futuremanda Member

Don't think so. "Don't eat below BMR" is something I see a lot, but I don't think there's any real basis to it. If my body can fuel my workouts and my work day on body fat, it can (and is) fuel(ing) my heartbeat and whatnot on body fat. Bodies dip into deficit and out of it throughout the day, and so anything my body needs…

Your BMR is a fairly irrelevant number. You don't really do anything with it. It's just what your body burns as a baseline, like if you were in a coma. Since you're not, you burn more than that in a day, and need to look at the whole picture when deciding your appropriate calorie target. Set up MFP correctly and eat what…

No, you don't need supplements or special shakes or anything. Calorie deficit is how you lose weight. Set up MFP, eat the number of calories it tells you to. Log consistently and carefully (ideally using a food scale). If you exercise, log it and eat back maybe 50% of what MFP gives you from burns (to start, in case the…

Yoga or walking. You can also do something like elliptical at a more leisurely pace/resistance level than usual. Leisurely swimming, if you have access. Or if you're going to be more active today anyway, running extra errands or doing extra chores (as many people do on weekends), then that may cover it. But you sound like…

Cravings don't always mean anything physical, just like hunger doesn't always mean you *need* more calories, etc. You may crave it because you like it or because of old habits or old triggers or because it's getting warmer or because you've been having fewer treats, or anything. But it's probably a personal reason and not…

Slow is not the same thing as stopped. Stopped would be, you would die. Meaning it's slower... weight will come off slower, you will have to be more strict, and you may need a lower calorie target than most people. (In fact, I'm assuming you will probably need a lower calorie target than most people.) But slow does not…

Did you tell MFP 2 lbs a week? Change it to less. Try 1 lb or 0.5 lb and see what it gives you. You can also try moving more. Hard exercise has a bit of a cap on it in terms of energy and health -- you can't spend all day on the treadmill running (and shouldn't try). But you can take more walks, get up more often, do more…

HRM is accurate for steady state cardio only -- meaning continuous, steady effort (no intervals etc). So would definitely work well for running, depending on running style. For other things, since calculators and machines are also inaccurate, I'd default back to saying just use AN estimate from somewhere, and test the…

Frustration is understandable! But if you're eating healthy because you want to be healthy, then you're going to do that forever regardless of what the scale says. So do that. It WILL have an effect, it just may not be as exciting as hopping on the scale every week to check out your latest losses. Many people on internet…

Nope. 2700 would make ME fat, as a 5 foot 4 slightly overweight 29-year old female... and not as quickly as you might think, either. You are bigger, and male, and way more active than I am (and larger, male bodies burn more calories JUST moving around than for smaller bodies). Your numbers show that 2700, today at least,…

Honestly, the best way to know is just to test it. So if you get 1500 and calculators say you burn 700, eat 1850 on exercise days (50% of exercise cals -- which is what you say you usually eat back). Give it maybe 5 weeks and see what you weigh. Get an average over the weeks. Is this more or less than what you targeted? If…

People are ONLY talking about deductions to try to help you understand the math that is going on. YOU don't need to "work out" anything. That's why you have MFP and Fitbit. MFP knows you're trying to lose weight. It is not telling you to eat calories that would make you maintain your weight! If MFP tells you to eat…

Weight loss is a huge stress on the body, as is exercising. And an aggressive deficit like you're talking about -- aiming for 2 lbs a week, no fail, no exceptions -- will be an even bigger stress. And you tend to quit when you're stressed. Mathematically, you may be able to hit 20 lbs down (or close enough) by the end of…

I have never heard of any medications or medical conditions that literally make it impossible to lose weight... just that they mess with the equation significantly (and/or cause massive appetite increases, but that doesn't sound like your issue). I think usually it makes the process much slower, and you need to be more…

Your walking makes you lightly active, so you should really bump up from sedentary if you aren't going to sync the Fitbit. 1800 calories will still be WAY too low for you. You'll be undereating at that target. You probably need at least 2100 a day.

Sure. But which one you're focusing on is about your calorie intake, not about your workout. You should have progressive overload either way.

Have you lost *nothing* in the last 6 months, or just more slowly than you'd like? And adding in weight training, or changing your exercise up, can cause water retention, so you won't be able to trust the scale until that settles, as an extra thing to keep in mind.

You won't be able to build muscle while losing fat. But you can retain more muscle by strength training and eating enough protein. And you can also try to keep a moderate deficit, which gives the skin time to adapt.

You will not gain muscle in a deficit. But you may retain more muscle than you would have otherwise. You may also want to try to up your strength training. Progressive overload is key -- meaning increasing the stress on your body. So you could switch to a weight lifting program, or if you're sticking to body weight…

If you have a fitbit synced, it won't matter whether you choose sedentary or not anyway. Fitbit will adjust for you based on actual steps. If you're really lightly active, and pick sedentary, fitbit will send you a bunch of extra calories every day, because you're walking more than you told MFP you were. Definitely do not…

Sedentary is something like <5000 steps a day. You could pick lightly active, and add your workouts to the exercise tab. (But don't log your dog walks.) You'd probably be pretty safe with that. Or you could put a custom target in the middle. Like 2000. Just so you know, even though MFP asks you how much you plan to…

I would suggest eating the 2130 that MFP says. Log your exercise -- MFP will add those calories to your total. Eat some of them, but not all. (Maybe half?) Give it a month and see how you do.

And when you run that, it gives you 1600? When I run it on an external calculator, it gives me 2066 for you to lose 2 lbs a week. That's before exercise. Some other calculators actually give you more. Most calculators put your total daily energy expenditure above 3000. But if you've tried higher goals and found you didn't…

You don't have to starve. 250 calories off a day would get you 0.5 lb in a week, and you'd hit your goal of 6 lbs in no time. Not even 3 months from now. And besides, you'd start to feel better before you hit your end goal. And you could probably achieve that by logging very carefully and then making mindful cuts --…

What are your goals?

You can try: - adjusting leg position a bit (in general, the more into your body, the easier it is to achieve a flatter back, because it helps you tilt your pelvis correctly -- think tucking your tailbone, the opposite of arching your back) <-- so for example, if they do "legs in tabletop", bring your knees closer to your…

Even having a job like that gets you pretty far! 10 hour days on your feet a lot, then a 2 year-old after? That's pretty active, imo. But if you think that purposeful activity would benefit you, I'd recommend something like Yoga with Adriene on YouTube. The videos are anywhere from maybe 10 mins to maybe 60, and you can do…

Adding: You don't *need* to eat *all* those calories to lose weight. It's a great approach though -- more food makes hitting proper nutrition easier, and is more sustainable. Also, appropriate deficits are easier on the body (though any deficit is a stress for your body). Especially if you are working out (another stress…

If MFP tells you to eat 1780, then eat around 1780. That's your target for weight loss -- it has the deficit built in. Remember to log exercise and eat back about 50% or maybe 75% of those calories to start (because sometimes exercise calories are very inflated -- so pick a percentage to eat back and see how it goes,…

I pulled up a height/weight chart that is usually accurate for me (but their male equivalent) and it put him at underweight. I ran a BMI calculator and it puts him in a low to mid healthy -- around 20, like you say. That calculator suggests he could safely get down to 125 lbs. So that's a pretty big discrepancy -- on my…