Struggle to lose weight

You're taking in a lot more than 1,200 a day when figuring weekly calorie averages.

@vtvibes666, as you clearly understand, an accurate 1200 calories should be producing weight loss for you, if you've been consistently averaging close to that daily amount over 3 months with no breaks, cheat days, or other forms of interruption or over-goal eating. We'd expect you to lose nearly a kilo per week at that level, more or less . . . which is probably faster than it would be ideal to lose at your current weight, honestly.

This next isn't any kind of diss: Food logging can be a surprisingly subtle thing. Most of us who've been doing it for a while have had various face-palm moments when we realized we were logging something less than ideally, maybe in important ways. If you would like to make your food diary here MFP-public, and say so on this thread, some of the MFP old hands could take a look to see whether you've unintentionally, unknowingly stumbled into some pothole that we ourselves fell into earlier in the process. Please understand, this is an offer, not a demand!

Beyond that suggestion, given that long a time period, there are really only 2 things I could suggest:

1. Have you asked your doctor for blood tests or the like to assess why you're not losing on such low calories? There are medical conditions than can result in lower than average calorie needs, such as hypothyroidism. There are also effective medical treatments. (I'm severely hypothyroid myself, properly medicated, lost weight fine.)
2. Barring that sort of thing - and I'm sorry to say this - it would probably be time to reduce calories further. I suspect the problem is more about logging or consistency, but even if I person is off on the counts, a 3-month time at stable weight will adjust (to some extent) for logging slips as well as unusual personal calorie needs.

There's a small chance that you have some stress-related water retention from an extreme effort in this case, which could distort scale results, but that most likely would've resolved at least somewhat, some way, over a consistent-behavior period of a full 3 months.

I'd love to see you succeed, and I'd love to help you if I can. I was around your weight to start (but shorter, at 165cm), and reaching a healthy weight was a huge quality of life improvement for me. I want that for everyone, which of course means that I want that for YOU.

Best wishes!

KatieFour wrote: »

So a couple of thoughts, id actually do a calorie calculator like this one https://badassbabesquad.ca/calorie-calculator/ (great account to follow on insta from a gal that actually lost 100+ lbs) I’d make sure youre getting enough protein, i shoot for 120 grams a day, if you could get in an extra 15-20 grams of protein and eat more like 1400 to 1500 calories it might be better for your weight loss. I also made the mistake early on of not actually counting some things that mattered like condiments or like a tablespoon of oil can be an extra 120 calories and could tip you in the wrong direction. Additionally I weigh myself everyday and take the average weight over the course of a week to tell me where im at. Tamper your expectations, its a marathon not a sprint, you should expect 1 lb of weight loss per week if and only if you eat in a calorie deficit, dont use calories burned to offset calories eaten keep it consistent day to day.

That's good advice about condiments, dressings, cooking oils, etc. (We had one person here who lost weight successfully who said it was eye opening to find she'd been eating many hundreds to a thousand calories daily from things like mayonnaise, salad dressing, oil for frying, and other condiment type things!)

Also good advice about weight averaging (or use a weight-trending app, since there are some good free ones), and the importance of protein. I agree with you that an accurate 1200 would likely be too aggressively low for OP, and that any calorie intake for weight loss should include adequate protein (ideally plus other good nutrition!).

To the bolded, though:

It's fine to use exercise/activity calories to increase calories eaten, as long as a person has set their base calorie goal to include only their activity excluding exercise. I ate every delicious, carefully-estimated exercise calorie all through weight loss and for over 8 years of maintaining a healthy weight since then, and it's worked fine.

It's essential to understand the concepts behind one's calorie counting method: It's fine to eat a fixed amount daily (but that ideally should also average in exercise calories, which is exactly what the calculator you linked does). It's fine to eat more on exercise days and less on non-exercise days, as long as the non-exercise day calories reflect calorie needs before considering exercise.

There are some good calorie estimators that don't require giving the site an email address to get results (so that they can spam us with sales messages, probably ). Though not the only one around, this is the one I like, because it has more activity levels with better descriptions, and lets a person compare multiple research-based estimating methods:

https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

Any calculator or fitness tracker estimate needs to be treated as a starting point. The best plan IMO is to follow the starting recommendation closely for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles if applicable), then adjust calorie goal based on average weekly results. We can use the assumption that 500 calories daily is about a pound a week (or 1100 calories daily is about a kilogram a week), and arithmetic for partial pounds/kilos.

Why test then adjust? Not everyone is statistically average in calorie needs. It's rare to be far off, but it can happen. (My good brand/model fitness tracker, one that is close for others, is off by 25-30% for me. So is MFP's estimate. I lost weight predictably once I dialed in a personalized estimate with the method above.