Negative Burn - not losing weight

[jillblingmann]

So for the past 3 weeks I have logged everything I have eaten down to my coffee creamer.  For the last three weeks I have posted a negative calorie intake of anywhere between 7,800 & 8,200 calories each week.  Given a pound is 3500 calories I should have lost weight by now but I haven't.  Has this happened to anyone else?  

[PaleoCrossfit]

@jillblingmann sounds l ike you aren't eating quite enough. Our bodies tend to go into starvation mode if we don't feed them enough,

[WKH]

Have you tracked Lean  VS Fat ...this could possibly be the reason?  I did a weekend warrior challenge this pass weeekend and burned 7 thousand calories each day the first day I lost 2 pounds the second day I lost nothing.  My Muscle went up and my Fat was down.  You should also take your mesurments and see if you are losing inches.  

[jillblingmann]

I haven't tracked lean muscles vs. fat, nor have I taken any measurements.  Haven't noticed a change in the way my clothes fit.  Perhaps I will have to measure going forward.

[keithcw]

Every time I get my weekly report e-mail it's always negative; anywhere from 700 to 4,000+ calorie deficit. 

There's the usual suspects: water retention, stomach contents, etc. 

However, I would use the FitBit as a baseline measurement and then adjust from there. For example, I had more luck eating at the 1,000/day deficit setting, even though I was losing at something closer to a 600/day rate. 

What's I'm saying is that there's a fudge factor involved in both calories burned *and* calories entered, even when weighed meticulously. 

Unfortunately there aren't any intermediate choices for food plan goals.  You can try entering your daily calorie goal manually, or you could pick a Food Plan setting and then plan to consistently be 100 calories under or over that to reach an intermediate step.

tl;dr Adjust your activity or your intake by about 10% and give it two weeks. Then re-evaluate.

[smhermione]

When I switched from my One to my Charge HR, I noticed that the new fitbit was a bit generous with the calories burned as well. I've done the same as @keithcw and upped my food plan to reflect the results I was actually seeing. So far that has worked for me. Measuring body fat% is also good as you may be gaining muscle. I really like the aria scale for tracking that as well. It's not 100% accurate, but it is good for seeing trends.

[Heybales]

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@jillblingmann wrote:

I haven't tracked lean muscles vs. fat, nor have I taken any measurements.  Haven't noticed a change in the way my clothes fit.  Perhaps I will have to measure going forward.

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First - there is no such thing as lean muscle. Except when at the butcher ordering a cut of meat.

Your body, not anything you can control, will decide how much fat happens to be within muscle. Endurance cardio is about the only way to increase fat stores within the muscle.

Perhaps they were talking about Lean Body Mass (LBM) - which is everything but fat, so water, muscle, bones, organs, blood, ect.

And you are missing your goal by a huge amount.

Does your goal already have a weight loss amount built in to it?

Like you perhaps choose a smart 1 lb weekly, but have been attempting to make it a very unwise 3 lbs weekly by undereating even more?

If you think bigger is better - why not just stop eating and get it over with then?

You are just stressing your body out. A healthy body can lose fat, depending on amount to be lost, from 1-2 lbs weekly. Sounds like you have made yours pretty non-healthy right now, so you can't expect the same results.

Also - good job logging all your food.

But logging by weight everything you eat?

Because calories is per gram, not per cup or spoonful or package label - per gram weighed on a scale (except liquids).

[keithcw]

Isn't it also possible that calories are being overestimated and activity is being underestimated? Maybe her deficit is closer to maintenance, or a very minor deficit.