AIBU to think it should be working by now?

[Outbutnotoutout]

So I have been using MFP since 1 March

I am 50yrs
Weight 17st 5lb
Height 5ft 7in

I started at 1800 calories, now I'm on 1400 calories per day and I stick to it.

Over the past few weeks I have put on and lost the same 2lb. I started at 17st 5lb and today I'm 17st 5lb.

Everything is weighed, measured and is healthy

What am I doing wrong?

😒

Do you exercise? Or just cutting calories? Sorry I just saw this in active and was intrigued.

What are you activity levels like? Even 1400 calories if you are sedentary isn't going to make much difference in weight loss. For me to eat 1400 calories a day I would have to be walking around 4-6 miles a day to just maintain my weight, closer to 10 miles a day to start seeing a loss. I know this through bitter experience! You have to move a lot more than you think so see good losses, or really cut back the calories to VLCD levels.

It's been 3 weeks....

Hi OP, that's exhausting and disappointing I know.
Can you screenshot your MFP record for a day? Or just post a bit more detail so we can see in more detail where there may be hidden calories or a difficulty in measuring that has caused some issue?

Have you calculated your calories needed to maintain or lose?

For me, to maintain my current weight it’s around 1400. To lose, I need to aim for 1200

1400 calories is a lot to eat when trying to loose weight. I would go with 1000 as a starting point.

My BRM is 2100 and your supposed to cut by 500 calories.

MFP calculated 1460 as someone is lightly active

Cant post pictures for some reason 😕

I was thinking it might be steps, so aiming to do 5000 steps per day on week days 9 and 10hr shifts and 10000 on rest days x 4

@Outbutnotoutout

I was thinking it might be steps, so aiming to do 5000 steps per day on week days 9 and 10hr shifts and 10000 on rest days x 4

5000 steps is roughly 2.5 miles, I think your calories would need to be much lower than 1460 to make a dent in weight loss at those levels in sorry I know it's disappointing'

I'm 5'7" and eating 1700 calories daily and clearing 15k steps a day. I lose roughly a lb per week. Since August I've lost 1.5st. You need to be in caloric deficit and you need to track all the calories. Most people don't track everything and it slowly creeps up. Don't starve yourself or you're far more likely to crash and binge. Team RH worked for me, they've a lot of free content on Facebook but it's quite brutally put sometimes so not for the sensitive! I just felt they talked sense. Good luck x

@gingerbiscuit19

1400 calories is a lot to eat when trying to loose weight. I would go with 1000 as a starting point.

It’s really not when you’re very overweight.

I don’t know OP, but it’s so demoralising isn’t it? I did similar a few years ago - felt great for three weeks while I obsessively counted calories and went for a walk every day, by the end of the time I’d lost nothing. Still don’t know what I was doing wrong.

(No my body wasn’t in ‘starvation mode’ and no I hadn’t gained muscle enough to counteract what dieting should have made me lose).

You might suddenly lose a bit.

Do you think you were eating more like the 2100 before?

1400 cals per day should result in weight loss for anyone who is 17 st. Are you weighing and measuring everything you eat? Are you counting every bite of food? mfp can be difficult to do properly as you need to weigh everything and that takes up a lot of brain space. There’s also the small fact that most of the calorie inputs are wrong as they rely on other users to plug them in and mfp uses a global database so there is a lot that’s wrong.

Probably best to weigh and calculate your calories yourself (and input them in manually for each meal) for the most accuracy.

Same goes for walking - if you aren’t walking at a speed of least 3.5 miles an hour then while that activity is useful to track, you can’t use it to offset calories as the calculation they use is just plain wrong.

@GiveMyHeadPeaceffs

I'm 5'7" and eating 1700 calories daily and clearing 15k steps a day. I lose roughly a lb per week. Since August I've lost 1.5st. You need to be in caloric deficit and you need to track all the calories. Most people don't track everything and it slowly creeps up. Don't starve yourself or you're far more likely to crash and binge. Team RH worked for me, they've a lot of free content on Facebook but it's quite brutally put sometimes so not for the sensitive! I just felt they talked sense. Good luck x

1700 calories and 15,000 steps for a 1lb a week loss sounds bang on the money to me, those are the numbers I'd expect to see.

Keep it up 😊

Can you give an example of your daily 1400 ?

@Outbutnotoutout

I was thinking it might be steps, so aiming to do 5000 steps per day on week days 9 and 10hr shifts and 10000 on rest days x 4

Those steps have to be in one go at at least 3.5 miles per hour to count as exercise. To give you an example - I walk 4.8 miles in one go (for me that’s 10k steps) at an averag of 3 miles an hour and will only burn 138 calories. If you’re doing those steps across the whole day then it won’t be burning anything like that.

I'm going to disagree with the PPs, I'm 2 inches shorter than you and my BMI is in the healthy range. I maintain weight at around 1800 calories. 1400 is quite low and although it might not put me in starvation mode I don't imagine I would have much energy to do exercise if that was all I was taking in.

If you have upped your exercise then maybe check if you are losing any inches before you change your diet. It's possible for the scale not to move but your body to be changing.

ahh OK.
My guess would be your estimation of 'lightly active' is way off. I'm the same age and personally would think of 6 to 7000 steps or less as sedentary and 14000 to indicate 'lightly active'. Don't forget, you're only measuring steps, not necessarily a raised heartbeat.
On that basis I would suggest you recalculate plugging in a lower activity level and see what you get...1460 kcal probs too high an intake to drop weight at our age, sorry.
Tough isn't it.

I'd only maintain on 1400, I need to stay under 1200 to lose at all.

5000 steps isn't enough. You need to aim for 10000 every day.

Hi OP yes it should be showing something so let's go back to basics.

I've been using MFP since Aug 2020 and have lost 57lb by sticking to the calorie limit it sets. When I was 16st 9 I had 1690 calories a day, now at 12st 9 I have 1420 a day.

I have a sit down job and aim for 3 x 30 minute workouts a week so not massively active. On a non workout day I only manage about 3000 steps.

Can you screenshot a couple of days of your food diary so we can see what you're eating?

Are you on any medications or have any health conditions?

Have you ever had thyroid, diabetes or PCOS type diagnoses?

So to answer a few questions

I have 5 stone to lose, so I would have thought 1400 calories per day puts me in deficit

I have no health issues

A sit down job

I promise you my partner measures everything and I record every mouthful

I can't post pictures, but can see the paperclip.

If I put in sedatory, it gives me 1200 per day

I would definitely try to up your exercise.

However—biggest thing to remember here is that weight loss comes in lumps and bumps! I will work hard for weeks with no results, then suddenly be a quarter of a storm lighter. Because there are also the hormones of where you are in your cycle, etc and it doesn’t necessarily come off in a simple easy way like that. My personal trainer showed me her results—she was doing a diet for 2 months, same input and output each day. Slight weight loss, then suddenly dropped in space of few days.

Bodies are weird! You have to stick with it, water/hormones make things weird and unpredictable. You’ll lose weight overall in lines with your calculations, maybe just not when you assume.

At your weight for your height, 1400 calories should definitely be enough for weight loss.

I assume you’re measuring and weighing everything? If not, that can often be the killer - it’s very hard to accurately eyeball things like tablespoons of oil etc, and the calories in some things can be disproportionately high.

Have you been to your GP for a general check up? It might be worth mentioning to them in case they can run some tests. But I would give it another few weeks first just to be sure. It may just be that the plan is working slowly and results aren’t visible yet.

The great thing about having a good bit to lose is that it’s fairly easy to do it. If you did 10k steps a day, your current eating and stick with it for a few months you will see big results.

In case it helps, when I started to lose weight I didn’t see any changes to the scales for at least three weeks. But once the weight started coming off, it came off fast! I ended up losing close to 3 stone on 1400 kcal, so I think you should wait a little bit longer before you make more drastic changes. As one of the PP said, bodies are weird!

If you’re hoping to lose 5 stone, you need something sustainable. Anything lower than 1400 kcal is hard to keep up over a long time period, without creating some kind of deficiency. Slow and steady is the way to go