Advice needed

[Abz12]

Morning All,

I can not find my original post but i am new here and today is my 1 month anniversary of using the FitBit. Love it! It makes me accountable for my steps, water/food intake etc.

I have a problem though...i dont seem to be losing any weight.

I have increased my activity over the last month by completing videos on Youtube at home which range from HIT to dancing to Piloxing. Each for about 20-30 mins, on average about three times a week.

I am using MFP to log food and bought some scales to weigh out my portions. I try to stick to 1500 calories a day. Typical diet looks like this;

Breakfast;

Seeded multigrain bread with olive butter and bovril

Tea with semi skimmed milk (no sugar)

Lunch

Protein Shake

400ml Semi skimmed milk

Dinner

Chicken based mainly with sweet potatoes. Broccoli/green beans.

Steak and sweet potato fries

chicken salad with parma ham, cucumber, lettuce, baby toms, halloumi, chorizo, spinach

Snacks

sunbites multigrain crisps sweet chilli flavour 120 calories eaten at 11am

mini gingerbread men 25g 115 calories (usually shared) eaten between 3-4pm

0% fat free yoghurt with approx 100g of strawberries. 88 calories eaten between 10:30-11am

Dark chocolate. eaten after evning meal

green tea with Jasmine 1 calorie between 10-11am 250ml

Water - roughly 2L.

Average steps - 7,000

[Abz12]

by the way i am 15 stone 6 on the scale this morning

down from 17.2 Jan 2015.

[JohnRi]

I believe your calorie diet is ok.  Although you could trim it 100 cals.  I'm also not a fan of protein shakes, I prefer to eat real food. 

But your exercise might be the issue. I know for me, to get any weight loss, I have to exercise daily, around 90 to 120 minutes.  I just power walk most days, and I burn around 900-1100 calories doing it.  Or I ride my bike, and burn around 700-900 calories.

My idea is you are not doing enough cardio to generate a calorie deficit.  60 to 90 minutes of exercise a week is not enough.  Some would say that 20 minutes of exercise is just enough time to burn through the stored sugar you have in your muscles.  It burns zero fat.  HIT is also for those that have a great resting heart rate.  HIT requires you to get your rate up very fast, and then drop down during the resting.  While a great exercise, it doesn't burn a lot of calories.  You'd be better off walking, running, swimming, biking, etc.  Something that keeps you moving none stop.

To lose weight, most people have to eat less, exercise more, or both.  It's a pretty simple formula for most people.  Up the exercise, and I think you'll see some weight loss.

Also consider the dreaded muscle gain, fat loss.  I my self have lost about 9 lbs of fat in the last 4 weeks.  I gained about 8 lbs of muscle.  I'm recovering from a leg injury, so I'm having to rebuild my leg strength.  So I'm not surprised by the muscle gain, but after a month of very hard work, I've only lost a pound!  This is why the scale is not a great judge of how you are doing.  In the last month my waist went down over 1/2 an inch, allowing me to go down in my pants size.  My latest measurements using a clothing tape measure also show weight loss.  But the scale does not! 

So how are your clothes fitting?  Get a tape measure and measure yourself. 

Good luck and stay active!

[grumpyeagle]

hey you might wanna up your step count some and vary your intensity of the workout...looks like you are doing well.  i started drinking more water and my boss actually was the one who got me to get my fitbit ....ive uped my step count to about 12000 a day and added some planking and bike ridiing as well. the water intake has helped....i did notice that when i added a few extra calories i saw some weight loss

[ThatGreen]

For the record, I mildly disagree with many opinions made by the previous posters.

I took a look at your stats and these are my findings. Excuse my rounded off metric.

Based on your first post, you are 5'6.5" (170cm) and 15stone 8lbs (99kg).
This post says you're 15stone 6lbs as of this morning. That's 2lbs loss in one month. Congrats!

I'm not sure about your age, gender or activity level apart from the exersice/steps you stated, but if you happen to be average, 40 years old, sedentary and female, you're in a 500 calorie deficit and you'd be expected to lose one pound a week on average provided you eat the 1500 calories a day you say you do.
However, weight loss is not linear and there are a thousand an one reasons why this is, most of which are completely normal.

I think your diet seems fine. As long as it's sustainable for you in the long run and you feel fine, go for it.
10 points for investing in a scale. If you log everything accurately, there's no reason you shouldn't see positive results.
Be careful if you're planning on eating back excersice calories. Some overestimate their burn by a lot and can cancel out the deficit. If you log an exercise and the burn number seems too high, it probably is.

I'm not sure what your goals are in regards to your health (other than losing weight), otherwise I'd be happy to give you more spesific suggestions for improvement.
Good luck!

[joyjems]

You might like to try the 5-2 diet. The idea is you eat normal? five days a week and semi fast for 2. Fasting is you eat no more than 500 cals. for me I found Friday and Sunday were the best. Start the day with orange then some fruit (pineapple, strawberries or? ) later in the day and about 5-6pm 5oz of salmon or other fish or meat. I've been losing 1-2 lbs a week. On the non days I keep the cal to about 1500 and stay away (most days) from the sugar things like cake, donuts, pie and try to eat more veggies. I'm not very good at eating veggies. That's what seems to be doing it for me since th e new year 2016 have gone from 250 to 230. I do walk at least 3000 steps a day. I am 82 so there is hope and life for us all.

[Dominique]

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@Abz12 wrote:

I can not find my original post

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Your original post can be found here (to find any past post of yours, or of anyone else, just click on their community profile).

I noticed this from your Fitbit profile:

I would suggest you try to get some Fitbit friends, as they can be a great motivator and they will let you take part in challenges.

[Dominique]

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@Abz12 wrote:

Dark chocolate. eaten after evning meal

green tea with Jasmine 1 calorie between 10-11am 250ml

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Interesting you log the 1 calorie contained in your jasmine tea, but you do not provide details about your dark chocolate .

So let me ask you this (as a former dark chocolate junkie): how many grams/calories of dark chocolate do eat after your evening meal? Are you able to keep it within your 1500 calorie allowance? I’m asking because I was not able to keep it under control: one square would lead to another, one row to another and before I knew it, the whole bar would be eaten. So at one point I decided to stop eating chocolate altogether: I stopped buying it and storing it at home, and since it’s out of sight, it’s not too hard. My only concession to dark chocolate is (dark, unsweetened) cocoa powder in my (skimmed) milk at breakfast.

As a general comment about your diet: I see quite a few high-caloric delicacies that I would find challenging to fit in a daily allowance of 1500 calories. If you want to eat all this (which is perfectly legitimate), I would just increase my step count from the current level of 7000 to 10,000 or higher. If you find you’re not losing weight with your current activity level, just keep eating the same and increase activity until you achieve a deficit that works for you (regardless of what Fitbit and MFP tell you).