Doing everything right, but not seeing progress

You aren’t in a weekly calorie deficit. It sounds like you’re plenty active exercise wise so you’ll need to lower calories.

I doubt that this is going to be a popular response, but it’s true for me and my body and may be true for you..,High protein makes me fat. I have adjusted macros and workouts and a million factors and if I eat that much protein I just can’t cut my fat. It hangs right on and I can’t shift anything! You might consider adjusting macros and seeing what happens…

That’s such an annoying feeling! My advice would be to either increase your output (more steps, more cardio in the training, more calories burnt) or decrease your input (bump your daily calories down by 100 and see how you get on with it)

The calculators are a starting point. Some MFP food entries are incorrect. Your personal data and results will take precedent over the calculators/food entry data.

Yes if you’re already pretty active, you need to lower your weekly calories.

echristensen010 wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback! According to most calculators, my maintenance calories should be able 2000 based on my height, weight, and activity. I eat 1650-1690 calories a day and make sure to measure everything by weight including sauces and tiny bites. I also very rarely eat out or drink alcohol, usually 2 times a month.

Over the last year I did lose 60 lbs. I started at 1200 calories a day and increased that to 1650 when I started hitting my steps, weight training and adjusted my macros.

Since I am doing a body recomp, I don't know of I need to lose more weight, it's really about fat loss at this point to see more definition.

Does that also come from cutting p?

Probably, if you don't want to gain much more muscle, or don't have the patience for recomp at maintenance calories, and if you don't have much fat left that you want to lose. What do you think your BF% is, and what do you think you want it to be?

Fat loss can come from eating under maintenance calories (cut), or from eating at maintenance to slooooowly add muscle from continuing progressive lifting and using some of the remaining body as fuel, loosely (recomp).

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10177803/recomposition-maintaining-weight-while-losing-fat/p1

If you're more impatient than that, probably a tiny calorie deficit (250 calories or fewer below maintenance calories, calculating maintenance needs from your own data, not a calculator) to absolutely minimize chances of muscle loss, maximize possibility (not guarantee) of continuing slow muscle gain.

If you were logging consistently, you should have data from your loss last year that tells you how close you are to the calculator estimates (like MFP's or a TDEE calculator's) or your fitness tracker estimate if you have one. Use that data to adjust going forward.

Protein:

Lots of good info in this thread:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10247171/carbs-and-fats-are-cheap-heres-a-guide-to-getting-your-proteins-worth-fiber-also

I'll add a suggestion that I always make to fellow vegetarians, but it works for non-veg folks, too: If short on protein, don't think only about the "one big protein per meal" things. In addition, think about pleasant ways to get little bits of protein from many different sources throughout the day. There are veggies with more protein than others, breads/grains/pastas with more protein, crunchy/salty snacks with protein, flavoring incredients with protein (like miso or nutritional yeast) . . . you get the idea. Those little bits of protein add up, by end of day.

Review your diary, look for foods that "cost" quite a few calories - more than seem worthwhile to you for the food's tastiness, nutrition or satiation, and that don't have much protein. Reduce or eliminate those, substitute some other food that you enjoy eating that better helps you meet your protein goals. That will gradually move your protein total in a positive direction.

PAV8888 wrote: »

is 22% body fat for a female considered to be high these days?

No. But also not rock bottom crazy low, depending on build.

echristensen010 wrote: »

@kshama2001 Activity level is set to moderate. I am 5'3 and weigh between 115.8 and 117.8 depending on the day.

Another insight I had after reflecting is that I did increase my calories from 1400/day to 1605/day about 10 weeks ago when I started training more diligently. So that is maybe impacting results too. Perhaps I need more time to let the results take place.

Slow fat loss (tiny deficit) can take a surprisingly long time to show up on the scale - I can say from personal experience. I've had it take more than a month to show up even in my weight trending app - let alone from simple observation of scale weight - and I'm long menopausal so I don't have hormonal water retention variability in the picture.

For muscle gain results, you absolutely need more than 10 weeks. I'm not saying you'd see no progress at all in that span . . . but it's unlikely to be dramatic. Fat loss can be kind of fast, but that's unlikely to be the right answer in your scenario IMO, partly because you're already slim and at a low-ish body fat (even if not max bodybuilder low), and partly because you have muscle-gaining goals.

If you do have goals to look like a bodybuilder, that's great, and you likely can (with extreme patience and discipline). But keep in mind that the way female bodybuilders look in competition and publicity photos is not how they look most of the time just walking around in daily life. For formal photos, they're fake-tanned, carefully lit, mega-posed, professionally photographed, and maybe even photoshopped. If internet influencers are a factor, the same will apply to what they share in public . . . and a fair fraction of them flat out lie about how long it took them to achieve the body they have now, and misrepresent that they got that look by some less daunting program that they're selling, rather than the slower and more challenging route they actually used.

You seem more level headed than to be influenced by that kind of nonsense, but I can't help but rant a little on account of seeing quite a few more naive and starry-eyed young women post things that tell me they have fallen for it (and I wonder what other threads they may be reading, like this one, so sometimes I rant).

@PAV8888 has a point about hormonal issues around low body fat, either appetite/hunger snapback at extreme leanness, or loss of menstrual cycles (which can happen at varying levels, but unlikely at your current stage, seems like).

Your calorie goal does seem oddly low to me, but I'm possibly biased by being a mysteriously good li'l ol' calorie burner, despite being much older than you, and only a little bigger. There's one thing you might consider, once your weight stabilizes, or as you have a couple of months in the bag where you're seeing the teensy tiny weight loss that would be the most you should go for with your size/goals. That would be inching your calorie goal upward a little, with a long-ish adjustment period between, to see if you can get the same weight trend at higher calories.

Eating very little (low calories) is not any kind of virtue, although I feel like some few women behave as if it were. (I hope that's died since the era of my youth, when eating like a tiny sparrow was absolutely seen as more feminine!)

In my view, the more calories you can eat while accomplishing your goals, the better. That's the path to thriving. More calories will fuel your muscular gains better, more calories will let you get more nutrients which also will fuel your gains better plus maximize your workout energy for better results. If you can train your body to accept a little more but still accomplish your body goals (look and performance), that's a big win, a virtuous cycle.

I'm not saying that for sure can work (eating more, same weight management outcome) . . . but our bodies tend to respond to what we train them to do. Calorie deficits tend to train our bodies to get along on less (adaptive thermogenesis). That is reversible, generally.

Think about it.

Best wishes!

Quick note to say that no I wasn't really comparing her to your pictures Ann and I'm aware that life-saving surgery may have changed them in your case.

I'm obviously operating at a bit of a disadvantage of only having seen a very small Avatar picture when I looked or tried to I did not see any pictures at the op profile probably operator error on my part!

Beyond that I will not hide that my bias is and remains 100% towards doing things that promote long-term maintenance and that includes both mindset activities methods of eating moving and exercising if I have two options and one potentially enhances the probability someone will maintain that is what I would suggest.

Athletic and physique goals that progress slowly and without time limits are a most excellent maintenance promoting activity!

The whole thing about potentially being able to increase calories (of course this depends on how one is recording them in the first place too, right?) anyway the potential at maintenance to slowly reverse adaptation that took place during weight loss definitely does exist.

And hormonally induced rebound hunger is definitely something that happens to people. and if we had a definitive guide as to when any of these things happens with 100% probability we would all be rich and happy