Advice needed: One year of dieting and the gains have stopped. What should I do?

[blownsi]

I've been dieting since last March. I document everything that I eat, workout with weights 3 days/week and fast walk for 45m 6 days/wk. I started out at 318lbs and now weigh 263. The problem is that I was at 265 in December. I have tried lowering calories, adding more cardio, etc but I keep getting the same result. I lose one week then gain the next, etc. Logic tells me that I'm somehow eating maintenance calories even though I'm not. I use My Fitness Pal and have it set for sedentary (desk job) and 2lbs per week loss. Looking for some advice as to weather I should take a dieting break, try IF, reduce calories to only LBM calculations aka stop feeding the fat, or some other idea.

[Jerseylump]

At 265 you still have a lot of weight to shift, and it should come off fairly quickly. How many calories are you eating a day?

[blownsi]

2000-2200

MFP reccommends 1680 without exercise. With the exercise added in it shows the 2000-2200 range so that's what I eat.

[Winfamy]

At 2000-2200 calories a day you still have a lot of room to reduce them, as you get smaller you also spend less calories doing the same activities, so that if you keep them in the same range without increasing activity you'll eventually stall, which is the point you're at. Decrease your calories by 100-150 or increase your activity and you should see progress in the right direction.

IF can be a good option in terms of satiation if you decide to lower your calories but it's not magic, if you eat the same calories you'll have the same results.

[Beatletown]

Don't 100% trust mfp to give you exact calories for foods. Check your most regular items now and again. I was eating one thing described as having 300 cals when it was closer to 700. At your weight with activity weight will fall off at 2000 kals I cut at 2500

[buckiaj]

Any way you slice it if the scale has stalled, and has for months now, then you are eating too much. Period. There are no other reasons this could be.

Regardless of how you are tracking properly or not, whatever amount you are eating now, eat less. Scale it back 200 more calories and see where you are in a couple weeks.

[blownsi]

Thanks for all the recommendations. I have to agree, either MFP or myself is estimating something wrong on my food intake. I will drop my calories by 200 and see what happens.

[Electricheadd]

Any way you slice it if the scale has stalled, and has for months now, then you are eating too much. Period. There are no other reasons this could be.

Regardless of how you are tracking properly or not, whatever amount you are eating now, eat less. Scale it back 200 more calories and see where you are in a couple weeks.

^^What he said

I suspect your getting some extra calories from someplace your missing. (We all do it) You counting your fish oil? Weighing everything? You would be surprised how many times ill take a pre-packaged food item and find there is more food than is listed on the back. For example, last night I had a package of noodles from Schwann's that was listed at 2 servings (8.4oz) 240 calories. I weighed it out and it was actually 9.2oz....

[AAOBob]

Companies get a 20% leeway on calories listed vrs actual. This is important because some items are impossible to measure precisely. This also lets companies fudge it, so "diet" food which seems too good to be true often is (like arctic zero ice cream (think thats the name)).

Add in the ice cream above, they just flat out lied, they were 40-50% higher than listed. My sister who was losing weight at the time ate a pint a night, and was getting some 200 more calories than she counted.

When I had my BEST fat loss was when I was basically making all my own food (outside of the bread, which I weighed). I was taking my chicken sandwiches to lunch (with my own yogurt chippotle sauce rather than mayo), making my own dinners etc.

Do not rely on menu calories or package ones. Even doing this what I found was I needed 1500 to lose at 200lbs, which is "low" so odds are I was getting some extra calories I didn't realize despite my best efforts.

[TreeTrunkLegs]

Can you post up your exact diet my man?

[iamgrimm]

Thanks for all the recommendations. I have to agree, either MFP or myself is estimating something wrong on my food intake. I will drop my calories by 200 and see what happens.

MFP is likely also overestimating the calories burned from any cardio entered.
I started at 290 in Aug, and have been using MFP to get down to 208 today, but still got more work ahead of me. At Sedentary and -1.5 per week it has me at ~1650 cals per day, I do 40-50 mins of cardio per day (split into 20-25 min sessions) right now usually stairs at home, elliptical or stairmaster in the gym. MFP calculates that I burn approx 426 cals in 30 mins of stairs/elliptical work. This could be accurate, but in relation to what the machine with the heart monitor is telling me, it's about 100-150 cals too high. As such, I try to make sure I stay 200-300cals below what MFP tells me regardless of how much cardio I do. I also don't add my 'weight training' into the cardio portion of MFP. Those numbers will like be very inaccurate unless you're tracking your heart rate closely throughout your weight training. I figure whatever I burn lifting weights is just bonus, so I don't bother tracking it.

[blownsi]

All of this makes sense. The calories being off on packages, calories being overestimated on exercise in MFP, etc. The end result is that I am somehow eating maintenance. As for my diet it's your typical no soda, no alcohol, lean proteins, veggies, etc with a dose of packaged food thrown in when necessary. It's far from bodybuilder clean but nothing like what I used to eat. I'll see what the 200c/day drop in MFP does for the next few weeks and then go from there. I will also take note of package sizes versus label, etc and try going by HRM cals burned during workouts instead of MFP.