great start.

Do you keep a food dairy? Do you use a food scale to crunch the numbers? A food scale will give you a lot more accuracy than measuring cups except for liquids.

A couple of things. There’s a significant calorie counting learning curve. And the fact is, it’s not all that exact. We don’t really know how many calories we are using unless we are hooked up in a lab. The fitness gadgets are based on statistics and averages. But no one is exactly average. Plus, there are a lot of calorie counting gray areas. Unless we are prepping everything we eat using our food scale, we are either relying on someone else to do the calculations or we are estimating. Just how it is living our lives.

The good news is calorie counting doesn’t have to be perfect to work. But it helps a lot if we are consistent. Or as consistent as we reasonably can be.

If you read this board regularly you’ll see regular posts like yours. The calculators and gadgets eventually have limits. They are a good place to start but the numbers just don’t work for a lot of people a lot of the time. That MFP thing that projects where we will be in X days? I think it does a huge disservice. I bet it was put there by someone who has no first hand experience with losing a significant amount of weight.

You know that thing about experience being the best teacher? I think first person who said that was trying to lose weight. Weight loss is mostly about problem solving and persistence. There’s a lot of trial and error and it can be very time consuming and frustrating.

Try this- forget the MFP projection and set up regular weigh ins and make a chart. What you want to see on your chart is a downward trend over time. The more frequent your weigh ins the more bouncing around you’re going to see. But if you keep a food dairy, make good plans, hit you number most of the time, and problem solve when needed you will get to your goal. When? Unknown. I’m 71, lost 100 lbs and have been maintaining for years. How long did it take me to lose 100 lbs? Exactly as long as it took. In the end time doesn’t matter much. If you want to maintain your loss not much changes at goal. Never quit. Good luck.

lilahmax17 wrote: »

I've been using MFP For 3 months now. I am 60 yrs old, male & 5' 11" +. I have a layer of fat around my waist mostly now, with a slight 8 pack of abs trying to come through If I tighten my abs.
I connect with Samsung Health app that tracks my steps and exercise. I do core exercise M-F and walk 3000-5000 steps daily. MFP gets the info and adjust my remaining calories accordingly. Most days I do not eat the extra calories and I stay near 1780.
the first month I lost 15 pounds. I have been following my BMR number for calories on MFP for the last 2 months and it keeps telling me: Keep it up and in 5 weeks you'll weigh 210 pounds. I was 231lbs. I got down to 216 for a few days but went back up to 218 then 219. I have been eating 1780 cal. within 50 to a 100 calories everyday for the past 2 months and I am stalled at an avg of 218... no where near 210. Any thoughts out there as to why? I've used the BMR and BMI calculators over and over and they keep telling me I should be at 1780 calories to lose one pound a week... with a TDEE of 2285.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you! - James

You've been at this for 3 months, which would be around 12 weeks. You've lost from 231 to 219 (more or less), which is 12 pounds. You're aiming for a pound a week. You're close to a pound a week, on average?

You don't clearly and specifically say how long you've been stalled, but maybe it was the whole final 2 months?

It's pretty normal to drop a bunch of water weight at first, then for that water retention to rebalance, hiding continuing slow fat loss on the bodyweight scale, or something like that.

This is a good read:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

Water retention is variable, making scale weight progress variable week to week (let alone day to day), even if fat loss is slow and steady in the background (but playing peek-a-boo on the scales with water, and the coincidences of food in transit in the digestive system, on its way to becoming waste).

All of the "calculators" are giving you *estimates* for things like BMR and TDEE, and that includes your fitness tracker. Most people are close to average, so the estimates tend to be close to accurate, but they can be noticeably off (high or low) for a few people, and surprisingly far off for a very rare few. Your multi-week weight trend (minimum of 4-6 weeks average) gives you a better gauge of your actual calorie needs, in context of your particular logging habits.

The "in 5 weeks" thing is pretty much nonsense. It's "if every day were like today", right? Do you do the exact same things every day (chores at home, exercise, hours of sitting/sleep, same foods each meal . . . .)? Probably not. Also, even if you did the exact same things, it's relying on your logging to be perfect, and assuming you're statistically average. (If you rely on your own results to predict future weight loss, you're merely relying on your logging to be consistent, not perfect 😉).

If you're so close to a healthy weight that you can see the beginnings of an 8-pack . . . well, many people find that fat loss slows as they get close to a healthy weight. Not everyone, but many. OTOH, you're still around BMI 30.5. If you're quite muscular, or generally of wider build (wide shoulders, etc.), then you may be close to a healthy goal weight, but that would imply a pretty muscular build. I'm not very good at guessing body comp, for men, though - I'm older than you, but way more female. 😉

Hang in there, tighten up your food logging if you can, and I think you'll see the expected loss rate happen longer term. I 100% understand that the ups, downs, ups, and stalls are frustrating, though.

Best wishes!