Newbie question

agklare8441
agklare8441 Posts: 2 Member
in Getting Started
Hi all. I’m so glad to be here and have others in the same boat and here to support each other. It’s a hard journey and I for one have been trying to lose weight most of my life.
I seem to be consistently low in calories at the end of the day but am meeting my other macros including protein. I have been sitting at the same weight for over 2 weeks. What should I do? Do I have to force more calories?

Replies

  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,507 Member
    Welcome!

    If you are not losing weight, you are not low on calories. How do you measure your food? If you don't have one yet, invest twenty bucks on a digital food scale. Cups and spoons are notoriously inaccurate.

    Use the database and log your food. Log honestly. Log completely. Just do that for a week or three to see how it feels and maybe you'll already see some patterns to work on when you start to lower your calories.

    Use the guided set-up to get a good starting goal for calories. Continue to log honestly and completely for several more weeks. Check your results. If they are what you expected, your goals are good ones. If not, tweak your goals. As you lose weight, you'll have to also reduce your calories because there will be less of you to fuel.

    Go slow. Don't be too aggressive in your weight loss goal. It can backfire. Take a while and look through the "Most Important Posts" to get some other great ideas. For example:
  • Marcieb21
    Marcieb21 Posts: 127 Member
    I guess it depends on how low your calories are. If you are starving your body then that could cause problems.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,045 Member
    Hello there and welcome.

    We need a lot more information to really help you. Would you mind sharing your current stats, your weightloss goal, how many calories you get and how little/much you eat? For how long have you been doing this?
  • agklare8441
    agklare8441 Posts: 2 Member
    Thanks for your comments. I was getting frustrated. I’m reading all the “must reads” now and they’re helpful. I started at 233 and dropped to 218 quickly and that’s where I got stuck. My calories are supposed to be at 1200 and my protein at 60g. Both were low each day. My kids suggested the same as marcieb21 that I wasn’t eating enough and my metabolism was probably revolting. I now have my protein well above the requirement. I was used to drinking several glasses of wine with dinner each night and when I dropped those the calories were easily slashed. I’m going to try to keep close to the macros and keep the protein up and hope for the best.
    Oh, and I certainly am not “dishonest” about my food logs. I have a kitchen scale and know how to use it. lol
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,507 Member
    I'd encourage you to check out a TDEE calculator like Sailrabbit, especially if you don't want to share your statistics here (height, age).

    How did you determine that your calories should be 1200? A five-foot tall 45-year-old woman who weighs 218 pounds and has a sedentary lifestyle and wants to lose one pound a week should eat over 1400 calories. That same woman would lose a pound a week on 1200 calories if they had a "constricted lifestyle, movement limited to a confined space, almost always sitting or laying." Kind of like bedridden. Play around with the numbers and see if that gives you any insight.

    The myth that your metabolism goes into "starvation mode" and "holds on to calories" is not true. You have to get fuel from somewhere. That's like saying if your car is low on gas it can get better fuel economy to stretch that last gallon.

    The most likely explanation is that something is amiss with your food logging. It might be that you're not using the correct foods from the MFP database. It might be that your measurements are off. It might be that you don't log every single little taste or morsel you eat or drop of liquid with calories you drink.

    Your diary is closed, so we can't look at it to provide any insight on that.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,117 Member
    Marcieb21 wrote: »
    I guess it depends on how low your calories are. If you are starving your body then that could cause problems.

    Yes, but one of the problems is extremely unlikely to be not losing weight, especially for someone who is overweight and has only been in a calorie deficit for two weeks. Not to say there couldn't be other issues coincidentally causing maintenance despite a large calorie deficit, but the calorie deficit itself isn't the cause.

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