ultrahoon Member

Going from maintenance / surplus to deficit makes the difference. One could cut out ultra 'healthy' foods and achieve the same results, and many of us here have.

Mostly no, I usually see it listed as grilled, which assumes a certain amount of fat lost through the grill slots. There are entries for raw bacon in the food database though, and you could then add a serving of -X grams of fat to account for what you lose while cooking it (if you're able to measure the fat that is).

It's wearing a corset / tightlacing. Basically the only way it does stuff for weight loss that's close to being verified (that I can find) is that it makes you a bit hotter, causing you to sweat more.

Many exercise burns are wildly inflated estimates, and many people choose to only eat 50% or so of their exercise calories back to compensate for this. That said, Ironman is *serious* business, and you will absolutely need to eat a lot more food to fuel the training for it. If you're tracking your food *extremely*…

For me the trick is to avoid putting myself in that situation in the first place. I try to pre-log the days food and split my fat and protein up over my three meals to keep me satisfied. If I do find myself hungry with very few calories to work with, I increase a serving of mixed veg up to borderline crazy amounts, or add…

What do you do with that information if you aren't logging? Do you just pull stuff up in the database and add up the calories in your head? Log it elsewhere?

Keep it simple, accurately weigh both yourself and your food, be honest in your logging, and let calories in vs calories out do it's work. The weight *will* come off.

Yes, sustained weight loss is all about calories in vs calories out. If you eat high sodium take out style food, you might get an increase in water weight for a while that masks the actual fat loss, but long term, you will lose weight.

I'm glad I google before I respond :)

Same way I log on regular days. Accurately as possible. The way I see it is that I want my data. I will want to have a really good feel for exactly where my maintenance is when I am done cutting. If I don't log my pizza nights, then I can't ever reach my maximum potential for accuracy.

Did you also enable negative calorie adjustments? If you don't it can only adjust one way, and wont be accurate.

Ok, weight loss isn't linear, a plateau is 6 or more weeks without any loss. Chances are you just need to wait a little bit to get more information. That said, do take a look over your diary (it's not open so I can't see). Make sure you aren't using generic entries for things, no measuring cups for solids etc. You might be…

How long have you been in this plateau? What amount of calories per day do you eat, and how do you determine / measure these calories? We need to know a little more really. But usually in these cases, it's because a person has gotten a lot smaller, and now needs less calories to exist, often coupled with bad habits…

MFP bases your calorie deficit off your stats, and exercise level. If you tell it you're going to increase your exercise from 3 times a week to 5 times a week, it rightly assumes you are going to burn more calories, so it gives them to you.

As long as you are in a calorie deficit then the weight will come off. The rest of the stuff you're doing is personal preference.

Are you banning these items for most of the time, and then deciding it's time to break the rules? If so, you need to hop out of that mindset, you can allow yourself treats that fit in with calorie goal. If you don't restrict them so much you may feel a decreased need to keep eating them past satiety.

Depending on what county in the UK you live in, you might be able to get an NHS referral to a vastly superior Dietician. If you're not lucky enough to live in such a county, then your local GP office will almost certainly have a diabetic nurse with some kind of nutrition training.

You need to fuel those workouts though. Investigate more calorie dense foods, because if your estimations of calorie burns are even remotely close, this is a long term disaster.

Before cooking, unless you're using a pack of bacon or something where the nutritional info is specifically listed as 'cooked'. I ended up with a lot of '-5G, fats' in my diary whenever I cooked bacon before I realised!

The slow and steady, very basic, very few restrictions of CICO. Slow and steady wins the race for me.

What are your goals?

You don't rely on your scales enough if you still use cups every now and then!

Your diary looks a little odd to me. Either you are the most militant logger I've ever seen shaving off 1g of lots of foods to make them weigh 100g constantly, or every serving of things you buy works out to be the exact same weight at last time, or you're taking educated guesses. Since your margin for error is now much…

As long as you're getting a sensible amount of calories and adequate nutrition over the course of the day, then it doesn't matter if you choose to have a light snack in the evening, and get most of the calories in at breakfast and lunch (or vice versa).

Looks like you've had good success so far. The protein might even be a touch on the high side. I am guessing you already know this, but just in case: A progressive heavy lifting routine (like SL 5x5) will be your largest factor in retaining as much muscle as possible while cutting weight if you've got nice steady goals and…

I'm planning on eating over maintenance for sure. Well actually, I plan on eating at maintenance, but my family loves roast potatoes, so we always make an absolutely obscene amount of them, and then everyone thinks it's a shame to let them go to waste so we go back for seconds and then thirds on them :)

To be honest, the recipe building has never been useful to me. It matches stuff in all kinds of weird ways. I find it much better to just find a blank meal slot (like a dinner I haven't logged anything in yet), and then add the ingredients one by one in there. Then you can hit quick tools > remember meal and give it a…

I use chocolate peanut butter flavour protein powder with milk. That way it's a nice treat that satisfies a 'bad food' craving. I only do this because I am an extremely picky eater, and it's tough to get enough protein in on days where I don't eat chicken for lunch without it.

I'm not 100% sure I have interpreted your goals correctly, is it just to get smaller? If so, what you eat is irrelevant, it's purely about if you are in a calorie deficit or surplus. Proper nutrition is for health, not weight loss. You seem to be taking pretty decent care of yourself, but if you want to get smaller, there…

Your body fat that you are consuming to make up the energy deficit is nutritionally void, i.e you don't get any micro-nutrients from it. So you get the missing energy from the fat stores, but still need to get nutrients from somewhere. The 1200 number is picked because as you go below this, it becomes increasingly more…