Weight not coming off!

[Spidey66]

So 2 weeks ago I started logging my calories on MFP. i'm very overweight, started at 17st 1 (the shame) at MFP allocated 1580 cals. I'm sticking to it except Monday as that was my birthday.

Many days my calculations are a couple of hundred cals under but I'm leaving it as I suspect sometimes I'm underestimating cals especially for instance cereal, pasta.

The first week I went down to 16st9.5 so 5.5lbs off, so I was chuffed....but this week it's gone up to 16st 12, so it's gone back up 3 lbs. Ok on my birthday I let it ease so I could have pizza, wine and cake in the evening but not enough calories to wipe out the rest of the week and add 3lbs on!

I'm 56, i'm not really clear if I've been through the menopause properly as I had a hysterectomy 7 years ago so obviously no periods since then but no other real symptoms. I've got an underactive thyroid but I'm on thyroxine and I had bloods done 2 months ago and my thyroxine does not need adjusting.

HELP!

Pasta and cereals are extremely deceiving. I'd weigh them.

It won’t be 3lbs of fat on in a week.
it will be holding water because you may have eaten saltier food, food not yet processed ie need of a big bowel movement. OR
I suspect sometimes I'm underestimating cals especially for instance cereal
there should be no estimating calories, you really do need to accurately weigh & measure each separate food element to get a true calorie intake. You could actually eating 2,200 calories and have no clue if you are estimating!

Eg the problem with guestimating portion sizes.
Also, on MFP, don’t add any activity. It gives you calories to eat back, I’ve seen so many posts about people not losing weight if they add their exercise, because it gives you too many calories to eat back.

MFP has allocated me 1580 cals but when I'm inputting them at the end of the day I'm coming up with about 1200 which I'm letting go to make up for not weighing the pasta/cereal. I don't eat them every day, or I might eat eg weetabix which doesn't need weighing. But yes I should get into the habit of weighing them.

I still remember weighing my pasta allowance in years past and realising that I was having triple the allowed amount, at least! Weighing is crucial with carbs such as pasta/rice/cereal etc unfortunately. Good luck.

Definitely weigh your food.

That first week won't have been all fat, some fat some water weight most probably (hence the fluctuations). The calories on MyFitnessPal can be deceiving, you need to work out your resting calorie burn (tdee) and go from there, there's loads of websites on Google that will help.

Are you adding in exercise too? Most long term plans work on 1-2lbs per week loss, which long term will all add up! (I've been there OP!)

WRT to exercise, I usually do more than I'm doing now (too bloody hot!). I use an ebike to get too and from work, (6 miles each way) so less exercise than a normal bike but I don't add the calories in anyway. I walk the dog too but due to the heat she's not had a walk for a couple of days. When I do walk her, I don't add the calories in, usually because she does love a walk, but she has to stop and sniff everywhere so hardly exerting myself.

When the weather eases off a bit I'll do more walking. I love swimming but atm I think the world and his wife are going swimming!

Definitely weigh everything. Literally everyone is shocked at how small a pasta "portion" really is

also recently I had an indulgent few days of pizza and takeaways. I actually made a thread about the 24" pizza I ordered I don't need to lose weight but I put on half a stone in a DAY. It wasn't fat I'd put on as I had plenty of leftovers, didn't hugely overeat, but the carbs + salt meant I was hugely holding onto water. My ankles puffed up and it took about a week of my normal diet to go back to normal. That's an extreme example obviously but dont be disheartened by the 3lb gain - for it to be all fat you'd have to have overeaten by approx 10500 calories.

So a typical day is....

B: Cereal eg weetabix, cornflakes, fruit and fibre, semiskimmed milk
L; Homemade pasta salad, with lots of salad veg, low fat mayo, and some protein eg chicken, ham, tinned fish
D: 4 falafels, low fat hummus, pitta bread, lots of salad, or chicken with lots of salad and some bread, or breadsticks with low fat hummus and salad

Snacks: Lots of fruits eg plums, nectarines, apples, banana. Couple of rice cakes and in this heat I've had the occasional solero.

At weekends I may have a couple of vodkas and diet coke (pub measures, I don't really drink at home and rarely have it in)

Oh sometimes I have wholegrain toast instead of cereal, with a thin scraping of peanut butter.

Lots of fruits eg plums, nectarines, apples, banana
Just because it’s healthy, doesn’t mean the calories don’t count.
Nectarine 45
2x plums 60
Large banana 121
pink lady apple 72

30g cornflakes -which is TINY-is 107 calories
40g fruit & fibre 152
100 calories for the milk

Pasta can be calorific, even with low fat mayo!
bread is also pretty calorific.

you really do need to weigh so you can look at your portions and check how many calories there actually are.

The crux of this, is that you absolutely need to weigh everything. You can't guess or leave calories over to cover, that's not accurate. A single large pizza could gain you 3lbs in a week, let alone not recording accurately, not including teas, coffees, oil you cook with, sauces etc. You can relax off a bit once you know your calories 'by sight' but if you really want a loss on the scales, you have to be accurate with your intake.

Cereal as one example - the serving size on boxes is usually 30g. That's a tiny bowl. What we usually think of as 'a bowl of cereal' is more like 60g.

Slimming down is 80% what you eat and 20% exercise. My advice would be to get some kitchen scales and measure everything.

It is a pain until you get used to it, but you need to check all labels and weigh everything. Scrape of jam could be 10 cals or 50 cals. I find that you can't just rely on MFP, as brands can vary so much. It can be difficult to pick the right one on the app. So I work out all my cals with a pen and tot them up.

I now know things like how much my usual breakfast adds up to, so don't weigh it every time, but I still write it all down.

If I go for dinner or get a take away, I don't worry about it, the rest of my week is counted and one meal won't derail it, but if I stop losing I have to knock those treats and extras on the head for a week or two. I've lost almost 4.5 of the 6 stone I want to shift.

I drink very little tea/coffee, just a cup of tea with breakfast and maybe one more in the evening, mainly water and well diluted squash, and I admit diet coke. I count any oil added but try and avoid, and I add my fruit into MFP.

But I will start weighing pasta/cereal (or just eat weetabix which I don't need to weigh).

I'm no expert by any means but to me your diet looks too carby

Id stop eating pasta while you're trying to lose weight.

This looks like an awful lot of sugar to me, and not nearly enough protein or healthy fat. I used to eat like this and I was much bigger than I am now.

Calorie counting has never worked long term for me, changing my macros has. About 10 or so years ago, at my heaviest I was 16.5 stone. I lost a stone doing calorie counting / WW, and over the subsequent years was occasionally able to lose a bit more, but it always went back on.

In the past two years I've switched to eating lower carb / low sugar and high protein, fibre and fat. I now weigh 11.5 stone (which is a healthy weight for my height and body shape) and keep it off easily because I'm not hungry. I don't have low fat anything - your body needs fat, it doesn't need carbs / sugar. That includes cereal, bread and fruit.

My typical day looks like this:

Lunch (around 2pm, I do intermittent fasting)
Plate of mixed raw vegetables
2 tbsps Homemade mayonnaise (just olive oil and egg)
Stick of celery with tbsp peanut butter
Hard boiled egg
Couple of slices of cheese

Bowl of raw rolled oats, nuts, chia and flax seeds with raspberries and full fat Greek yoghurt

Dinner (before 8pm usually)
Meat / eggs / fish with vegetables (could be anything - Thai curry, chicken puttanesca, burger salad, omelette. Just needs to be high in fibre, protein and fat, and low in carbs)
10-20g of good dark chocolate, or a piece of fruit

If I get hungry between lunch and dinner I snack on hard boiled eggs, cheese or nuts. I have no more than two pieces of fruit a day. I love to eat and find that if I stick to the above around 80% of the time, the weight stays off. If I go out for dinner or to a party, I don't worry about what I eat, but I keep party food for parties.

I'm not saying this is the only way, everyone's different and can process carbs differently, but it's the only way that's worked for me. There are many books and podcasts on this type of diet which you might find interesting if you want to give it a go.

Having just looked at your diet list I also think it looks carb heavy. I would swap carbs at breakfast and have 2 eggs instead (cooked any way) NO toast. If you need it to be quick, just do a scrambled in the pan and eat from the pan.

Lunch, salad is good but not pasta salad. Salad veg plus protein. Carbs as a small side if needed (e.g. a small pitta to eat with it)

Protein and veg (avoid potatoes, and don't have the carb base such as rice or pasta). You can then have some carb extras if you need. E.g spag bol but with veg not pasta or chilli with cauliflower rice (or just chunks of the stuff!) This works for me and if I put on a few pounds every now and again, I just drop the evening meal carbs and it comes off again. Breakfast should always be protein.

I've lost weight calorie counting, WW and SW. they all work but you have to do them all properly. I know SW is bemoaned by many people but I find it works best for me, though I don't eat 762 muller lights or make cake from weetabix or curry from mushy peas.

I have found that MFP is regularly wrong in the calories for items you scan. It's also world wide so there's a lot of American stuff on it. Anyone can add to the database and people kid themselves and knock 20 calories off items. You need to check what you scan is right against the packet. A much better database for calorie counting is Nutracheck. There's a 7 day free trial and then it around £23 for the whole year. But it's accurate as the company who run it input the nutritional data. It also helps with macros if you want to look at them.

What's your daily energy deficit? If you're eating 1500 cal, what's your energy output? The greater the difference the faster the loss. A daily deficit of 500cal is only a pound a week

You're having bread or pasta or cereal with every single meal. Really carb heavy

Weigh everything even the weetabix as no guarantee each is exactly the same.
If you eat tinned soup, tuna etc also weigh as the quantities on the label are rarely correct.

Weigh everything in grams, no large apple or spoonful of something.

plenty of water, fibre and protein in your diet and try and incorporate some strength training into your week

Check out Team RH, lots of valuable advice

Also things like Diet Coke and squash, while they might not add anything much in the way of calories, or even real sugar, will be giving you a sweet tooth. This will make you crave fruit, bread, cereal etc. The more carbs / sweet stuff you have, the more you want, because of the insulin spikes and crashes.

According to a TDEE calculator my maintenance calories is 2,275 and basal rates should be 1655.

I admit I have carbs with most meals. It's a long term eating habit, dating back to childhood, a meal isn't a meal (to me) without carbs, though acknowledge I need to reduce sizes. Which is why I'm opting for calorie counting, rather than a low carb diet. I will not be able to stick to a diet for any length of time (and given that given my starting weight, I'm in for the long haul) that does not allow carbs. I will merely fall off the wagon if I'm not allowed carbs.

I can't do low:no card OP I don't loose weight unless I eat carbs with at least one meal a day, I have carbs every meal though admittedly not vast amounts.

DH can do ultra low carb (like carbs twice a week) and loose well, I can loose nothing eating the same. As soon as I introduce some potato/rice/pasta my weight loss starts again.

Everyone is different, do what's right for you, but you do need to weigh accurately and track everything you eat!