Frustrated but determined!!

Patience will be your friend in this journey. Wish you well.

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fmichelle57 wrote: »

Does anyone else see that logging the daily foods doesn't seem to match the number they give you at the bottom after you have completed the diary for the day?
It's an incentive for me to see that in a 5 week period - you will weigh this amount...I get excited by it. I never go of course and I see that, for example 5 weeks ago, it said I would be 15 lbs lighter. That did not occur. I am wondering if it is really true??

To put a sharper point on it, for that prediction to be accurate:

1. We'd have to eat the same total actual number of calories every single day. We can't: Think about it. One apple is a little sweeter than the next (so more calories), one burger gets a little more oil on it in the frying, etc.

2. We'd have to move in ways that burn the same number of calories every single day: Same amount of moving around on the job, in home chores, exercise duration/intensity, all the same - or different mix of activities adding up to same calorie total. Not gonna happen.

3. Our logging would have to be exactly accurate. Product labels are allowed to be within a certain percentage of exactly exact, because regulators understand that variation can't be controlled exactly. We have to select accurate entries from the food database for every food we eat. We must not forget to log each bite, lick, taste, or sip of anything with calories. I don't know about you, but I make mistakes sometimes.

4. Our calorie needs would have to be exactly the average for people similar to us in the entries we put into the MFP profile (height, weight, age, etc.). In reality, not every single person is average. Most people are close (rarely spot on), but a rare few are fairly far off. That's just how statistics work. The calorie estimate is just a starting point. We may need to fine-tune goals once we get a couple of months of logging data, to be more in line with our individual needs.

5. Our activity level setting (or synched fitness tracker) needs to to be correct for our daily life activity level (not very active/sedentary, lightly active, etc.). There are only a small number of settings. How can that cover the full range of people's different lives exactly?

6. Our exercise calorie estimates (or those from a synched fitness tracker) need to be correct, too. Here again, people vary and will not burn the same number of calories in the same time period doing aerobics, or at heart rate 147, or whatever.

7. Our water weight fluctuations would have to . . . not fluctuate. Since our bodies can be 60%+ water, and healthy bodies stay healthy by shifting water weight in and out as needed, that's not going to happen. That's several pounds of variability up or down, right there. Digestive contents (on their way to becoming pee/poo) also vary day to day.

14. And more.

Does that mean calorie counting can't work? No.

Calorie counting can work. All of that stuff just needs to be close enough to accurate. That's achievable. Once we get some personal logging experience (month or two), we need to fine-tune our calorie goals to dial in our personal weight loss. That will give us even clearer expectations (MFP may or may not reflect that in the 5-week estimate, depending on what's happening in the data.)

Even then, there'll be some variability from week to week or month to month in our loss rate, but it'll be plenty close enough to let us succeed.

Don't let minor things like the 5-week prediction mess with your head. Staying clear-eyed about calorie counting as a skill, that can work on average, over multi-week periods, is a useful cognitive frame for sticking with it and actually succeeding.