I need help with redirection (long post sorry!)

SisepuedeLinda wrote: »

Hello! I’m in a mess of a situation and hoping someone can help me out! My story might be a little long so bear with me F. 5’5. 32. 202. 10k steps a day (3-5k of that comes from work where I stand and walk, pace, lift some heavy things, clean). Weight lifting 3x a week.

I started last June with just counting calories. I ate in a deficit and did some fasting with half of my days attempting to reach 10k steps and lost 45 pounds! However, my bf wanted to join me in October and we started the gym. This is where I fell apart. A few weeks in I was still losing weight. Not as much as before with the walking but I didn’t mind as I found I really enjoy lifting weights! But the more I learned and wanted to perfect my form, learn machines, learning how to eat while lifting… I felt (feel!) very stressed out about it all. I’m not sure if it was the lifting, trying to figure out how much to eat and my activity level for a proper tdee but my weightloss ultimately came to a halt and has been a bumpy ride. I’m not sure if I need to eat at sedentary like others say? Some days I’m ok to eat less other days I feel pretty hungry. I’m waiting my test results for hormone levels because I’ve been in a deficit, eating less and going to the gym yet my weightloss has stagnated for the past 8 months. I’m so confused idk what to even do anymore. I feel like I am obsessed with the whole idea of weightloss because I’m not getting it right! What throws me off the most is how much to eat. Walking and a deficit was a no brainier but adding in lifting just made a mess in my mind. I’ve even eaten little as 1000 calories while still being pretty active and I did lose some pounds but is this the only option I have? So currently, I’m walking 10k a day, I cut my lifting because I thought maybe I was stressing my body too much? So I do 2 lower body days, 1 upper body day (maybe a 2nd with light dumbbells). How much should I be eating to lose weight this kind of activity? At this point I don’t care if it’s a pound a week or a month I just want to see something move on the scale! I know the scale can be bad but the reality is I’m still 70+ pounds overweight with 46% body fat so I want to know why others have lost fat and can see that reflected in the scale but mine doesn’t change, not even measurements! Pictures I can see a slight change but that’s hard to tell as well. I’ve thought about not lifting weights and go back to only walking and a deficit but every time I try to research it it says it’s highly recommended for weight loss. I might have gained some muscle or maybe just got some definition but I don’t want to lose what progress I made either. I’ve also read I should take a break but since I’m so obese i should be ok to keep going. I also have slight insulin issues (slightly high glucose readings but normal a1c and possibly pcos). Please help and thank you so much if you made it this far!

Main Questions I have: how much should I be eating to lose weight? What is my activity level and what should I set it at? Any guesses on why I’m not losing weight but eating less and exercising more? Should I stop weight lifting? Shouldn’t I be seeing fat loss quicker than muscle gain? Should I increase/decrease anything? Would a diet “reset” help at this point and how can I do it? Any other advice/opinions?

The best idea is to start with the calorie MFP gives you if you put honest answers into your MFP profile, and ask for a sensibly moderate weight loss rate. (If you're around 200 pounds, and want to increase strength, a pound a week could be a good target to lose.)

If 10k steps is normal for you, that would be the "active" setting . . . but if you set at active, don't log the walking separately as exercise. Your job's steps alone would be around the border between sedentary and lightly active. You could set there, and add any intentional exercise walks as exercise in MFP. (I recommend getting walking calorie estimates from https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs, with the energy box set to "net".)

Follow that calorie estimate for 4-6 weeks, sticking quite close to calorie goal on average over a few days to a week. You can eat a little more when hungrier, a little less when less hungry, and monitor the calorie average. After a multi-week time at a specific regimen, estimate your average weekly weight change. If you have menstrual cycles, compare your body weight at the same relative point in two or more different cycles to estimate average weekly weight change.

Based on the data you get from that, adjust your calorie intake.

Weight lifting doesn't stop fat loss, if a calorie deficit is present. What it can do is cause extra water retention (for muscle repair), and that can confuse things on the scale.

You should expect to see fat loss faster than muscle gain, if fat is being lost.

Do you add exercise calories and eat those? If so, that's fine . . . but strength training is a thing that can easily be over-estimated in calorie impact, especially if a heart rate monitor is involved in the estimating. I'd suggest using the MFP "strength training" entry in the cardiovascular part of MFP's exercise database to estimate strength training. Strength training is very worthwhile, but it doesn't burn a lot of calories.

In general, from reading the beginning part of your post, I'm concerned that you might be over-reacting to short-term weight changes on the scale, and switching up your routine. During weight loss, the fat loss part plays peek-a-boo on the scale with routine multi-pound fluctuations in water retention and digestive contents on their way to becoming waste. Rely on those multi-week results to guide any changes.

If you haven't read this, do so (especially the article linked in the first post) to understand why I'm saying the above:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

Weight loss is always a bumpy ride, ups and downs on the scale with an overall downward trend long term, and it can be especially bumpy when challenging yourself athletically.

You should not need to eat as low as 1000 calories to see fat loss, in that multi-week average kind of evaluation. You will not see the scale drop every day, maybe not even every week. Some women only see a new low weight once a month, at a particular point in their monthly cycle (though that's not the most common pattern).

I'm your height, 5'5", female, and roughly twice your age (67). I used to be obese, and now I'm at a healthy weight. I'm active athletically. I'm also severely hypothyroid (though properly medicated for that.) I'm not lifting now, but have done so for months at a time while losing/maintaining. That's the basis on which I'm saying the stuff above. Well, that plus reading research, others' posts here, etc.

If you struggle with hunger/cravings generally, especially if it's around workout schedule, experiment with eating timing or nutrition quality or food choice to see if you can improve things. Many people with feel more full eating relatively more of whole foods and less of processed foods, though that's also variable from one person to the next. For sure get adequate protein, if lifting progress is important to you.

Taking a "diet break" at maintenance calories is an option, may be good after a long time at a deficit, but if your weight hasn't changed in 8 months, you're probably not in a deficit overall, no matter what some calculator says. (They spit out statistical estimates, close for most people, but can be far off for a rare few, possibly for non-obvious reasons.)

If you want to learn more about diet breaks and how/why they may work, read this:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

lucytalbot94 wrote: »

I don't have all of the answers, but in my experience, as soon as I start lifting weights I maintain my weight (and sometimes gain it!), this is because my muscles are getting bigger whilst I loose fat and therefore my weight it staying the same, but my fat percentage is dropping. It is so easy to get obsessed with the scales, but put them away from a few weeks and try taking measurements instead. Your body is most probably changing shape due to muscle building, but the scales won't account for this.

Be kind to yourself, Linda, you're doing amazing 🥰

Muscle gain is slow, under the best of circumstances. One to two pounds of muscle mass gain would be a very good result, and that assumes those best circumstances, which include a calorie surplus and relative youth (among many other things). On the flip side, half a pound a week of fat loss would be about the slowest fat loss rate that most people would consider satisfying, and even that would take multiple weeks to show up clearly on the bodyweight scale. The sad but inescapable conclusion is that no realistic rate of muscle mass gain will outpace a moderate or faster fat loss on the scale.

Strength gain and some better muscle definition can appear faster, but those are not the same as muscle mass gain. They come from neuromuscular adaptation (better recruiting and using existing muscle fibers), some "pump" appearance from water retention in the muscles for repair, and possibly loss of some overlying fat layer so that muscles show more. These things can happen quickly, and are worthwhile in themselves.