I was super positive and now defeated one month in - need some encouragement

Under-eating can lower your metabolism a bit (slower hair and nail growth, less movement/fidgeting,...) but not to the point of gaining fat instead of losing fat.
The more likely culprits here is water retention.
Water retention from stress (by the way: under-eating=stress!), hormones, increased exercise, salt, air travel...

One very important thing to know is that fat loss is evaluated over a longer period of time, because it can easily be masked by short term water weight fluctuations and fluctuations in food waste in your digestive tract.
Weight loss is not linear, it's a constant up and down roller-coaster, with more downs than ups overall

Patience is a virtue!

magil_lil_nancy wrote: »

@cmriverside So when my app adds a bunch more calories to my goal for the day after I exercise, that's actually the amount I should be trying to hit? That probably seems like a stupid question to the fitness buffs on here, but like I said, I'm completely new to this whole thing. I really want this so I want to do everything as right as possible. I just assumed that not eating over the initial calorie goal even after work out calories were added was the way you lost weight (I'm feeling more dumb as I type this out now haha).

Yes, that is how this site is set up. Read that link "How does myfitnesspal calculate...." that I linked above.

Your calorie Goal set by myfitnesspal includes a deficit equal to the weight loss rate you chose. BUT it does not account for purposeful exercise. Exercise must be added separately. Read that link, and the explanations in it.

You wouldn't put two gallons of gas in your car to drive 600 miles, right? Two gallons is fine for puttering up to the school...

Do you have menstrual cycles? Many women gain water weight at ovulation as well as premenstrually, and have a subsequent loss afterwards. Because of this, compare yourself to the same point in your cycle as last month, rather than last week.

Use a weight trending app such as Happy Scale (iphone) or Libra (Android) and focus on the trend, not the individual weigh-ins.

As you will see from reading the numerous threads on the subject, MFP intends you to eat back your exercise calories. Since the numbers can be inflated (especially if taken from machines at the gym) many eat only a portion of those calories, half or 3/4. Try that for a month or 6 weeks and see if your rate of loss is as expected. If you are losing faster than intended, then eat more. If losing more slowly, then eat less. Determining exercise calories burned is an approximation and some of us burn more and some burn less than the average. It is a good idea to eat back at least some of the calories burned so you have energy for your workouts and to prevent excessive hunger that leads to binging.

Losing weight isn't linear...the human body is comprised of anywhere between 50-60% water and that composition is going to fluctuate all on its on and due to other things you may or may not be doing (changes in diet composition, salt, increase or reduced exercise, etc). You also have variable degrees of human waste in your system at any one time. The human body is a complex biological organism, not a machine.

magil_lil_nancy wrote: »

Ok based on the values I input when I signed up, my initial calorie intake is 1804 calories. I usually burn about 330 calories in my hour long treadmill "hike". I synced my Samsung Health tracker to my fitnesspal app, so it logs the workout and daily steps and adjusts those calories afterwards. Right now, my only workout is power walking (4 mph) for an hour on my treadmill. Works up a sweat for sure, but I understand if some say this isn't enough. I probably need to do more. This, according to the fitnesspal app, was giving me around 350 calories extra when I was doing 45 mins on the treadmill and now it's giving me an extra 500 or so calories at an hour on the treadmill.

I also hadn't thought of my menstrual cycle affecting this as well (duh!). That makes sense.

I've read some about what diets are best to lose weight and it seemed to me that high protein was efficient. Is this correct or should I be doing something different?

Sorry for so many questions, everyone, but I truly appreciate all the feedback and kind words!

When you sync a tracker, what that sync is trying to do is reconcile the amount MFP thinks you'd burn (based on your demographics and activity level setting) with the amount that the tracker estimates you burn, but keep your calorie deficit the same so you get the weight loss rate you asked for in your MFP profile. (It's all statistical estimates, so it can vary somewhat in reality.)

Therefore, if you wear your device all day, and get a 500 calorie adjustment, that can be some combination of exercise calories and daily life movement (that may in itself be more than MFP's estimates, even before exercise).

It's potentially a little bit hard to explain a specific case, because each tracker gives different info on the tracker side. Sometimes the tracker displays exercise calories as gross calories (includes the calories you'd burn in that time period even if not exercising). The adjustment, if it works properly for your tracker, will net that out so it's regular life calories are not double counted.

On a quick re-read, I didn't see where you told us your current weight, and that matters for estimating something like treadmill walking (because you're moving your body through space). Just for comparison purpose, for me at 130 pounds (in maintenance), a relatively conservative net calorie estimate for walking for an hour at 4mph would be 141 calories. (Comes from https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs with the "energy" box set to "net".)

To the thing I bolded: Please don't feel that way. Exercise is for health, primarily (and for fun, too, in my world). It's completely optional for weight loss, mostly just lets us eat some more calories while getting the same loss rate, which is a nice thing. (I'd always encourage exercise, and it sounds like you're doing great!)

For fitness progress, what we want is just a manageable challenge to current capabilities. As we get fitter, we can tweak something to keep just that bit of challenge going (could be more duration, frequency; faster pace or higher intensity; different exercise type). The challenge drives fitness progress.

For weight loss, over-exercising (too much for current fitness level) can actually be counter-productive. The exercise should leave us energized for the rest of our day (after maybe a few minutes of "whew" right after the workout). If we're exhausted instead, that can bleed calorie burn out of the rest of our day (because we rest more, move less), effectively cancelling out some of the exercise calories.

As far as high protein, yes, generally that's good. That doesn't necessarily mean "eat the maximum amount of protein you can", because other nutrition is important, too, right? We need some fats. Like protein, they're an "essential nutrient" in the sense that our bodies can't manufacture some of their subcomponents out of any other nutrient, so we need to eat some. Some people also find that they need a certain level of carb intake to have their best energy level (though some others find carbs to be appetite-increasing, so carb level can be flexible). Finding the best balance is individual.

Protein does require slightly higher calories to be metabolized (higher thermic effect of food or TEF), but that's not really a reason to over-emphasize protein at the expense of well-rounded nutrition.

There's an evidence based protein "calculator", and its explanatory guide with research links, here:

https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

Note that the guide says that someone who's substantially overweight can use something more like goal weight as an input, rather than current weight.

Best wishes!

magil_lil_nancy wrote: »

THANK YOU EVERYONE!! Gosh, I'm glad I came to this forum because you've definitely all helped me and taught me new things already.

For reference since someone asked, I am currently at 168 lbs. I've mostly kept a pretty positive attitude about the food I eat now as being a good change in my diet rather than a diet in itself. I've done well with finding a lot of healthy meals that actually taste really good, and I've even noticed on my cheat day that when I eat something not so healthy (say a corn dog at our local festival recently), it's clear I've been on this healthy journey long enough already that my body isn't very fond of those foods anymore. I'd say that's a good thing!

On another positive note, I have noticed a significant change in my energy level. I no longer get winded and I feel so much better when I get off the treadmill. Sweaty to say the least, but energized and feeling really good mentally about myself. I can honestly say, regardless of what the scale says, I am on my way to the best shape of my life and am treating my body the way I always should've been.

My doctor recently started doing annual diabetes/cholesterol/etc bloodwork since I'm nearing 40 yrs old. Last year this time, my cholesterol was slightly high, so I'm curious to see if my recent work has helped that at all.

I truly appreciate how kind you've all been and how eager you've been to answering my amateur questions. Happy to be a part of this community and I'm not giving up! If anything, yesterday's deflated feelings only make me more determined to see different and better results. Now I understand what it means when they say that exercise releases endorphins. I feel better about myself than I ever have in the past and motivated. Love to you all!

@magil_lil_nancy, it sincerely makes me very happy (even as a total stranger) to read a post like this one!

I found the Community here a huge help when I was losing weight (and since, in maintenance), too.

Best wishes for continuing excellent progress!