TimothyFish Member

I maintain on about 3000 calories per day, but I'm at 205 pounds and I ride a bicycle most days. Given that you are exercising daily, I wouldn't expect 1700 calories to be enough. I would expect 2000 calories to be closer to right, but it could be that your "crazy" days are pushing your average up higher.

Actually, physical exercise is more of a determining factor in staying healthy than what you eat.

That's great if that's what works for you. I don't find that it works long-term for me. I don't give much thought to how miserable I felt when I was overweight anymore. Sure, if I think about it, I can still remember being out of breath climbing stairs. I can remember going to bed with Tums in my mouth because of acid…

"Starvation mode" is kind of a dirty word around here because so many people think it is this magical mode in which your body stores fat regardless of how active you are. However, there are things that happen when your body doesn't have enough food. Athletes talk about "bonking" or "hitting the wall." This occurs when your…

MFP assumes that a pound of fat has 3,500 calories. To lose a pound a week you need a deficit of 3,500 calories per week, so the 3,500 is divided by 7 days to give you a deficit of 500 calories per day.

Lack of energy can mean a number of different things. If it is emotional then exercise helps. If it is fatigue then sleep helps. If it is an actual lack of energy then eating carbs can help.

Motivation comes from the desire to achieve a goal. This is why maintaining weight is harder than losing weight. Losing weight has a goal built into it, though some people don't place as big of a priority on achieving that goal as they might. But often it is associated with a more important goal like being able to do…

Don't stress so much. There's nothing wrong with counting calories, it you want to, but by now you can probably keep your consumption in line without it. Weigh once a week or so to keep yourself honest and so you can catch yourself before you get to far from your ideal weight, but I've found that my weight stays pretty…

Sometimes we start to associate the desire to eat with other actions. Some people always eat when the television is on, so when the television is on they feel like eating whether they are hungry or not. Try doing things that you don't often do along with eating.

Quite treating weight loss like it is karma. You don't earn an indulgence by restricting your diet during the week. But that being said, I find that what keeps me from eating too much is finding something else to do that isn't food related. Go for a job. Ride a bicycle around town. Go fishing. Knit a turtleneck. It doesn't…

I see cheat days as a bad idea. Realistically, most people don't overeat everyday. It is those date nights, those party nights, those holiday meals, those potlucks that push them over the edge. If they ate only what they normally eat they might be overweight, but not to the extent that they are. But then they have those…

If you are eating at a deficit you will lose weight eventually regardless of what the scale says. But at some point you need to develop a friendly relationship with the scale because once you get into maintenance you don't have the margin for error that a deficit gives you. No matter how accurately you count your food…

I don't trust "inches." Especially in the stomach area, a change in circumference can be a result of what you have eaten recently. I went for a long time thinking I wasn't overly fat because I could still fit into jeans with a 36 inch waist. I conveniently ignored the fact that they were hard to get on at first. While I am…

Sure, but you probably don't want a woman who is going to base whether she dates you or not on how you look (though the two of you would have something in common). I couldn't help but think the same thing. I don't think older people are less picky, they just look for other things. There are a lot of older people who remain…

Whether logging my calories or not logging my calories, the key for me is the weekly weigh-in. I have a number I don't want to see and I know each week that I am going to step on the scale. I often think about that when I am considering whether I am going to eat something or not.

So what happens if you find this attractive woman and then a few years down the road you discover that she is 100 pounds heavier than she was when you met her and her skin has wrinkles in it? While physical attraction plays a part, if that's your main focus then you're setting yourself up for trouble. You should look…

The book has people eating at a calorie deficit, so they're going to lose weight, regardless of the other stuff the book says. As for being able to spot reduce, that seems to go against the scientific research, and no amount of eating organic foods is going to change that.

At 2,000 calories, you would be losing a pound a week even if you do no exercise. You are burning around 2,600 calories just by doing normal stuff every day.

That's not the way it works. The body doesn't start storing more fat if the calorie deficit is too high. But what can happen is that if you don't fuel your workouts you won't burn as many calories as what the activity databases indicate you should be burning because your body simply isn't able to put out that level of…

Eating when hungry works great if you are trying to maintain your current weight. If you are trying to lose weight then counting calories works better because you need to eat less than your daily calorie expenditure. I was your weight for a while. I was eating around 1600 calories to lose on days I didn't exercise, but I…

Personally, I can't do long term calorie counting for the purpose of long-term maintenance. It seems to work fine for losing weight, but when I'm at maintenance I find myself fudging on my calorie counts. Then I eat right up to my "limit" even though I know I haven't accounted for all calories. When I'm at maintenance and…

jlt1267, before being too hard on the previous commenter you might want to consider the fact that while the Tetas have doctorates, they are not Medical Doctors. They aren't even nutritionists. Their doctorates are in Naturopathy.

You might look at adjusting the balance of the kinds of foods you eat. I hear that low carb diet make people irritable, so maybe you need more carbs in your diet. Also, I find that the "runner's high" does wonders for my mood. I actually get mine from cycling, but I find that even as little as thirty minutes of exercise…

I leave fresh fruit sitting out in a bowl. Whether I eat it or not, it is the first thing I see when I'm looking for something to eat. I keep nuts around, but you have to be careful with those because a little goes a long way. Opt for dark chocolate over milk chocolate. There's nothing wrong with popcorn as long as you…

It takes a lot of weight lifting to result in seeing much bulk. When eating at a deficit it is unlikely that you are providing enough extra protein to see those gains anyway (though not impossible).

That sounds like a good plan. Some people like to weigh daily or even multiple times a day, but you need to keep in mind that daily measurements tell more about that day than they do long-term weight patterns. Some people like to weigh before and after exercise so they know how much water they need to replace. Doing that…

You should weigh at least weekly. It is easy to gain 13lbs in two months, but if you weigh regularly you will see it coming and be able to turn it around. I had a while when I measured body parts instead of weighing. I thought I was doing well but then I stepped on the scales and saw the second largest number I had ever…

2 lbs per week is extreme for someone of your weight. 1% of your body weight is about the most you should expect to lose in a week, so no more than 1.25lbs (regardless of how much you have to lose).

If you aren't losing weight, I would suspect you are measuring your inches wrong. If you've recently started exercising, the reason you haven't lost weight may be because your hanging onto more water than before. You should start to see weight loss soon if you are eating at a deficit. Cardio is good but it isn't required…

There's really no benefit in forcing yourself to drink water. Drinking more than you need just forces you to run to the restroom more often. Of course, if you drink a lot of water it could kill you, but that would be more than a gallon a day. Water by itself won't cause you to gain weight because to gain water weight there…