Calories???

lally

New member
I eat quite a healthy balanced diet but I'm not losing, if anything I'm gaining??

I tried eating around 1000-1100 per day and didn't lose so thought I may have been having too few and now eat around 1300 but I'm gaining slightly.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be eating, I'm so depressed right now I feel like I'm working hard for nothing
 
Are you sure you are calculating your calories correctly?

I don't know how you can eat 1300 calories a day and NOT lose weight? How long have you been eating at this level for? If it has only been a few days then don't expect results so soon, you'll need a good week or two to start dropping weight.
 
Bottom line is you are not eating that few calories and not losing weight outside the realm of a medical issue.

Seems to be like a miscalculation. How are you tracking your cals? How are you measuring your foods?

What are your stats?
 
Not losing weight on few calories

I hear you. I know someone who tried losing weight on a low calorie diet as well and it didn't work. He ate for an entire week and even started gaining weight. He was really frustrated as well.
My advice would be that you make sure you are getting enough vitamins and minerals. You need those for your body to function properly. Include couple servings of vegetables every day. That should help.
Are you eating real food or are you doing meal replacement foods?

Best luck,
Alexa
 
I hear you. I know someone who tried losing weight on a low calorie diet as well and it didn't work. He ate for an entire week and even started gaining weight. He was really frustrated as well.
My advice would be that you make sure you are getting enough vitamins and minerals. You need those for your body to function properly. Include couple servings of vegetables every day. That should help.
Are you eating real food or are you doing meal replacement foods?

Best luck,
Alexa

Even without the proper vitamins and minerals, the laws of thermodynamics remain intact.

One thing I'll say is, more so with women too, there seems to be something going on with starvation dieting and tons of ridiculous exercise that really shuts down various systems.... probably primarily hormonal. But there's nothing documented in the literature of it.

Even with that said though, 9/10 times it's people lying about the foods their eating or they are miscalculating their intakes.

And lie is a strong word.... I'm not sure I really mean it.

What I mean is, I've seen on more than the rare occassion someone count calories for a couple of days and they are intaking something stupid low.... like 1000. Then, as soon as they stop tracking.... they eat 1500-2000. Yet, their mind still tells them they're eating 1000.

Intake is a funny thing for most.

Or your friend is magic.
 
I'm keeping a diary on here, eating between 1200 and 1400 cals a day and staying the same

I'm eating normal, quite healthy foods too.
 
I'm keeping a diary on here, eating between 1200 and 1400 cals a day and staying the same

I'm eating normal, quite healthy foods too.

How much exercise are you doing?

What are your stats?

How long have you been eating this way?
 
I'm doing like 30-60 mins walking per day and sometimes going to a dance class once a week.

On days where I exercise more I've been eating more calories for it.

I'm 5'4 and weigh 144 lbs
 
i looked at your diary and noticed a few things...

1. your calorie count on some foods looks a little low but i'm not sure

2. i see that you subtract calories for exercise before getting your total calories for the day. where do you get the numbers for that?

3. your diary doesn't reflect that you are eating between 1200-1400 per day..some days yes but not everyday.

4. within two weeks you had alcohol quite a few times. i'm not sure how easily the calories are measured unless you were drinking at home and measuring out what you drank...perhaps you did that, i don't know

5. you have been at this for two weeks now. have you lost anything in those two weeks?
 
I'm definitely getting my calorie counts right, I'm weighing everything and double checking it all.

Maybe the alcohol played a part in it.. hmmnn..

I work my exercise calories out using this site:
 
Alcohol makes and/or breaks a lot of people. I've seen it happen time and time again.

For instance, I'm training an individual who was drinking beer every night. I started training him mid-January. At that time, I talked him into only drinking on the weekends and sticking with less calorically dense beverages.

He's lost 17 lbs since doing that. And we aren't exercising a lot. Four sessions of weight training per week, and these sessions are real calorically intensive.
 
Does anyone know how I work out how many calories I should be eating if I want to lose 1-2 lbs per week??
 
Does anyone know how I work out how many calories I should be eating if I want to lose 1-2 lbs per week??

It's a matter of finding your maintenance intake, which is described in the stickies and cutting calories from there. So if you're maintenance intake is 2000 calories, and you eat 1500 each day, that's a net caloric deficit of 3500 calories every seven days.

There's approx. 3500 calories in one pound of fat, so in theory, you'll lose 1 lb of fat each week.... although it rarely plays out like that due to a lot of other variables that we don't need to get into. The less weight you have to lose, the less the chance you'll lose consistently too.

It's important to remember also, that as you lose weight, your caloric requirements go down. So calculating your maintenance once does not guarantee success from here on out. It's a moving average.
 
I know that but what I mean is, I don't know how to calculate how many calories I need to maintain my weight, so I don't know how many I need to lose weight..
 
you have to experiment a little...

based on your current weight and activity level you can figure out the approximate number of calories you need... then adjust accordingly.. there really is no one size fits all number.. a lot goes into what your maintenance is... and it takes some time to find that good number..
 
I know that but what I mean is, I don't know how to calculate how many calories I need to maintain my weight, so I don't know how many I need to lose weight..

I understood what you were asking.

Which is why I said:

It's a matter of finding your maintenance intake, which is described in the stickies
 
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