In a calorie deficit, scale isn't moving

You aren’t in a deficit. Don’t rely on apps and devices to give correct information

Curious, what setting did you choose for MFP for your regular activity level? Is that accurate? And how many calories are you adding to that for all exercise? I wonder if there might be some double counting going on.

Definitely food scale and remember to include EVERYTHING you consume. From ketchup to your coffee creamer. I know we all hate to hear it, but I start my morning off with at least two bottles of water. I don’t go crazy with it after that, but I can definitely tell after two days without water.
I never eat back my calories…. My treadmill and my Fitbit are pretty close in calculations….. but I just figure it as quicker weight loss, or maybe a yogurt for a nighttime treat.

I just got my Apple Watch for Christmas and will actually use it on the treadmill tonight. I still will not eat back my exercise calories.

Good luck and Congratulations for taking the step to be a healthier you!

OP, I'm going to implicitly agree with some other posters, but phrase the explanation in a different way. The probable conclusion is the same: If you've been doing the same regimen (exercise and eating) for 4-6 weeks (and are male), and haven't lost any weight, the more probable explanation is that you're not eating at a deficit.

Here's the key thing: A calculator (like MFP) or fitness tracker (like your Apple watch), in combination with your food logging - that's not what tells you whether you're in a calorie deficit, or how big that calorie deficit is. Your actual weight loss rate, averaged over that 4-6 weeks, tells you what your calorie deficit is. It's starting to look like your current calorie deficit is zero, sadly. Use that information to guide you going forward.

It kind of doesn't matter whether the problem is on the food logging side or the calorie needs estimating side, in practice. As long as you log consistently (same methods of measuring/estimating intake and exercise), you can use your average loss rate over a period of weeks to fine tune your calorie intake.

If you are set up to lose weight very slowly, like half a pound a week, it's possible that water fluctuations could distort your results for a whole month, maybe more. If set for a pound a week or so loss rate, it's time to adjust your calories eaten downward, or your activities (daily life or exercise) upward.

As an aside:

Letting exercise calories increase deficit is a viable strategy during weight loss, as long as it doesn't result in losing weight faster than sensible (for sustainability or health risk). I disagree with the idea that exercise universally isn't a meaningful amount of calories (when stated as a generality). It's not unusual for mine to be 10%-25% of my TDEE, which seems fairly significant to me, and I'm not any kind of super athlete. (I'm a li'l ol' lady who bikes and rows regularly for fun, basically.)

One thing to think about, in picking a strategy: Sooner or later, each of us hopes to reach weight maintenance. Sooner or later, we're maybe going to need to have some handle on the magnitude of our exercise calories, because they'll vary over the course of life. Personally, I liked getting an understanding of that during weight loss - with that cushion of a deficit as a safety net for mistakes - rather than waiting to figure it out during maintenance.

Maintenance has enough inherent challenges of its own, IMO. I've been in maintenance for around 7 years now: Sure enough, exercise varies. I'm still maintaining. It may work differently for others, who knows, but that's how it works for me. I've always estimated my exercise calories carefully and conservatively, and have always eaten them back - lost as expected (once I had personal experience data to go on) and maintain as expected, too. Different methods work for different people, though.

I agree that exercise consumes far more than "so few" calories. It can consume quite a lot. It's also easy to eat back MORE than they burn.

A recent example: My calorie budget before any activity (as if I don't get out of bed) is set to 1771. It's not the number I got from the set-up, but close. I'm weird, and I like palindromes. After activity, as measured by a device I wear on my wrist made by Garmin, my calorie goals the last seven days were 2170, 2121, 2149, 2358, 2122, 2228, and 2267. That's an additional 350 to 587 calories; an increase of 20% to 33%. To be sure, this isn't just exercise it's movement in general.

I can't do much exercise right now as I am recovering from an injury. My "exercise" consists of walking, and I can't really walk all that far. Yesterday was a very long walk compared to what I've done lately - about 5K. I burned 287 calories. The day before it was 230 calories, and 337 a couple days before that. If I have a goal to lose a half pound per week, that's a 250 calorie deficit. My very mild exercise would double that deficit. For someone with ten to 20 pounds to lose, a deficit of 250 calories per day is safe.

I always eat back most of my exercise calories. I love food. I have my base goal set to a level that accommodates me eating back exercise calories on the days I exercise. If I go paddling, I burn a lot, and then I can eat more tacos. If I go diving, I burn a LOT of calories, and I can eat all kinds of things.

The program is designed to set the base goal not to include intentional exercise then eat back exercise. A reasonable alternative IF you do a fairly steady amount of exercise every week of every year is to do some trial and error to set your base goal to include exercise, and always eat the same amount. Some days you may feel overfull, and other days you may be hungry. I switch it up.

damage_inc74 wrote: »

Right after Christmas, I started lifting 5X a week (from 3X.)

I have been in a 500+ calorie deficit or more every day for the last three weeks (I'm taking what my Apple Watch says I'm burning and taking 15% off of that for my burn)

I weighed 348 lbs the day after Christmas. I weighed in today and the scale hasn't budged.

What's going on here??

Have I become confused? Everyone in this thread is acting like there is some long plateau here and that there must be no caloric deficit.

It hasn't even been three weeks: 18 days since Christmas.

In my book that is too short a time to see significant changes, particularly given the relatively modest deficit of 500/3500 (compared to TDEE).

At this deficit, you might see about a pound a week off - so looking at a maximum of 3lbs of actual weight loss: that could totally be masked by other factors. (My daily variability of weight is 2-3lbs at 220lbs)

BartBVanBockstaele wrote: »

autobahn66 wrote: »

damage_inc74 wrote: »

Right after Christmas, I started lifting 5X a week (from 3X.)

I have been in a 500+ calorie deficit or more every day for the last three weeks (I'm taking what my Apple Watch says I'm burning and taking 15% off of that for my burn)

I weighed 348 lbs the day after Christmas. I weighed in today and the scale hasn't budged.

What's going on here??

Have I become confused? Everyone in this thread is acting like there is some long plateau here and that there must be no caloric deficit.

It hasn't even been three weeks: 18 days since Christmas.

In my book that is too short a time to see significant changes, particularly given the relatively modest deficit of 500/3500 (compared to TDEE).

At this deficit, you might see about a pound a week off - so looking at a maximum of 3lbs of actual weight loss: that could totally be masked by other factors. (My daily variability of weight is 2-3lbs at 220lbs)

That reasoning is not wrong, but it does not take into account that the vast majority of people lose significant amounts of weight in the first few days to the first week of starting a diet, There are several reasons for this, but the fact that the OP does not experience this, does indicate that food intake is too high. For example, when starting a diet, one typically reduces intake, which will lead to a significant weight reduction because less food is coming in, while older, digested food that was taken in during the day or two before the diet started is still being excreted at the old rate.
Also, unless you have your energy use measured in a room calorimeter, numbers such as TDEE are extremely unreliable, and even if you did (which is highly unlikely) they are still less than reliable. We are not robots made in a factory. We are biological creatures, essentially chemical soups, and we are all very different.

As for daily variability, yes, that exists. Here is mine, for example:

The highest daily fluctuation (difference between highest and lowest weight on the same day) I had in this graph was 3.5 kg.

Sure.

A 500 kcal deficit is 85ml of oil. 80g.

We don't know what the OP did to reduce their calorie intake, but if they were eating at maintainance before then the amount of food intake may be as little as 80g a day less. And maybe they're eating a bunch of veggies now? Lots of bulk.

Now I know when I eat less fat, I eat more salt, and this holds water. And maybe the OPs holding onto a bit of water due to increasing exercise.

They also only gave two data points. Who knows what their true weight is?

I also think it's likely that OP is in a smaller deficit than they think, mainly because they quote their calories burned based on an Apple watch, and are likely over-counting calories burned in exercise. But that's a guess based on pretty minimal information.

Im saying that most of the advice here is premature, and based on too little information to be useful. It's very easy to say cut calories further now, and obviously that will accelerate weight loss, but we have no sense on how this will actually impact the OP, or how they are managing at even this deficit.

To the OP:

I do a 7 and 14 day rolling average of my weight. This is done by weighing every day, at the same time and putting it into an excel sheet, but apps like Libra scale also do something similar.

This will give you a sense of your weight is stable or falling.

I would give it another week or two before making further cuts in your calories. You definitely have room to cut further but that depends on how you are feeling and how stable your situation is. My experience is that you can easily burn out by pushing super hard at the start.

I've been actively managing my weight for 18 months (after many failed attempts). Lost a bunch in the first 6 months. On a 1000kcal deficit, but then maintained for the next year or so. I found 1000kcal deficit tough, and made decent exercise all but impossible. (As a proportion of my daily calories a deficit of 1000 would be about a deficit of 1300 for you, but YMMV)

I expended over 800 calories yesterday from WALKING. I would have expended more if I had more mass; I am at goal weight and maintaining.

To be sure, I walked a lot. I had one long walk about four miles, and I also walked to the store and walked out to meet friends later. But it was still 800 calories. That is a 45% increase over my NEAT calorie goal on MFP. I do not find this insignificant. I ate back all my calories, and my scale weight was essentially unchanged. I've been doing this for a while, and the results are similar. I eat over my TDEE and scale goes up. I eat at my TDEE and it stays the same. If I burn more than I eat, it goes down.

This is the last comment I will make in this discussion so that we can get back to helping @damage_inc74 with the original question asked.

First, I would track everything you eat for a week. You have get a baseline on what you eat so that you can then set a caloric deficit.
If you use My Fitness Pal, it is easy to enter foods and get nutritional information. Once you have the caloric deficit set, continue to track your foods. No cheating! Get moving outside or at a gym walking on a treadmill for 30-60 minutes a day. You should watch Paul Revelia on YouTube for more
information. Good luck! You can do this!