Macro issues?

Ang_syl
Ang_syl Posts: 7 Member
edited January 18 in Health and Weight Loss
After being in a LONG stalemate in terms of weight loss, (I’ve lost 20lbs so far with 10-15lbs more to go) I began tracking macros especially knowing I wasn’t getting enough protein. I’m 33 (almost 34) woman, 5 feet two inches tall, and currently 151lbs. I have my current macros at (1500 calories) 150g of protein, 50g of fat and 113g of carbs. I’m hitting them 6 days a week and will have a “cheat” meal on Sundays. I don’t drink anything anything but water. If anything, I’ll maybe have a couple of alcoholic drinks a month. I’ve been doing this for just over a month and have noticed basically no difference. In terms of weight, no change and I don’t look/feel any different body comp wise. Should I adjust this? If so, to what? I’m new to macros and I am measuring everything to make sure I’m being exact. This last 10-15lbs feels impossible and nothing seems to be helping. I’ve heard great things about macros and wondering if I’m just doing the wrong ratios or something.

Answers

  • Fitforevermore
    Fitforevermore Posts: 399 Member
    edited January 18
    Play with the calories, I'm 5ft7 and I can eat 1500 max a day to lose weight, and I exercise and walk quite a lot.

    Sorry I'm not very helpful on macros, I just try to get to 100g protein a day for muscle maintaining and satiation
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    It's not necessary to be exact on macros. Pretty close on average over a few days - that should be fine.

    And that's for health, energy level, body composition (fat vs. muscle) and that sort of thing. The direct determinant of fat loss is calories,. Sub-ideal nutrition can have an indirect effect through fatigue (i.e., move less) or appetite (i.e., eat more). The direct mechanism for fat gain/loss is still the calorie level.

    Water weight weirdness can mask fat loss for a surprisingly long time sometimes, especially if the fat loss rate is slow. Consequently, many here (me included) would say that it takes at least 4-6 weeks (maybe more) with no loss to make it probable that there's a true plateau. For sure, a person who has menstrual periods would want to go for at least one full cycle to compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles.

    Generally, though, if you were losing weight at a good rate then loss stopped suddenly (with zero change in calorie intake, exercise, or daily life activity), some kind of water retention effect is likely in play. On the other hand, if you'd been losing weight, and loss gradually slowed to a stop over a period of multiple weeks, it's more likely that you've found your maintenance calorie level. If the latter, then reducing intake or adding activity would be necessary.

    Trying to make a change in loss rate by playing with macros is unlikely to pay off. While macro levels can have some indirect effects, it tends to be fairly minor magnitude. If weight loss (fat loss) has actually slowed to a stop, a calorie adjustment would be needed.
  • Ang_syl
    Ang_syl Posts: 7 Member
    @AnnPT77 i had changed my calories from 1200/day to 1500 in august after no progress for about two months. I lost 5-7lb more after increasing them and have been at a stalemate for about two months now (maybe more). I’m worried going down isn’t even enough for me? Every app or calculator I do says I’d actually need closer to 1600-1700 which seems like a lot.

    In terms of water retention, I’m drinking 3-4, 40oz water bottles a day. Maybe I need more ?
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,788 Member
    Ang_syl wrote: »
    @AnnPT77 i had changed my calories from 1200/day to 1500 in august after no progress for about two months. I lost 5-7lb more after increasing them and have been at a stalemate for about two months now (maybe more). I’m worried going down isn’t even enough for me? Every app or calculator I do says I’d actually need closer to 1600-1700 which seems like a lot.

    In terms of water retention, I’m drinking 3-4, 40oz water bottles a day. Maybe I need more ?

    3-4 40 oz bottles! I admire you.... I would think that's more than enough.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,986 Member
    You don't provide any information about yourself, thus it's difficult to say how many calories you need to neither gain nor lose. Thus it's just guessing for us. One important thing to note though is that MFP doesn't use a TDEE calorulator to estimate your calories but NEAT. Pretty much every calculator out there wants to know how much you exercise. MFP doesn. Here you don't and hence get less calories to play with, provided you log your exercises and eat those exercise calories back. On average this would then come down to about the same calorie amount. MFP asks you how active you are, but this has nothing to do with exercise but with everyday activity like caring for kids, working, cleaning, those kind of things.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,458 Member
    The last ten pounds are hard. They just are.

    It took me nine months to lose that last 15 pounds, and that was with making 20 out of 21 meals a week at home, using a digital food scale, exercising five days a week and being like a hawk with my nutrition.

    Stay the course, keep logging, keep tweaking. Trust yourself.

    For the record I think 150g of protein is overkill unless you're actively lifting weights and trying to build muscle. I would struggle with that amount even at 2000 calories but if you like it and it doesn't cause health issues, good for you.

    I'm 140ish pounds, 5'7 (or 5'8", depending) and I shoot for 90-120g protein and 2000 calories (maintaining current weight.) Lots of whole fruit and vegetables, legumes, nuts, dairy. For me it seems to be more about getting good, well-rounded nutrition.
  • jjjsroach
    jjjsroach Posts: 34 Member
    Just a suggestion....Take your calories down to 1200 per day for 2 weeks and see what happens. If you really want to break this, also reduce the carbs to 20g per day and increase protein and fat to make up the difference. This should break your stall. After that, you can decide what you want to do.
  • JeremyM777
    JeremyM777 Posts: 23 Member
    Depending on how long you have been dieting you could be on a plateau due to diet fatigue. I would also look at what you are doing outside of macro tracking specifically resistance training. Your macros look good especially to maintain or build muscle but if you aren't strength training your macros won't help. If you have a workout program I would be happy to take a look at it and help you make some adjustments if needed. Feel free to message me, there are too many variables that could be affecting your results without knowing more information.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    Ang_syl wrote: »
    @AnnPT77 i had changed my calories from 1200/day to 1500 in august after no progress for about two months. I lost 5-7lb more after increasing them and have been at a stalemate for about two months now (maybe more). I’m worried going down isn’t even enough for me? Every app or calculator I do says I’d actually need closer to 1600-1700 which seems like a lot.

    In terms of water retention, I’m drinking 3-4, 40oz water bottles a day. Maybe I need more ?

    My advice would be not to try to game water retention. Shifts in water retention are part of how a healthy body stays healthy, and it knows what it's doing. (Obviously, if someone has extreme fluid retention, extreme puffiness/swelling, that's a "see the doctor" thing. I'm talking about the multi-pound day to day water fluctuations that make a healthy person's scale weight roller coaster up and down a few pounds.)

    Wait it out. The ups will drop, the lows will rise. Look at your average weight over a week of consistent AM weigh-ins (AM, after bathroom, before eating/drinking, same state of (un-) dress every time).

    Or put the daily weights into a free weight trending app. There's Libra for Android, Happy Scale for iOS, Trendweight with a free Fitbit account (don't need a device), Weightgrapher on the web, others.

    Either way, weekly average or weight trending app, what matters is the trend over many weeks.

    If a person's key goal is fat loss - which I'm betting it is for most of us here to manage our weight - the water fluctuations are a thing to understand and accept, not fight. It's not fat. Why worry about it? This thread may help (especially the article linked in the first post):

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

    As long as I'm pasting links, here's one that may give you some background (including some of the research) about diet breaks and refeeds:

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

    Back to the water issue: If you consume enough fluids - not just water, but all liquids including those in foods like fruit or soup - your urine should be pale yellow. If you get more than you need of certain B vitamins, it may be bright fluorescent yellow (not harmful). But it shouldn't be dark or brown-ish. If it is, drink more. Otherwise, don't chug water unless it helps you manage appetite. Even then, it's possible to drink toooooo much. (Some other colors can happen with unusual diets or medications, but most people don't ever see them.)

    Best wishes!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    JeremyM777 wrote: »
    Depending on how long you have been dieting you could be on a plateau due to diet fatigue. I would also look at what you are doing outside of macro tracking specifically resistance training. Your macros look good especially to maintain or build muscle but if you aren't strength training your macros won't help. If you have a workout program I would be happy to take a look at it and help you make some adjustments if needed. Feel free to message me, there are too many variables that could be affecting your results without knowing more information.

    OP, if you want advice, I'd encourage you to post details here. That way, you can consider advice from a diversity of viewpoints, and there are various people who have relevant expertise or credentials, in addition to the many here who have hard-won experience.

    I'm sure the poster I'm quoting wouldn't do this and truly wants to help, but the "message me for more help" approach has unfortunately been misused here by "coaches" who are really selling something, often a multi-level marketing supplement. They've tainted the situation for decent people who prefer not to share their expertise in public, but I hope PP won't be reticent in that way. We have a few experienced trainers here who are incredibly helpful, and when they post in the open in the forums they really build a reputation that helps them in the long run, as well as helping more people who read their knowledgeable advice.
    jjjsroach wrote: »
    Just a suggestion....Take your calories down to 1200 per day for 2 weeks and see what happens. If you really want to break this, also reduce the carbs to 20g per day and increase protein and fat to make up the difference. This should break your stall. After that, you can decide what you want to do.

    Dropping carbs into the cellar will drop a bunch of water weight for most people, which is satisfying. But if they don't want to stay at a low carb level, that water is going to come back.

    Don't get me wrong, I know low carb and keto are the perfect approach for some people, and I'm not dissing them across the board. But if someone truly is experiencing water retention (and thinking it's about fat retention), a short low carb break also has the potential to muddy the waters. If OP wants to do it, see what happens, I'd fully support her . . . but I think it's important to be clear that any initial big weight shift would still be a water weight effect.

    Interestingly, IIRC the diet breaks thread I linked above (IIRC) goes into why a carb refeed (i.e., more carbs) can also have the potential to trigger a scale drop in certain scenarios, I think because of effects on leptin and cortisol, and potentially because of NEAT increases. If the thread doesn't cover carb refeeds well, there are other sources that do.
  • Ang_syl
    Ang_syl Posts: 7 Member
    yirara wrote: »
    You don't provide any information about yourself, thus it's difficult to say how many calories you need to neither gain nor lose. Thus it's just guessing for us. One important thing to note though is that MFP doesn't use a TDEE calorulator to estimate your calories but NEAT. Pretty much every calculator out there wants to know how much you exercise. MFP doesn. Here you don't and hence get less calories to play with, provided you log your exercises and eat those exercise calories back. On average this would then come down to about the same calorie amount. MFP asks you how active you are, but this has nothing to do with exercise but with everyday activity like caring for kids, working, cleaning, those kind of things.

    I stated my gender, height, current weight and age, I’m not sure what else would be needed! I weight train 4-5 days a week and cardio 3-4 days week if that helps
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,986 Member
    Ang_syl wrote: »
    yirara wrote: »
    You don't provide any information about yourself, thus it's difficult to say how many calories you need to neither gain nor lose. Thus it's just guessing for us. One important thing to note though is that MFP doesn't use a TDEE calorulator to estimate your calories but NEAT. Pretty much every calculator out there wants to know how much you exercise. MFP doesn. Here you don't and hence get less calories to play with, provided you log your exercises and eat those exercise calories back. On average this would then come down to about the same calorie amount. MFP asks you how active you are, but this has nothing to do with exercise but with everyday activity like caring for kids, working, cleaning, those kind of things.

    I stated my gender, height, current weight and age, I’m not sure what else would be needed! I weight train 4-5 days a week and cardio 3-4 days week if that helps

    Sorry, missed that!

Categories