Hitting all my targets and not losing weight

[vmorap1]

I have been dieting and eating healthier, counting my calories and always having a min of 500 deficit sometimes a 1000 per day. I eat breakfast every day, and drink 6 16oz bottles per day. I excercise at home as well and always hit my target calorie burn and miles. I typically do 10,000 steps plus. What am i doing wrong?

[JohnRi]

How much weight do you want to lose?

What is your weight, height, and gender?

How many calories are you typically eating in a day?

How many calories are you typically burning in a day?

How many active minutes do you have a day?

What types of exercise are you doing?  How long? How intense?

Do you have a Fitbit with a heart rate monitor?  If so what is your heart rate when you exercise.

[vmorap1]

Hi John!

15 pounds is my current goal
currently at 176, 5'5, F

For an example  sun:1,550 mon:1,660 tues:1,117 wed:1,292  I work a lot and typically am at home only 2-3 "free hours" per day (obviously not including sleep time

sun burned:3,186 mon:2,643 tue:2,221 wed:2,206

sun active mins :92 mon:48 tues:50 wed:28 (i did pilates but it didn't really recognize it)

Me and my best friend who is also using a fitbit are doing different work outs everyday, sundays and saturdays i usually go for a run using my zombie run app, during the week its things at home, pilates from popstar, or youtube videos, we do arms one day, legs, butt and thighs the next, abs another, we alternate. Usually 30-1hr long. Depending. Intensity varies, sunday was an intense workout for me, yesterday i didnt even brake a sweat with the pilates. 

I do have a heart rate monitor on, i havent really looked it it much while im exercising to be honest. 

[Ukase]

The truth is - 4 days of data that you've provided tells me you're on the right track - although, nowadays, I think what we eat and when we eat it may have more impact than I used to think. (just a few days ago) 

From the math - if you've logged your intake correctly - and Fitbit didn't exaggerate your efforts - you've lost a little over 1 pound. 

Which the scale doesn't reflect because of water weight or "intestinal gut" - food you haven't absorbed that hasn't passed through. 

I do realize that when we have a caloric deficit on day 1 - we expect to see that reflected the next morning. But, I promise you - it simply doesn't work like that everyday. 

I shared in another post yesterday that my weight was the same for four days in a row - despite being at a caloric deficit of 1400 calories per day! 5600 calories! 

Yet, the next morning, I'd lost 1.6 pounds - despite only being at a deficit of 1400 that previous day. 

The body is just plain weird sometimes. No other way to put it. 

Keep up the effort - and I promise - unless you've handed your fitbit off to a pet dog or miscalculated your input - you will lose weight. (assuming the "sun:1,550 mon:1,660 tues:1,117 wed:1,292" was your intake and not your calories burned) 

[JohnRi · Accepted solution]

On the whole you are doing the right things to lose weight...

They only thing I forgot to ask was your age.  But that was for your bmr calculation,so I guessed 30.  And how long have you been exercising and not lost weight?  Do you have a Aria or scale that can measure fat %.  Are you taking your measurements with a clothing tape measure?  Often our fat % goes down, our clothes fit better, but we increase muscle mass, and see no change on the scale.

I recently went through a 3-4 week period where my weight seemed to go no where, but in realitiy I had lost 10 lbs of fat, I just gained 5-6 lbs of muscle at the same time.  So my weight loss was so slow, that I couldn't see it. 

But at the same time I went down a pants size, so I knew I was losing weight...

Your BMR is somewhere around 1600.  Being a woman, you should probably not eat less than 1200-1300 calories a day.  Which for the most part you are doing based on the data you gave.  So as far as I can tell your calories eaten are ok.

As for exercise, your heart rate does matter.  If you exercising, and your heart rate is in the 90's or lower, chances are you are burning very few calories.  If you heart rate is 130-140 or more then you are burning a ton of calories.  I remember when I first started exercising, it didn't take much for my heart to get up there.  But quickly I had to increase the intensity to get my heart elevated.

I was going to suggest a variety of exercise, but you are doing that! 

So the only thing left is duration of exercise.  When I first started I was walking 20 minutes every other day.  And I was losing weight with my diet changes.  Today I have to exercise 90 minutes with my diet changes to lose any weight.  And I'm 32 lbs from my goal of 183. Every lbs I lose, then next one is harder to lose.

Everything I see you should be losing anywhere from 1 to 2 lbs a week.  You might want to connect trendweight.com to your fitbit account.  Perhaps it can see a weight loss trend, that the numbers do not make apparent.   I find the site very useful. 

Since you are already doing this sometimes, you might try to maintain the 1000 calorie deficit.  You can do this by lowering how much eat to no more than 1200-1300 and increasing your daily exercise so that you burn at least 2500 calories a day.  You and I have the same BMI right now.  So once you find your balance point of exercise and diet, you will have to monitor it carefully.  As you lose weight, your weight loss will slow.  You might have to increase your exercise even more.  Everyone is different, and we lose weight at different rates.  3500 calories is not 1 lbs for everyone...

I'm eating around 1800 calories a day, and burning 3000-4000 calories a day.  I'm only seeing 1.2-1.4 lbs lost a week.  I should be losing closer to 3 lbs a week.  So there is more to losing weight than just the math...

Good luck, and keep active! 

[vmorap1]

thank you to the both of you, hopefully in the next couple of weeks ill be able to see a difference! I hadnt thought of doing the measurements so i will do that tomorrow and see what gives as i did take them when i first started. I have a normal scale but maybe getting one that show body fat will be a really good idea! 

Also the water weight would be a good explaination too. You both make good points that i hadnt taken into consideration. I was so focused on defict and why the math wasnt adding up.

[FitBeforeFifty]

Looking at your profile, it seems like you've only been wearing your fitbit regularly for about 1 week. Also, you say you normally get over 10,000 steps but yet this week you've only made it to 10,000 steps one out of 4 days. The other 3 days are in the 5000 - 7000 range. I get to about 5500 hundred steps just at my desk job, so to me this means you week thus far has been pretty sedentary.

The bottom line is you can't draw any kind of conclusion from a week of tracking. You need several weeks to be statistically relevant. 

[Dominique]

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@vmorap1 wrote:

hopefully in the next couple of weeks ill be able to see a difference!

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I agree with @FitBeforeFifty: you’ve only been using your Fitbit for a week or so:

What you do in a week’s time, or even in two weeks’ time won’t matter too much when you look at the big picture. Consistency over the long term matters a lot more than perfection during a short period.

It probably took you several years to gain the weight you now want to lose. Reversing the process will be slow and you must accept that you may not "see" results in a few weeks’ time.

[GershonSurge]

Just to confirm, I interpreted you are using a Fitbit with a heart rate monitor to determine calories burned.

I have a Fitbit Surge, and by analyzing my weight loss data, I found it overestimates the calories burned by about 20%. What this means to you is a 500 calorie deficit based on the device and your calorie counting may be a surplus. 

The body will eventually follow a true calorie deficit. There will be plateaus along the way. 

Here is a chart of my progress since May 15th. Notice I plotted total calorie deficit, the predicted weight based on the total calorie deficit, and the actual weight. In order to make the points the same at the end, I had to change the assumption of 3,500 calories/pound lost to 4,172 calories/pound lost.

What this means in a simple explanation is if you don't see results in a couple weeks, try increasing your calorie deficit to 1,000 calories/day. I suggest doing this by increasing exercise and not by reducing food below your sedentary requirement. Keep in mind, exercise is anything that gets you moving like housework or similar activities. This is how I boost my calorie burn in addition to my normal walks/runs.