myfitnesspal.com support thread 3 - come join us!

[QueenStromba]

New thread since the old one is full :)

I'm on 1330 a day. I sometimes find this amount a struggle, especially during the holidays and weekends so I tend to exercise to give me a bit of room for more food/alcohol options. I've lost 14lb in 7weeks, even though my setting with mfp is 1lb. But I'm combining low carbing with calorie counting, seems to be working well. Dh has done the same and lost nearly 17lbs in 6 weeks...he's now happily maintaining. I have only 2lbs to go.

I empathise piratecat but just think if you were on, say 2200 cals a day, you could slowly be gaining 2lb a month!!!! So really you could think of it as 4lb if that helps!

Hi guys

I'm bexsy on MFP and have an allowance of 1340 calories per day. I was previously on 1200 but didn't seem to loose regularly so after advice on here I changed my calorie intake and have been losing avg 1-2 ibs per week

I started in october on MFP and had 5st 7ibs approx to lose and have managed to lose approx 43ibs I am exercising quite a bit and have really started to enjoy it. I am doing swimming, gym and body pump

Welcome and hope you enjoy

i think i'm doing it wrong sometimes. not having enough cals by the end of the day some days, because all i have left is carbs and not fats!! Or eating too few proteins, which i am finding a struggle being a vegetarian.

Or overdoing it by say a hundred the next day. Glad it's come off of course, but to those of you doing low carbing with it, what are you increasing on to get to your cal amount?

Pirate I'm veggie too. If I need to up my calorie intake, I find wine comes in very handy otherwise I have almonds or Total yoghurt with strawberries and a whisper of maple syrup - told you I wasn't a proper low carb dieter!. This evening I made oopsie rolls - bit like a souffle bread!

Have ordered Celia Brooks Brown - Low carb veggie, think she might be human....don't order Carb Conscious Vegetarian by Robin Robertson - too American being all preachy and evangelical about health issues, felt very sinful and not worthy after reading it.

I think you'd be better to focus on the weekly calorie count if daily is micro-managing too much.

hmm ilove brazil nuts and that ups protein which is great, but surely too much fat. are almonds better for you fat wise, i adore almonds.

love red wine too.

i will have a look for that book thanks for the recommendation! I am so fed up of Quorn mini balls/eggs!!!!

have just had a look at Celias book on amazon, and the look inside feature allows you to read half the book!!

great tips.

I adore almonds - they are the first ones I pick out of a portion of mixed nuts... May just buy almonds next time if they are the healthier ones out of all nuts??

Oh no those quorn things are horrid. Almonds are filling, taste nice and are unprocessed, your body will love you for it. Cauliflower rice is great with a curry - so you can eat your favourite curry without adding wads of rice stodge. The new cauldron range is quite good - try marinated tofu pieces stir friy them with veg, spring onion, chilli, ginger & soy sauce and a bit of coconut milk or cream. Finish off with some fresh coriander - delish! Cauldron cumberland sausages have improved too - better texture and decreased use of dried herbs and over salting has helped.

I rarely meet my protein or carb levels but I'm always over on my sugar, didn't think I had that much sweet stuff but I obviously do! I used to be a vegetarian but never again, it's way too much hassle. I don't like nuts (apart from cashews and pistachios) so that would be no good for me. Don't pay too much attention to the levels just notice the sugar as it's red nearly every day.

I can only eat nuts as snacks as we have a nut allergy in the family...which is frustrating, I'd love to be able to cook with nuts. I've never been a great lover of the traditional meat and two veg and would only eat dinner if my mum cooked something interesting like a curry or a casserole, which was a rarity - hence as a child I was like a stick. I also can't eat much processed food - simply because I don't like it very much, it's always such a let down.

So veggie or not my food would always require more time & effort, which is mostly fine because I like spending time messing around in the kitchen.

10 foods you should eat every day includes almonds I always carry some in my handbag just in case I get hungry when I'm out, I always have a healthy snack close at hand and through lack of choice am tempted by less healthy snacks.

Oooh, on that link of 10 foods you should eat every day I already regularly (almost daily) eat red pepper, almonds, avocado, eggs, garlic...
It will be very easy to add greek yoghurt and grapefruit into the mix.

Not sure about green tea (taste?) and chard (taste?) and quinoa (die hard pasta and rice fan, have cut it out for now)

Not bad, I will be healthy one day!!

quinoa is imo gross, i tried and failed to enjoy. was hoping it would be great for the protein input but me not likey.

I adore Cauldron sausages, i always use them at xmas as a base to make chestnut stuffing.

I will be investing in almonds. Havent eaten potato for two months but funnily enough don't miss them. I think i am going to switch to brown rice for my stir fries, i'm like you i love pepper, avocado.

Can I just check, I am supposed to 'eat back' my exercise calories, is that right?

It's up to you whether you do or not, I personally try not to so I can hopefully lose more but others do exercise to allow them treats or just to balance the calories.

well i weighed in today and have lost nothing in 3 weeks. grrr.

Oh pirate, how disheartening... But you may be losing inches instead?

Cinnamon, there seem to be some theories on MFP that say that if you don't eat your exercise calories you may not lose as fast as your calorie intake will be to low and your body will hold onto fat? But am not sure about that...

Hi everyone

My name is RGPargy on MFP - feel free to add me, if you haven't already!

Just in case you didn't know, I weigh around 16st 7lbs (am a little over that atm as i've been quaffing wine and eating shit rubbish. Am finding it hard to get my head in the right place at the moment too.

Foodwise, i am trying to low carb and low fat but am currently battling in my head with the fact that as i do a lot of exercise, I will need some major carbs to fuel my gruelling exercise routine. I say gruelling because for someone my size, it's probably quite a strain on the body!! I quite often think back to when i did Atkins a few years ago, which is low carb and a good amount of natural fats and i did lose alot of weight back then, as well as having bags of energy (something i am struggling with now). Am tempted to head back to Atkins, but am tempted to chat to a nutrionalist first to get a run down of what is good for me and what isn't (i.e. wheat etc).

Exercise wise, my normal routine is:

Mon a.m. - Body Pump
Mon p.m. - Step
Tues a.m. - Zumba
Tues p.m. - Body Balance
Weds a.m. - Step and body pump
Sat a.m. - pump and occasionally balance
Sun a.m. - Step and/or Body Combat and then pump. (2-3 classes)

I also go on fitness days and fitness weekenders which means i do LOTS of continuous exercise. On the weekenders its been known for me to do 6 classes in one day. Yikes. Knackered.com doesn't even come into it!! Want to go for a personal record of 8 classes in a day on my next weekender at the end of September but i deffo need to lose a good couple of stone first!

Anyway, enough self praise, time for bed!

N'night all!! :o

pirate I can't eat quinoa either. Try Total Greek yogurt it's really creamy even the 0 % fat version tastes pretty good.

RGPargy don't mean to put a downer on your plan but that's an ambitious exercise plan for anyone. Be careful with overdoing it - high impact exercise done daily could lead to an injury, your body needs some recovery time too, you don't burn much fat with an injured leg - I have an injury which is stopping me and it's very frustrating - have you thought about consulting a personal trainer to obtain an exercise program that will help you achieve the level of exercise intensity without putting excessive strain on your joints?

Good luck with your quest - mfp really worked for me and the support on here is brilliant.

i have been looking into this whole eating back your cals business. i think mfp's bmr is very standard, and that you should always eat that amount.

I had a read of this, how cals work and bmr etc

it gets a bit confusing, but i 'think' it's about losing proper fat and not lean tissue. Getting your energy or loss from your fat stores not your muscle or lean fat stores. ( no not a clue here either!!)

By under eating or not eating back your cals expended by exercising is counter productive. Complicated. i just want to lose weight, you could be right tho, clothes are loser. Why would one lose inches and not weight, i mean where's it gone!!??

will buy greek yog today.

You lose inches because of exactly what you were saying piratecat, you are losing/burning fat but you are gaining lean muscle, which weighs supposidly more and therefore you weigh the same but your body has less fat and more muscle so is leaner and smaller/flatter in general. In general I think eat less lose weight works to a certain point, if you eat too little you shock your body into 'starvation mode' which makes it hold on to the fats you want to burn as it thinks it's not gettin enough food and isn't sure it will get more so needs to conserve what it has.

Some of us here have more to lose than others and weightloss will slow down as you get smaller but if you're weightloss is slow it wouldn't hurt to give it a go eating 150 calories more and being a bit more actor and see how it goes would it? Personally I seem to lose the week after my period, stay the same when I ovulate, lose weight the following week and stay the same/put on slightly when I have my period so have some frustrating weeks when I know I'm doing the same as other weeks and it's just not coming off. Even though I have seen a pattern it's still really disheartening and frustrating!

I bought Greek Yoghurt yesterday and made the mistake of buying the full fat version. It is gorgeous, very creamy, lovely but one pot does wack up the calorie count...

May try the reduced fat version. My only concern is that low fat yoghurts leave that horrible artificial sweeterner taste in my mouth...

Thanks for the exercise calories explanation piratecat - it does make sense (and made me feel less guilty for eating a quarter of a dominoes large pizza yesterday after walking for two and a half hours....)

pirate - are you on mfp? who are you on there? [nosy]

The mfp forum seems almost obsessed with starvation mode and avoiding it - but when I googled for more information on the subject it seemed largely to be a myth and that body fat needs to be at around 5% before real starvation mode kicks in.