kiwitechgirl Member

Measuring spoons and cups aren't as good or accurate as weighing all the solid food that you're eating (fine for liquids though). I'd be trying that for starters.

Always. Maybe not all of them, but at least 50% - try it and see what works for you. I burned over 1000cal in four hours of roller derby training the other day and ate about 600 of those back, and was starving the next day so I ate more of them back. If I didn't eat them back I'd never get out of bed.

5lb is 17500 calories - so unless you ate that much over maintenance, it's not fat! Keep drinking water, it'll fall off quickly.

Breakfast should only be your biggest meal of the day if that works for you. I work on completely the opposite - breakfast is my smallest meal and dinner my biggest. It won't work the same for everyone.

It's hard to know...I'm 5'3" and aiming for 55kg (which is 121 pounds). My original goal was 57.5kg but at that weight there were a couple of bits I still wanted to work on; currently I'm just over 56kg and those bits are on the improve so I think 55kg will be it for me. It's one of those things you'll probably need to…

Eat more. Netting 600-1000 is going to cause you problems in the long run. I'm 5'3" and about 125 pounds and losing easily on 1410 cals a day eating most of my exercise calories back. I would say that if you're "skinny fat" then losing weight isn't going to help - forget the cardio, or cut it back, and concentrate on…

Weight fluctuates a lot - you've probably just caught the upswing. Have you eaten sodium heavy foods in the last day? Could easily be water weight. Keep at it, it'll come off again pretty easily.

This thread reminds me why MFP is so awesome. I'd wish you luck but I'm not sure you need it, with a personal cheer squad of MFP friends supporting you. You can do this - this journey is the start of the rest of your (lighter) life.

First, 1700-1800 calories is not a binge. Even that many additional calories over and above your daily limit isn't really a binge. Secondly, if you think that's a binge, how many calories are you trying to stick to? If all you ate was an egg, an apple and a light dinner, then you are not eating anything like enough and…

Vanity pounds will come off pretty slowly - be patient. And definitely eat more, you're not fueling your body properly.

I update mine every kilo, because I eat my exercise cals back and like to be as accurate as possible.

What is your activity level set at? I think for a walk of that distance I'd probably log it, unless I'd listed activity level as active, in which case, depending on job and other daily activity, I might not.

What did you tell MFP your activity level was, and how much did you tell it you wanted to lose per week? I would definitely think you could be eating more - I eat 1410 and exercise calories back, and while the weight isn't flying off I don't have much left to lose so slower is much better.

If you haven't been exercising at all, you'll be retaining some water weight as your body adjusts. Keep at it and it'll soon reverse.

The number MFP has given you already takes a deficit into account, so if you're eating your allocated 1550, you're eating less than you burn before taking exercise into account. If you told it you wanted to lose a pound a week, then that deficit is already 500.

Polar FT4 is a great basic HRM which will do what you want it to - I love mine. Has the added bonus of being waterproof so if you swim for exercise you can still use it.

Polar FT4 is waterproof and you can input your information. It doesn't have the ability to download data but it does store info on your last ten training sessions so you can go back and check data.

You need to log your food as accurately as possible. Weigh solid food, measure liquids carefully and put everything in your diary. Start by doing that for a week without altering your eating habits, and then you will start to see where you can make changes to cut calories. Eating at a deficit is the only way you will lose…

Also, you appear to be eating almost no protein, which is a very important part of your diet. It might be an idea to find ways to include much more.

I would say that you need to track your food - you're clearly eating more than you burn, there is no other way to put weight on. Start out by just tracking for a week, don't alter your eating at all, but start by weighing and measuring everything and logging accurately. Then you'll get an idea of where you're at and what…

You can't be 100% sure that your intake and burns are accurate down to the very last calorie - even if you're weighing your food exactly, there's still a margin of error in there. You also can't know exactly what your BMR is - you can estimate pretty closely, but it won't be exactly 100% all of the time. And, you may burn…

My thighs are the last part to lose weight - my stomach has flattened nicely and while I have lost some weight in my thighs, it's proportionally less. Unfortunately that just seems to be the way it goes for me. I think running has helped, but I also play roller derby which has built up my quads!

When you say you have your exercise settings set to account for it, do you mean when you joined MFP you entered in how much you were aiming for? If this is the case, then your daily calorie goal doesn't actually include that exercise - it's just a goal for you to aim at, it's not actually taken into account. Or are you…

Email the MFP people and they can fix your counter for you! If you didn't log anything in a 24 hour period, even if you logged that day's food the next day, it thinks you haven't logged in that day...

Buy a food scale, if you don't already have one. Weighing everything I eat was a total eye opener, I hadn't realised just how oversized some of my portions were.

2 pounds a week is a lot to lose when you only have 30 to lose in total. If you do lose at that rate you'll be sacrificing lean body mass which is not a good thing; a slower loss is better for you and more sustainable. I would say 1 pound a week is much more achievable for the first ten pounds, and then probably down to…

MFP doesn't take your exercise into account, whereas TDEE does. If you're using the MFP method, you should be logging your exercise burns and eating at least some of your cardio burns back (depends how you calculate them - if you use a heart rate monitor the numbers will be more accurate than the MFP database numbers). A…

Yes, it's the net calories which count. On days where I have four hours of roller derby training I can eat nearly 3000 cals and still come in at my 1410 net goal...

It's also an app. I think it cost me $3 but it's totally worth it - really easy to follow workouts and you don't need any equipment.

Are you breast feeding your son still? I realise that at 8 months he's probably eating solids, but do still take bf-ing into account if you're still feeding him. I wouldn't be trying to lose any more than 1lb a week and eating more than 1220.