I’m at a loss on my weight loss
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Hi All, I really appreciate all the help.
I also really appreciate the attention to detail and accuracy. Believe me, I used to be very OC, weighing everything down to the recipe. For example, for home-cooked meals, I used to weigh everything I put in as I prepared the food. That was very accurate. It was also very unsustainable. I stopped using MFP for a long time then.
I realized that I had to strike a balance. If I were to religiously weigh and measure what I eat every meal, I would resort to weighing the prepared meal (someone prepares meals for me), then trying to find the closest meal that already exists in the database. It's already creating a bit of tension in the family dinner table as I have a weighing scale beside my plate and I weigh and log as I eat. But it's the only way I think in my situation I could be consistent.
So I am making some compromises and having to choose between 100% accuracy or very infrequent and inconsistent logging. And I guess I am choosing 80% accurate but consistent.
I guess in this community, most of the people here tend towards perfect accuracy. Anyways, thanks for the help and advice.
I will just assume I am eating more than I am measuring. If I just look at patterns instead of grams and calories to the decimal, I think I am seeing that I am eating way more carbs. So I think my plan will be to cut down on that macro.
You're the one who mentioned tracking 'religiously' in your opening post
I'm not saying this to blame you: you are obviously free to not track as accurately as as you (theoretically) could. But you then need to conclude that you're working with most likely inaccurate data. As you said yourself, you are likely consuming more calories than you think, if your weight is stable at your current intake.
You can then either opt to
- log more accurately for a shorter period, to get a better idea of your actual intake/the margin of error
- log more accurately long-term
- continue logging as you are now, but aim for a lower 'inaccurate' calorie count
- not log calories at all but attempt to lose weight via another strategy: intermittent fasting, low carb, using smaller dinner plates etc.4 -
Do you really sit at the family dinner table with your scale? Do you think that is appropriate behavior? Can't you fix your plate at the counter and then sit down and enjoy a dinner with your family? Can you offer to cook for the family once or twice a week where you can use a recipe you want, while treating the family by taking some of the work away from the primary cook?
If I took the time and energy to prepare a meal from scratch only to have a guest (or family member) pick it apart and weigh at the table it would happen once and only once. Sorry, but that is rude behavior.2 -
Do you really sit at the family dinner table with your scale? Do you think that is appropriate behavior? Can't you fix your plate at the counter and then sit down and enjoy a dinner with your family? Can you offer to cook for the family once or twice a week where you can use a recipe you want, while treating the family by taking some of the work away from the primary cook?
If I took the time and energy to prepare a meal from scratch only to have a guest (or family member) pick it apart and weigh at the table it would happen once and only once. Sorry, but that is rude behavior.
I really don't see how that's rude. I always weigh at the table at home. Weighing is just a part of serving myself dinner. Pots and pans at the table means scale at the table. And that's regardless of who cooks, my BF or me.2 -
Do you really sit at the family dinner table with your scale? Do you think that is appropriate behavior? Can't you fix your plate at the counter and then sit down and enjoy a dinner with your family? Can you offer to cook for the family once or twice a week where you can use a recipe you want, while treating the family by taking some of the work away from the primary cook?
If I took the time and energy to prepare a meal from scratch only to have a guest (or family member) pick it apart and weigh at the table it would happen once and only once. Sorry, but that is rude behavior.
Did I miss something? I didn't see that anywhere?
ETA: ooohhh, I see it now. Got it. You have a point.0 -
Do you really sit at the family dinner table with your scale? Do you think that is appropriate behavior? Can't you fix your plate at the counter and then sit down and enjoy a dinner with your family? Can you offer to cook for the family once or twice a week where you can use a recipe you want, while treating the family by taking some of the work away from the primary cook?
If I took the time and energy to prepare a meal from scratch only to have a guest (or family member) pick it apart and weigh at the table it would happen once and only once. Sorry, but that is rude behavior.
I really don't see how that's rude. I always weigh at the table at home. Weighing is just a part of serving myself dinner. Pots and pans at the table means scale at the table. And that's regardless of who cooks, my BF or me.
Yeah, TBH, it really wouldn't bother me if someone did that. But people can be touchy I guess.1 -
Just me, I have pots and pans either on the counter or stove, not at the table. I got the feeling that the family was sitting at the table for dinner. I'm too old school I guess.3
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Just me, I have pots and pans either on the counter or stove, not at the table. I got the feeling that the family was sitting at the table for dinner. I'm too old school I guess.
Not sure if it's old school versus 'new school', more cultural I think? I've always had family dinner with my parents at the dinner table, with pots and pans on the table. It's that way for most families I know.
But that's going off-topic a bit much I guess!1 -
Hi All, I really appreciate all the help.
I also really appreciate the attention to detail and accuracy. Believe me, I used to be very OC, weighing everything down to the recipe. For example, for home-cooked meals, I used to weigh everything I put in as I prepared the food. That was very accurate. It was also very unsustainable. I stopped using MFP for a long time then.
I realized that I had to strike a balance. If I were to religiously weigh and measure what I eat every meal, I would resort to weighing the prepared meal (someone prepares meals for me), then trying to find the closest meal that already exists in the database. It's already creating a bit of tension in the family dinner table as I have a weighing scale beside my plate and I weigh and log as I eat. But it's the only way I think in my situation I could be consistent.
So I am making some compromises and having to choose between 100% accuracy or very infrequent and inconsistent logging. And I guess I am choosing 80% accurate but consistent.
I guess in this community, most of the people here tend towards perfect accuracy. Anyways, thanks for the help and advice.
Maybe to some extent. I weigh things myself because it's simpler for me as well as more accurate. (I do all the cooking, and know a bunch of time-saving scale tricks.) But I don't insist that everyone must weigh food, let alone do that forever. People do succeed without weighing . . . even without calorie counting at all.
Here's the thing, though: When someone posts that they're not losing weight as expected, getting more accurate with logging - including weighing food - would be what I'd recommend. On some threads, I've even said "do it for a couple of weeks to figure out what's going on, not necessarily forever". It's generally the right diagnostic process to figure out what's really happening.
I (and some other folks in long term maintenance) have been here a long time. We see "not losing as expected" posts very frequently. Not always, but very often, if the person is willing to tighten up accuracy, they find that they're undercounting calorie intake. Research studies have also suggested that undercounting is a very common thing. In that context, doesn't it make sense that we recommend "weigh your food" in these cases?
If you re-read your first post on this thread, pretending you're someone who doesn't know what you meant, it sounds like you're tracking very meticulously. In your current posts, it becomes clear that it's unworkable for you to be super meticulous in the way some of us think of it. That's a perfectly reasonable thing, in your case . . . but we didn't know about it at first.
Yes, in your case, where you're not the cook, and you've found that you can fall into obsessive behavior, some other strategy is likely a better idea.I will just assume I am eating more than I am measuring. If I just look at patterns instead of grams and calories to the decimal, I think I am seeing that I am eating way more carbs. So I think my plan will be to cut down on that macro.
Given your circumstances that you've now filled us in on, that makes good sense as a plan going forward: Changing your routine patterns to eat somewhat fewer calories.
Carbs are one possible place to cut - and you know what you're eating better than I do - but I'd observe that fats are more calorie dense, plus a little sneaky, so they're very easy to overeat.
By "sneaky", I mean that especially when we're not the one cooking, we don't always know how much of things like butter, cooking oil, oil in dressings, inclusion of condiments like mayo, etc., may be used. They're not very visible in finished dishes, but those things can add shockingly many calories to a food. It's also the case that some common foods people often call "carbs" - cookies, many chocolates, cakes, etc. - get more of their calories from fats rather than carbs.
I'm not saying fat is evil. It's an essential nutrient! But it's calorie dense, and like I said, sneaky.
It sounds like you have a tack to take at this point. I hope it'll bring you success!1 -
Do you really sit at the family dinner table with your scale? Do you think that is appropriate behavior? Can't you fix your plate at the counter and then sit down and enjoy a dinner with your family? Can you offer to cook for the family once or twice a week where you can use a recipe you want, while treating the family by taking some of the work away from the primary cook?
If I took the time and energy to prepare a meal from scratch only to have a guest (or family member) pick it apart and weigh at the table it would happen once and only once. Sorry, but that is rude behavior.
I really don't see how that's rude. I always weigh at the table at home. Weighing is just a part of serving myself dinner. Pots and pans at the table means scale at the table. And that's regardless of who cooks, my BF or me.
This. I'm betting OP knows his family culture better than we do. If I had a family member striving to lose weight by calorie counting, I'd be fine with a scale at the table for routine family meals. Being cool with that seems like supportive familial behavior. I want to help my family/friends achieve their goals . . . especially when it's something this easy!
Pressuring the calorie counting family member not to do it would seem rude to me. But people and families differ, so if it's offensive in one's family, that's a factor.0 -
But the OP has already stated that having the scale at the table is causing tension with the family, hence my response that for the OP, having created tension is perhaps rude. I can see that for some families it would be met with an eye roll that this is just a current phase to be ignored.1
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Just me, I have pots and pans either on the counter or stove, not at the table. I got the feeling that the family was sitting at the table for dinner. I'm too old school I guess.
Not sure if it's old school versus 'new school', more cultural I think? I've always had family dinner with my parents at the dinner table, with pots and pans on the table. It's that way for most families I know.
But that's going off-topic a bit much I guess!
Yeah, we do buffet style instead of serving dishes. Just leave the food on the stove/counter, everyone gets a plate. My family wouldn't care if I sat down and started weighing stuff, I guess it depends on the family.
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Hi OP.
Generally aside from illness, there seem to me to be 3 main reasons for not losing: miscalculating your intake, plateauing, or gaining muscle (which is heavier than fat).
Looks like you're working on your calculations.
Plateaus can last a few weeks or even months for some people. Sometimes it helps to shake it up a bit with like a brief fast, or loosening up a couple days then tightening back up a little stricter for a while.
Consider your workouts as well because if you're gaining muscle faster than you're losing, that can make it seem like you're not making progress when you are. Keeping measurements can help with figuring that out a little better than the scale.0 -
Hi OP.
Generally aside from illness, there seem to me to be 3 main reasons for not losing: miscalculating your intake, plateauing, or gaining muscle (which is heavier than fat).
(snip)
Consider your workouts as well because if you're gaining muscle faster than you're losing, that can make it seem like you're not making progress when you are. Keeping measurements can help with figuring that out a little better than the scale.
Muscle mass gain is slow. A very good rate of muscle mass gain under ideal circumstances would be 1-2 pounds of new muscle mass gained per month, so half a pound a week at the high end. "Ideal circumstances" includes a calorie surplus, i.e., weight gain, not a calorie deficit. That doesn't mean no one can gain mass in a deficit, but it does suggest that the gain rate would be substantially slower than half a pound a week.
On the flip side, half a pound of fat loss per week would be about the slowest rate most people might consider satisfying, and a rate that slow could potentially take several weeks to show clearly in scale weight, amongst normal daily multi-pound fluctuations of water weight and digestive waste in transit.
The sad but nearly inescapable conclusion is that no realistic rate of muscle mass gain will outpace any satisfying rate of fat loss. Muscle gain will rarely be the explanation behind a scale stall.
Sometimes people believe otherwise because strength gain can be quite fast at first. That initial strength improvement comes from better recruiting and utilizing existing muscle fibers ("neuromuscular adaptation", NMA). Until that source of adaptation is getting mostly tapped out, the body has little impetus to add new muscle fibers.
On top of that, one may see improved muscle definition before mass gain, from some combination of water retention in the muscles for repair (a sort of "pump"), and loss of a small overlying subcutaneous fat layer that's hidden the muscles previously.
I can't tell you how much I wish muscle mass gain were easier and quicker. Sadly, it's not.0 -
What you're doing isn't working.. so change it up. Try new things.. like how long are you on that treadmill? How about go faster, so increase the speed or add ten minutes. Do that and keep your calories the same..but change what you're eating. Are you eating healthy lean foods.. or simply counting caloires and still eating processed foods and fast food? Are you drinking a lot of water. Drink water.. increase that.
Do two simple things.. go faster and longer on the treadmill..and drink more water.. and take a good look at what you're eating. tweak it..1 -
The ultimate result is your weight measured over weeks of time. I wouldn't worry as much about the preciseness of your measurements in your case, due to the external factors, and the understanding that it makes you want to give up.
I'd keep doing what you're doing but just add an additional "handicap" like in golf. Set your goal calories at 200 or 300 less than you have now, every day, and then see how that affects your weight over weeks of time.0 -
You're the one who mentioned tracking 'religiously' in your opening post
When I said religiously I meant encoding every meal.I'm not saying this to blame you: you are obviously free to not track as accurately as as you (theoretically) could. But you then need to conclude that you're working with most likely inaccurate data.
I do not prepare my food. I have my househelp do that
You see I had these choices:
1. not weigh and not log at all
2. weigh the food then use MFP to enter the food name. I could just use unverified or verified.
3. weigh every ingredient, enter the exact recipe.
So I chose #2 because I thought it struck the right balance between zero accuracy but zero effort and maximum accuracy but maximum effort.
I guess my mistake was to put so much trust in the "verified" foods. But isn't choosing #2 with verified foods much better than #2 but with unverified foods?
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Sorry, but that is rude behavior.
I understand why you could say this since you don't know the context. My family is quite supportive. But it takes a lot of time to weigh my food and log it in. So that's what I was referring to as tension.
Why not do it in the kitchen? I don't cook my food. Someone prepares it and serves it.
I could ask that person to weigh every ingredient and log it in but I didn't feel right because she's already spending so much time in food preparation.
Bottom line I guess is more accuracy equals more effort. I thought weighing the food and identifying the food thru MFP would be a good middle ground but I guess it's not.
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positivelysimful wrote: »or gaining muscle (which is heavier than fat)...
Consider your workouts as well because if you're gaining muscle faster than you're losing, that can make it seem like you're not making progress when you are.
I wish I was gaining muscle. I'm not exercising. but soon will be.
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Thanks all0
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Sorry, but that is rude behavior.
I understand why you could say this since you don't know the context. My family is quite supportive. But it takes a lot of time to weigh my food and log it in. So that's what I was referring to as tension.
Why not do it in the kitchen? I don't cook my food. Someone prepares it and serves it.
I could ask that person to weigh every ingredient and log it in but I didn't feel right because she's already spending so much time in food preparation.
Bottom line I guess is more accuracy equals more effort. I thought weighing the food and identifying the food thru MFP would be a good middle ground but I guess it's not.
Well, if it doesn't work, then just continue the same way of logging and eat less-of-the-same-food.
It's still about lowering intake in whatever way that would work for you.
If you can't log accurately (and, yeah, the "verified" items are not necessarily good ) then find another way.
There's always a way. It usually means eating less than I want. I don't like that either.
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