PT disagrees with the calorie allowance on the app he recommends

[nothingcomestonothing]

Advice welcome re dilemma please.

I need to lose about 1 stone and get fitter (sedentary job and peri-menopausal and sweet toothed!).

I've started with a personal trainer who recommended my fitness pal to track food, which I've been doing. It put me at 1200 calories but now PT says that's too low and says I should be eating 1600. I've lost 2lb in 4 weeks trying to stick to 1200 calories.

Can anyone advise? Is 1200 too little, will I not lose weight if I eat too little? I don't really get it! Thanks in advance

The PT isn't in charge of what you put in your mouth. If 1200 is working, and you are eating in a way that gives you all you need (which means addressing the sweet tooth/empty calories), and you feel strong for training, that's great. If you're training a lot and feeling hungry, you will need to rethink.

I've had things suggested things to me (like eating protein before a run) and I said, "that doesn't work for me" because it doesn't.

1200 is quite low - I'd have thought around 1500 cals per day would allow you to exercise & gain strength, and lose fat but not muscle. But it depends on the sort of training you're doing - how intense, how often and how heavy you're lifting.

I sit down at work all day, walk 15 mins per day on commute, 30 mins swim and 30 mins PT a week, so not loads. I'm so confused whether I'm not eating enough, it seems counterintuitive to eat more to lose weight?

MFP and similar apps seem to put everyone on 1,200 and it is too low for most people. Those apps are really useful to track, but ignore the calorie recommendation.

No PT will put you on 1200 calories OP. It's not enough. Mine starts you on 1500 but you're not there long.

You also need to throw the scales away and use a tape measure instead. Scales lie. We need to be totally reprogrammed.

If you're doing 1 swim and 1 pt session per week (both 30mins) then it's not a huge level of activity and so less cals required, however I expect the PT is suggesting higher so its more sustainable long term.

I've lost a little over a stone since January on approx 1,600-1,700 per day. Age 40 5ft 3 and very sedentary lifestyle.

Ok I guess it's too low because it's not sustainable long term not because I'm not eating enough to lose weight. Though what I'm eating to try to hit 1200 is basically my normal diet minus all the biscuits, crisps and cheese. I should have tracked my pre trying to lose weight diet to see what calories I was eating then for comparison I suppose.

Thanks all, this is new territory for me, I was fat when younger, then skinny when DC were young and I was running around after them, and now don't want to get any fatter than I currently am.

I use MyNetDiary to track calories. IMO it's much better than mfp. Try putting your info in that and see what it gives you. It will also analyse what you are eating so you can make adjustments.

What's your TDEE?

What's that please?

That's really not a lot of exercise, so it should be possible to add in more activity: more walking (as in ordinary steps) each day should do it. I aim for around 15,000 steps a day, but I walk everywhere!

Total daily energy expenditure. You can google sites to work it out.

Use james smith calorie calc. You can only work it out based on height, weight and activity levels

For TDEE use something like this https://tdeecalculator.net/

The problem with the generic 1200 figure is that it isn't sustainable and everyone burns a different amount daily.

TDEE will work out what your deficit should be.
To lose 1lb there needs to be a deficit of 3500 calories over the course of the week.
I burn approximately 2500 calories a day depending on how busy I am so if I was to only eat 1200 I would lose weight very quickly and feel shocking.

I think this is poor advice. I swell up, my wrists and ankles in particular and then go back down again (age), so tape measures are notoriously unreliable on me

In addition, my waist measurement has not gone down in about 4 stone, its still 35/34 inches, the rest of me is shrinking as the weight comes off but not my waist

Thank god for scales I say

Age doesn't make you swell up and down. Not drinking enough water in a healthy person makes you retain water. The answer is to drink more and it won't happen. Scales when you weight train are useless.

The only reason I can see someone hanging onto scales for weight loss are those who take those 'I am legend' injections.

Well I dont weight train and didnt say I did, I was just answering your point about tape measures being more accurate

I swell up due to a number of issues, age being comorbid in some of them, peri menopause has a number of effects on joints and water retention so swelling is common

Scales are useful for anyone losing weight to , erm, see how much they have lost. Ive lost over 9 stone so its sort of important for my medical team to have a gauge of that.

I suspect that needing to lose 9 stone @soupfiend is quite unusual, and your treatment is specific and urgent, and probably not relevant for most people, who only need to drop 5-10 kilos.

For most people, starting to do a serious programme of exercise, including adding in resistance training (especially reasonably heavy weights), the tape measure will be a significant measure of progress, as well as the scales.

I'm peri, I'm a kick in the arse off 50, I have hEDS. I drink 4 litres of water a day and don't get water retention. It's not a blame x,y and z thing. It's literally not giving your body what it needs.

I already know you don't weight train just by going on your posts and it's a shame given you've shed a lot of weight.

Well that was my point, you cant just blase say that throw away the scales and a tape measure tells you all you need to know, it doesnt!

My treatment isnt specific or urgent to be honest, its just managing symptoms, heat doesnt help and to be honest neither does fluid intake that much, I track all my liquid intake as I have record it, so I have a good understanding of patterns. Its really come on in peri for me although it was worse on certain medications.

My point @soupfiend is that your situation is an outlier and very unusual, because most people posting on this thread are not 9 stones overweight. For normal people, the advice re measurements being as important as the scales is sound. But most people aren’t so overweight that they need to lose 9 stones and are under medical supervision to do that.

I think what people are missing here is the need to increase fat loss, not weight loss.

If you reduce calories too low a large % of what you loose will be muscle. Unless you are extremely overweight you need to eat at a slight deficit to maintain muscle whilst reducing fat, not at a super low 1200 calories a day.

Combine this with weight training and the increase in muscle will mean that over time you can eat more calories.

I used this approach in the last year and lost 15kg. I can now also eat 2000 calories a day to maintain, up from 1600 last year.

@soupfiend If you are not going by measurements and not exercising I would worry that a large % of weight loss is muscle. Over time the loss of muscle means your calorie need will reduce resulting in increased difficulties to loose fat. It maybe worth a DEXA scan to monitor changes if you feel measurements are misleading especially due to the lack of any change in waist size as visceral fat is the most dangerous kind.