lemonlionheart Member

Read the flow chart carefully. If you still don't know why you're not losing weight, you need to open your food diary so we can investigate further and give you more specific advice.

I only finished it this week, haha. Flow charts just make so much sense to me, I was actually really surprised something like this didn't exist already :)

Yep, there are a lot of '1200 calories and no weight loss' threads. I posted in one just yesterday. 95% of the time it turns out to be logging errors.

I put it in the red circle :)

If someone is truly eating 1200 calories, working out 2 hours a day and somehow failing to lose ANY weight over two months, I'd go less with 'common issue' and more towards 'medical mystery'. Seriously, they should do scientific experiments on these oddballs, figure out if they can somehow extract this superpower and give…

Good point! Hmm, I'm wary of adding more though because it's already so wordy. I do recommend that the poster open their food diary though, so hopefully that would be a case where people can investigate a bit further and give some more specific advice.

Not sure, sorry! It might be your browser. Seems to be working fine for everyone else :)

What did MFP tell you to eat when you put in your height, weight, and activity level? Do you eat back exercise calories? And, once again, do you weigh everything using a food scale?

By 'small portions', do you mean 'less than you usually eat'? Because yes, that will help :) If you haven't already, my advice will be to get a food scale and use it to weigh everything that goes in your mouth. Weight can fluctuate due to water retention and other factors not related to fat loss, so it's impossible to say…

Yes, BUT it's commonly accepted that the calorie burn amounts given by the MFP database or from gym machines can be overestimated. Many of us stay on the safe side by only eating back half.

Fixed:

Oh no! haha, thanks :)

What do you need help with?

Yep, I want to lose 15-20 more lbs too! Perhaps we could make a 20lb group where we check in every week and support one another? :)

Some minor edits: - specified the use of a digital scale - made it clearer that weighing/logging accurately means using a scale for everything - bolded some important points Unfortunately the free flow chart maker I downloaded isn't great, so it was tricky getting the text to look right in the boxes. If there are any…

I'll think about that, I just pulled the number from what people in the forums have said- most seem to be happy with spending $10-$15. Maybe I'll just change it to 'digital scale'. I'd love to say "decent digital scale with a tare function" but then it gets too wordy, half the people won't know what that means, etc... :)

Yep, still trying to find the balance between 'enough information' and 'way too many words', haha

Maybe I should add that 'starvation mode' doesn't exist.

If you wear your fitbit all day and add those calories you should set it to sedentary, otherwise you're counting some of your activity twice.

I went through the exact same thing when I first started here. It's good to get feedback from someone else who could have used something like this in the beginning!

What do you have set as your activity level on MFP?

Do you wear your fitbit all day, or just during steady-state cardio? You have like 1400 - 1800 exercise calories logged on some days, I'd have to do intense cardio for 3 or 4 hours to burn that many calories. What exercises are you actually doing, and for how long are you doing them?

Nope, just tragically optimistic :)

Possible that some may not understand it all but hopefully this will prompt them to provide more helpful info or ask more specific questions. Also, for the sake of my sanity, I'm choosing to maintain my faith in humanity and believe that for every idiot we encounter, there is someone who is just new and confused and hasn't…

Well, i mention 'using a food scale' in the question, and commented on the inaccuracy of cup measures and portion sizes in the flow chart. I can't cover everything or it gets too confusing, so some stuff will have to pass over to people in the forums who can then begin to ask more specific questions :)

I do see your point. I think I'd still like to keep the first question where it is, since often it's people freaking out because it's been like, 4 days and they haven't lost any weight yet. I think that most people who read this chart will probably go on to read the rest of it anyway, so they should still get the advice…

Good point. I reworded slightly to clarify that it means to weigh EVERYTHING. :)