Stuck at 190's range

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heyitzzsam
heyitzzsam Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I started at 230lbs and I'm currently around 195 - 199. My calories intake was roughly between 1300-1600 with a goal 180g of protein for the weekdays and one cheat day on the weekend. My goal at the time was to hit 180lbs and I've been stuck at the 190's for the past month. I just got premium for mfp, so I'm hoping it can help me finally hit my ideal weight of 170 lbs. MFP has my base goal of calories for 1950 which doesn't seem correct. I set it to goal weight of 170, lose 2 lbs per week, workout 5 days a week with cardio included (some days high incline if my foot doesn't hurt and other days will just be regular walking on 3 speed). My current diet has me hitting 1400 calories, 170g of protein, 55g carb, and 55g fat. Does this look okay?

Replies

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,508 Member
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    Are you actually stuck, or has loss just slowed down?

    You’re very nearly your goal and the closer you get, the slower it will go (and feel!).

    You don’t indicate if you’re male or female, or height, so hard to judge with the info provided.

    Clarify what you mean by “cheat” day. Are you going buck wild? Try changing to “seven day view” and seeing what your daily average is.

    It’s possible to “build” a cheat day into your plan. I shoot for 2600-2800/average-per-day. During the week, I’m very happy at 2300-2400/day, and will then use the “leftover” calories on the weekend.

    But don’t eat your goal during the week and then eat over your goal on weekends. As Tom says, that defeats the purpose.

    Also, as you’ve lost weight, don’t forget to reevaluate your daily goal. The lighter you are, the fewer calories you need. Sometimes MFP recalculates automatically……..sometimes not.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,508 Member
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    And PS: two pounds a week when you’re within 20 of goal is brutal. Change it to a pound or even half a pound. Go slow, let your body process these changes, and don’t hurry through, or you’ll be one of the “Back Again!” crowd.
  • Rockmama1111
    Rockmama1111 Posts: 262 Member
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    Do you log the food you eat on your cheat day? If not, I’d encourage it, even if it’s just your best estimate.

    For some perspective on what Tom mentioned above, I’m also close to goal and am working on slow weight loss with a small deficit. I have logged some 3500-4000 calorie days over the past 5 months; that might be a day out where I have lunch and dinner at restaurants with a margarita or three and an ice cream cone. That’s enough over my target to completely wipe out the deficit I achieved on the other 6 days.

    I believe that it’s fine to do it—you want to live life! But logging it gives you good data to help answer the question, “Why am I not losing?” and then you can strategize more effectively. My solution is to have a few 1200-calorie days throughout the month to buy me a little more freedom on fun days. Fully logged, of course!
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 1,660 Member
    edited April 2023
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    Rockmama1111 wrote: »
    My solution is to have a few 1200-calorie days throughout the month to buy me a little more freedom on fun days. Fully logged, of course!
    yep

    Once people fully grasp it’s the weekly and not daily calories that count things
    become more understandable. MFP even has weekly calorie breakdowns which as far as tracking goes is more important than the daily accounting.

    Will one cheat day in the long run of months make a difference? Not really however weekly or every few weeks will for sure.

    If say you know you have a party to go to on the weekend just take in fewer calories the week leading up to it and it will lessen the damage to some extent. When your dieting affects your social life to where you can’t enjoy a party once in awhile you’ll need to re access how you’re handling things.

  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 1,660 Member
    edited April 2023
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    heyitzzsam wrote: »
    I started at 230lbs and I'm currently around 195 - 199. My calories intake was roughly between 1300-1600 with a goal 180g of protein for the weekdays and one cheat day on the weekend. My goal at the time was to hit 180lbs and I've been stuck at the 190's for the past month. I just got premium for mfp, so I'm hoping it can help me finally hit my ideal weight of 170 lbs. MFP has my base goal of calories for 1950 which doesn't seem correct. I set it to goal weight of 170, lose 2 lbs per week, workout 5 days a week with cardio included (some days high incline if my foot doesn't hurt and other days will just be regular walking on 3 speed). My current diet has me hitting 1400 calories, 170g of protein, 55g carb, and 55g fat. Does this look okay?
    Calories are too low and carbs too low. Bump those both up a bit. Set your calories at 10 calories per pound that you want to end up weighing so that would be 1,700 or about 12,000 per week and do whatever works for you as far as adding or not adding exercise calorie back in.

    Over the years this had been what I've found to be the best equation.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,234 Member
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    heyitzzsam wrote: »
    I started at 230lbs and I'm currently around 195 - 199. My calories intake was roughly between 1300-1600 with a goal 180g of protein for the weekdays and one cheat day on the weekend. My goal at the time was to hit 180lbs and I've been stuck at the 190's for the past month. I just got premium for mfp, so I'm hoping it can help me finally hit my ideal weight of 170 lbs. MFP has my base goal of calories for 1950 which doesn't seem correct. I set it to goal weight of 170, lose 2 lbs per week, workout 5 days a week with cardio included (some days high incline if my foot doesn't hurt and other days will just be regular walking on 3 speed). My current diet has me hitting 1400 calories, 170g of protein, 55g carb, and 55g fat. Does this look okay?

    In MFP, goal weight setting doesn't affect calorie goal. The workout settings don't affect calorie goal either.

    (Don't believe me? Change them and see. Goal weight and workouts in your profile are just used for some progress messaging along the way. They don't affect the calorie estimation.)

    How MFP is designed to work: Set your activity level in MFP based on your life before intentional exercise. Log exercise when you do some, and eat those calories too. (If you're worried that the exercise calories are too high, eat 50% or so of them.) Or sync a fitness tracker, with negative adjustments enabled, and eat back the adjusted calories.

    If you don't want to handle exercise calories that way, use an outside TDEE calculator** to get an estimate and average in your exercise plans and set your MFP goal manually. (If you do that, be sure to actually do the exercise.)

    Then, either way, stick with that routine, logging everything (including cheat days) for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles for people who have those). Once you have that personal data, use that as a basis to adjust your goal. That'll work fine. It's like a fun, productive science fair experiment for grown-ups.

    ** This is a better than average one - better descriptions, lets you compare multiple research-based estimating formulas:

    https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

    tomcustombuilder wrote: »
    heyitzzsam wrote: »
    I started at 230lbs and I'm currently around 195 - 199. My calories intake was roughly between 1300-1600 with a goal 180g of protein for the weekdays and one cheat day on the weekend. My goal at the time was to hit 180lbs and I've been stuck at the 190's for the past month. I just got premium for mfp, so I'm hoping it can help me finally hit my ideal weight of 170 lbs. MFP has my base goal of calories for 1950 which doesn't seem correct. I set it to goal weight of 170, lose 2 lbs per week, workout 5 days a week with cardio included (some days high incline if my foot doesn't hurt and other days will just be regular walking on 3 speed). My current diet has me hitting 1400 calories, 170g of protein, 55g carb, and 55g fat. Does this look okay?
    Calories are too low and carbs too low. Bump those both up a bit. Set your calories at 10 calories per pound that you want to end up weighing so that would be 1,700 or about 12,000 per week and do whatever works for you as far as adding or not adding exercise calorie back in.

    Over the years this had been what I've found to be the best equation.

    The implication of that formula is that any person who wants to weigh X pounds should eat X times 10 calories, whether the person is bricklayer's apprentice who's remodeling their house in their off-hours and triathlon training for fun, or a reference librarian who sits at a desk on a phone all day then goes home to their studio apartment to knit for fun until bedtime.

    FWIW, it also would give me a calorie goal that even at my maintenance weight would have me losing insanely fast, unhealthfully fast, and it would've been even more insanely fast when I was still obese. (When I was obese, I weighed 10-15 pounds less than you do now, it's just that I'm much shorter.)

  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 1,660 Member
    Options
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    heyitzzsam wrote: »
    I started at 230lbs and I'm currently around 195 - 199. My calories intake was roughly between 1300-1600 with a goal 180g of protein for the weekdays and one cheat day on the weekend. My goal at the time was to hit 180lbs and I've been stuck at the 190's for the past month. I just got premium for mfp, so I'm hoping it can help me finally hit my ideal weight of 170 lbs. MFP has my base goal of calories for 1950 which doesn't seem correct. I set it to goal weight of 170, lose 2 lbs per week, workout 5 days a week with cardio included (some days high incline if my foot doesn't hurt and other days will just be regular walking on 3 speed). My current diet has me hitting 1400 calories, 170g of protein, 55g carb, and 55g fat. Does this look okay?

    In MFP, goal weight setting doesn't affect calorie goal. The workout settings don't affect calorie goal either.

    (Don't believe me? Change them and see. Goal weight and workouts in your profile are just used for some progress messaging along the way. They don't affect the calorie estimation.)

    How MFP is designed to work: Set your activity level in MFP based on your life before intentional exercise. Log exercise when you do some, and eat those calories too. (If you're worried that the exercise calories are too high, eat 50% or so of them.) Or sync a fitness tracker, with negative adjustments enabled, and eat back the adjusted calories.

    If you don't want to handle exercise calories that way, use an outside TDEE calculator** to get an estimate and average in your exercise plans and set your MFP goal manually. (If you do that, be sure to actually do the exercise.)

    Then, either way, stick with that routine, logging everything (including cheat days) for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles for people who have those). Once you have that personal data, use that as a basis to adjust your goal. That'll work fine. It's like a fun, productive science fair experiment for grown-ups.

    ** This is a better than average one - better descriptions, lets you compare multiple research-based estimating formulas:

    https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

    tomcustombuilder wrote: »
    heyitzzsam wrote: »
    I started at 230lbs and I'm currently around 195 - 199. My calories intake was roughly between 1300-1600 with a goal 180g of protein for the weekdays and one cheat day on the weekend. My goal at the time was to hit 180lbs and I've been stuck at the 190's for the past month. I just got premium for mfp, so I'm hoping it can help me finally hit my ideal weight of 170 lbs. MFP has my base goal of calories for 1950 which doesn't seem correct. I set it to goal weight of 170, lose 2 lbs per week, workout 5 days a week with cardio included (some days high incline if my foot doesn't hurt and other days will just be regular walking on 3 speed). My current diet has me hitting 1400 calories, 170g of protein, 55g carb, and 55g fat. Does this look okay?
    Calories are too low and carbs too low. Bump those both up a bit. Set your calories at 10 calories per pound that you want to end up weighing so that would be 1,700 or about 12,000 per week and do whatever works for you as far as adding or not adding exercise calorie back in.

    Over the years this had been what I've found to be the best equation.

    The implication of that formula is that any person who wants to weigh X pounds should eat X times 10 calories, whether the person is bricklayer's apprentice who's remodeling their house in their off-hours and triathlon training for fun, or a reference librarian who sits at a desk on a phone all day then goes home to their studio apartment to knit for fun until bedtime.

    FWIW, it also would give me a calorie goal that even at my maintenance weight would have me losing insanely fast, unhealthfully fast, and it would've been even more insanely fast when I was still obese. (When I was obese, I weighed 10-15 pounds less than you do now, it's just that I'm much shorter.)
    there will always be outlier requirements so in that respect there will never be a perfect equation for every person walking the earth. Someone carrying a lot of fat can run a bigger deficit than someone with less fat. The 1-2 lb of loss can easily go out the window when someone is grossly over weight. Someone laying bricks and running marathons generally won’t have a weight problem.

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