Advice

[BigG1986]

Can someone please answer a question for me I burned 6300 calories yesterday and only consumed 3300 calories is that not enough to be eating to lose weight because I started at 22 stone 10 pounds got down to 20 stone 10 pounds. I can't seem to lose any more weight and the last couple times I have weighed myself I have put on 2 pounds :-(. I have still be doing the same exercise and not been over eating. It is starting to really get me down. Has anyone got any advice?

[jmattwood · Accepted solution]

I started at 23 stone two years ago and have been maintaining 11.5 stone for 9 months now. I guess you're fairly young to be burning 6000+ calories a day. I would suggest politely that you're eating too much and not moving enough. As time went on, in order to maintain the same level of input and weight loss, I had to increase my activity. This was nothing more than 3 hours a day on the treadmill; something I have continued to do in order to maintain the weight, although I have had to up my activity to 22000+ steps a day.

1. Set goals and measure them (built in to the Fitbit app)
2. Keep a food diary & log EVERYTHING (built in to the Fitbit app)
3. Consider calorie intake as a loan – you have to pay it back
4. Consume less (but better) –
5. Eat certain fruit, fish, lean meat, pulses, veg & drink plenty of water,
6. no pastries, no bread, no rice, no pasta, no sweets, no crisps, no snacks.
7. Move more
8. Commit to yourself &, if you can, someone else
9. Don’t listen to anyone that says “you’re OK to have a cheat” – the only person you’re cheating is yourself. This is usually said by someone who either doesn’t have an issue or someone who does and doesn’t want to get left behind in the wake of your success.
10. Weigh yourself daily (regardless of what the naysayers say);  sign up to www.trendweight.com which links to the Fitbit app – this helps me see in a graphical way that it doesn’t matter if today I weigh more than yesterday as I can see the trend is in the direction I want it to be going – this trend could be to gain, lose or maintain.

Good luck.

[BigG1986]

I am only going on the calories burnt that ismy says on my fitbit charge2 I am not adding any myself I walk 9 too 10 miles a day and cycle 45miles on a exercise bike. I decreased my calorie intake so much I was waking up every morning with a severe headache. I track all the food I eat and eat healthy foods. So I am thinking there must be something wrong with my fitbit charge2 then 

[Julia_G]

Hi, @BigG1986, the Charge 2 calculates your calorie burn in two ways.  First, the information you put into your account when you set up your Fitbit, gender, age, height, weight will give your BMR calorie burn.  These are the calories your body burns just keeping its processes going (respiration, digestion, circulation -- even your brain burns calories).  You don't say anything more than your weight, so no one can compute this for you, but Fitbit's calculations are consistent with most online calculators.

Added to that your Charge 2 will estimate additional calorie burn from activities -- that is, how many calories moving that body of yours is burning.  Because the Charge 2 has a heart rate detector it factors that in.

Of course, these are really only estimates and are also only based on averages.  If you are very unfit, for example, you may show a higher heart rate than someone else at the same level of exercise, although you might not necessarily be burning more calories.  This does not mean that your Charge 2 is faulty -- but it could mean that your calorie burn is somewhat over estimated.

At the end of the day, if you aren't losing weight (and losing weight is your goal) you will need to make some changes.  Burn more or eat less.  Weight loss is dependant on burning more calories than you consume -- although there is growing evidence that not all calories are created equal, and the kind of calories you consume can also make a difference.

I am moving your post to the "Manage Weight" forum, as I feel you will get a much better response there than on the Charge 2 forum.

[BigG1986]

My weight is 20 stone 10 pounds, I am 6ft 2. 31 year old man. I walk at least 9 miles a day and cycle 45 miles on a exercise bike. I eat no more than 3300 cals a day and it's all high protein and lots of veg/ fruit. I am always under my goal that my fitbit app says to eat and I still can't lose weight :-(. I was 22 stone 10 to start with dropped too 20 stone 10 and just can't seem to get any lower.

[Dominique]

Stones don’t speak to me, so I converted them to units I understand: you went from 144 kg (317 lbs) to 131.5 kg (289 lbs), which means you already lost almost 9% of your starting weight. That’s a lot, and an achievement in itself. How long did it take you?

You may want to watch the video "Losing All Your Weight At Once" referenced in this other topic. It advocates taking phases of maintenance in between phases of weight loss. Will take longer, but is likely to be more sustainable.

[BigG1986]

It took me about 4 months but I seem to not be able to make any more progress. I am sticking at it through and am feeling alot healthier. I would love to see the difference on the scales through

[rthomas268]

Have you researched the concept of eating more to lose weight?  I have just begun to do that this week so I don't have any results to share. The analogy I use to understand why my body is storing fat instead of process my food when I was eating a restrictive calorie diet is this:  when I don't drink enough water, my body holds onto what it receives which results in swelling, or leg cramps, or a very high urine odor. So the remedy is to drink MORE water to saturate the cells and soon no more leg cramps. Now change the word water to food. If you eat more (your BMR + activity) you will saturate your body with what it wants and then you can create a deficit  for a short 2-3 week period at a time in between maintenance at your lower weight.

Just a thought.  Good Luck.

[Dominique]

12.5 kg / 27.5 lbs in 16 weeks is 0.8 kg / 1.7 lbs per week, i.e. 0.5-0.6% of your total bodyweight per week, which is within the recommended range. I think you should view your current "plateau" as a victory rather than as a lack of progress. Do as suggested (in the video): maintain your weight at that level for a while, to let your body adjust to it and your metabolism recover, and then go for another stretch of loss.

Most likely, you didn’t reach your weight of 317 pounds in six months, nor did you reach it at a fully linear pace of 2 lbs a week. It probably took a lot longer than that, and you also experienced "plateaus", periods of time when your weight was not increasing. Now you’re trying to reverse the process, the same rules apply (metabolic adaptation works both ways).

One thing I’d suggest is to ease up a little bit on the exercise side: 9 miles of walking and 45 miles of biking (whatever that is in terms of time) sounds like a lot, especially if you started from almost sedentary. You may also want to introduce a little bit of resistance training; it may not burn as many calories per unit of time, but it has other benefits (in preserving lean mass and triggering body recomposition).

@rthomas268 also has a point with the eating: you can’t constantly reduce your intake, especially if you keep exercising at a high level. Doing so may put you in a vicious circle with no exit. This is something @A_Lurker could also expand on, as she has experience with it. 

[Daves_Not_Here]

@BigG1986 -

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@BigG1986 wrote:

Can someone please answer a question for me I burned 6300 calories yesterday and only consumed 3300 calories is that not enough to be eating to lose weight because I started at 22 stone 10 pounds got down to 20 stone 10 pounds. I can't seem to lose any more weight and the last couple times I have weighed myself I have put on 2 pounds :-(. I have still be doing the same exercise and not been over eating. It is starting to really get me down. Has anyone got any advice?

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Here's what worked for me:  log your eating and weight on a daily basis and the answer will reveal itself to you.

Several thoughts:

• Weight loss is 90% what you eat, and 10% how much you exercise
• Your weight blips up and down due to water -- if the scales shows a 2 pound increase, you don't know if it's a blip or a trend unless you have more data.  Many here use TrendWeight.com to show the trend.
• I don't know if you are logging all your eating on a daily basis, but if not, it's really hard to know if you are overeating.  
• As you lose weight, your caloric requirements decrease, so if you continue to eat the same amount, your caloric deficit will diminish or disappear.  You must continue to reduce your intake.
• As you become more fit, your caloric requirements decrease, so if you continue to eat the same amount, your caloric deficit will diminish or disappear.  You must continue to reduce your intake.
• Large deficit days like your recent 3,000 deficit day take 2 or 3 days to show up on the scales.  However, if you overeat in the following days, you may not see it.
• If your routine is not yielding results and you are truly stalled (which I am not convinced you are), then you must change your routine.
• If you are going to change your routine to try to lose weight, my bias is to do it towards those behaviors that are known to result in weight loss (food logging, 8 glasses of water, eat foods that stifle appetite, 8 hours of sleep, etc.)
• I believe intense exercise can be counterproductive to weight loss.  It increases fatigue, increases your appetite, requires recovery eating, and tends to justify "reward eating".  And it depletes your limited mental resources of will-power, making it harder to resist the 10 PM refrigerator raid.

Bottom line: you have been engaging in "increase your fitness" behaviors that are only 10% of weight loss.  I'm suggesting you engage in "lose weight" behaviors that are 90% of weight loss.

[emili]

unless you have a medical reason for not losing weight if you eat less than what you put out you will lose weight- meaning you are in a deficit. So I think somewhere your calculation is off. I agree that you may be over taxing yourself in exercise - you may want to focus on food and supplement with activity. I am sharing a link with you that talks about all things fitness. He is not for everyone so I take no offense if you stop reading after the first article- but he says it plainly and he is pretty spot on with his advice.. https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/