Calories in vs calories out

[fretnutt]

I'm confused... I'm always under budget but I don't lose weight. Can someone explain this to me.

[WillowTheWhisp]

If you are active and excercising you could be losing fat but building muscle and muscle weighs heavier than fat.

Or if your calorie intake is too low your body could be storing because you are depriving it. Sometimes weight just plateaus for a while. Mine does and it's rather aggravating when I am trying to lose.

Try to keep to the out targets as well as the in targets and you should start to see changes.

[SunsetRunner]

Like WillowTheWhisp says - undereating is as bad for weightloss as overeating. You need to fuel your body properly so that it function and that includes being capable of losing weight. 

Also, make sure that the calories you're putting in are the 'right' calories. Although you can still lose weight eating bad foods it will catch up with you and slow the whole process down including messing with your metabolism and energy levels. 

[FBScottyT]

Good points.  Until I began working with a trainer, I never realized how important it is to monitor the kind of calories, their quantity, and time of day I eat.  This is especially true if you are getting closer to an optimal weight and are in your 40s or beyond. It sounds scientific and obsessive but it's quite natural once you do it for a few weeks.  Three modest meals plus two snacks, eating 'good' carbs before and after exercise (along with proteins after), and reduce starchy carbs especially in the evening when you don't need that kind of energy.  

[Heybales]

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@fretnutt wrote:
I'm confused... I'm always under budget but I don't lose weight. Can someone explain this to me.

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Started an exercise program at same time as diet?

Exercise always has as side effect water weight gain, for many reasons.

You mean you are under calorie eating goal budget, which already has a deficit to it from what you burn - so you are creating an even more extreme deficit?

Guess what the body does under big stress - elevates cortisol - you can gain upwards of 20 lbs of water weight with that kind of stress load.

And that's even if you have a reasonable deficit goal - majority don't, they want it fast - so bigger is better in their minds.

So untrue.

But sadly you can't gain muscle that fast, as fast as you can lose fat. And that's only going to come with progressive overload resistance training program.

But you got 2 sides of the equation, eating and burning.

Are you manually logging any workouts with calorie burn based on something else, for exercise?

Are you logging by weight all the food that goes in your mouth, and confirm labels match database, and how much of a serving size you are truly doing? (about 2 servings isn't 2).

[WillowTheWhisp]

Oh yes, despite what many people may believe it does matter what kind of calories you eat and when.

Some foods take longer to digest than others (check out G.I. values) - and eating in the morning gives your body a whole day to work on using up those calories. What you eat late evening doesn't get used as efficiently as you are more likely to be sitting and subsequently lying down and sleeping. Anything the body doesn't need to use for excercise it will put into storage.

"Breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord and dinner like a peasant." used to be an old fashioned way of saying eat more earlier and less later. Unfortunately peasants often ate starchy, stodgy, calorie laden carbs, but the principle is sound.