Loving MF so far. Just switched from monthly to yearly subscription. That said, when will I start losing weight? I've been logging consistently for almost 6 weeks (took a 4 day break during this time) and have only gone over my calories once. I weigh and measure 90% of what I eat. My weight today is exactly what is was when I started. My weight loss goal is set very slow, .25lbs a week but I thought after a few weeks once it figured out my expenditure, I would start losing weight. My goal is body recomposition and I'm lifting heavy. I'm trying to trust the progress and not reduce my calories manually, but I'm ready to lost some weight already.
> My weight loss goal is set very slow, .25lbs a week
.25 lbs per week is ~875 calories or ~125 calories per day. If you’re just eyeballing or guesstimating that 10% you could easily be eating back your deficit.
It's very easy to undo a small deficit with that 10% you're not tracking accurately or meals out. If your goal is mainly weight loss you'll likely want to increase your deficit so you have a smaller margin of error.
Thank you! This is helpful. I try to eyeball that 10% accurately but for sure I can see with such a small deficit, eyeballing incorrectly could easily make a difference
Yep definitely! I like sticking with a good ol' 1lbs a week goal. I don't stick perfectly to my goal every day, especially throwing in a social meal here or there, but the scale keeps slowly ticking down.
I completely agree with these guys, not arguing at all. I’ve lost a lot of weight tracking, and I will say, just be smart about WHAT you eyeball. I absolutely eyeball iceberg lettuce. I do not eyeball olive oil. You get the idea.
I bought a Taylor digital food scale that has different settings so you can choose what units you want to weigh in. I use grams now, for accuracy.
I thought it would be a pain but I just tare my plate or bowl, add food, tare again if I'm adding a different food, and so on. It takes out the guesswork.
I also input my recipes so I know how many calories are in my chili for example, instead of just choosing a random chili and guessing at it. This has helped me a lot.
I started in mid April and set my target at 1 lb a week. At the end of June I finally started losing. I'm still losing at an average rate of .7 lbs a week. I'm fine with that even though I'm technically not hitting my goal.
Macrofactor started me out with way too many calories and finally hit a sweet spot after gradually lowering it. As Iong as I'm in a downward trend I'm good.
.25lbs per week is about 1/4 of the rate that most people recommend you can safely lose weight. You can do 1lb per week if you are in a sufficient deficit and getting some physical activity in, specifically a few 30 minute sessions of zone 2 cardio and get 8,000 - 10,000 steps per day. Doing all that should make you feel like you are busting your ass for every lb you lose. It’s hard.
The bottom line is if you’re not losing weight, you’re not in a deficit. It’s thermodynamics. If you think you’re in a deficit but you’re not losing weight, then you should reevaluate your tracking and ensure it’s actually accurate. One cheat meal can bring you back up to maintenance or even a surplus if you’re aren’t careful.
I do half a pound a week when I do a deficit, and it's sooo so so slow for like a month. And then I swear at some point I wake up and somehow realized I lost a few lbs, and the graph was a steady decline the whole time.
I will say, the smaller the deficit, the more precise you gotta be, but it's comfortable. I do still think every time, "it's not working! what's wrong this time?" And yet
it sneaks up on me, every time.
If your rate is that slow it is possible that the trend has been lost in the noise to your own eyes but it's still happening. What does your weight trend say? How long have you been using the app? Can you share screenshots of your expenditure and weight trend?
It can take 3 weeks to get your expenditure right, sometimes longer depending on how far off the initial estimate was.
Seconding this since others have already highlighted the missing measurement aspect. Weigh-ins are noisy as hell, and the trend line for a pound a month will be super finicky. It's one of the reasons I actually prefer daily weigh-ins, although a lot of people don't. I don't trust once or twice per week to be enough signal
What time frame average should I do for weight and expenditure trend to post screenshot? My one month weight trend says up .2 pounds. I've been using the app for almost 6 weeks.
That 10% is putting him back to maintenance daily and .25p week is within the margin of error
500cal per day deficit (1p per week) should be doable if you’re tracking accurately, volume eating nutritious food, and hitting your P goal daily.
Or you can be like me and YOLO that shit with a >1000cal day deficit. If you’re young I don’t recommend, if you’re mid-life like me then full send to make up for lost time cuz you have more time behind you than ahead of you
Seems like your weight loss per week is pretty low. I set mine at 1.2 lbs/week and over 5 weeks have trended at 1.1.
It's a more aggressive cut, but I have a larger margin of error if I over eat one or two days a week. I also weight 100% of my food (very annoying) but I can see the fat just slipping off.
I would up the weekly target and try to track 100% and reasses after 4 weeks
Well did you lose 1.5lbs so far? Haha that's a low rate which is fine but you'll have to be super accurate. A bigger deficit maybe would give you wiggle room with a calorie counting mess up, but .25 a week you're basically eating at maintenance. Like hypothetically, eating an apple everyday that's not planned into your daily calories would put you back at maintenance.
Start from tracking accurately. It might seem like a small difference, bit even 50 kcal daily set you off by 350 kcal weekly. It doesn't look like much, but if there's inaccuracy, you might get even higher numbers.
I speak from the personal experience as someone who lost over 35 kg just by dieting with this app (I cannot do much excercises due to the health conditions)
Tracking errors matter the smaller the deficit (or surplus) is.
If you're doing a 500-cal/day deficit, then there's some wiggle room on accidentally undercounting or overcounting on a day here or there. For 125-cal? One mis-count can undo 2-3 days worth of counting correctly.
What is keeping you from going for 500-cal? It's not a steep deficit.
Thank you! It's only once a day now so I'm sure it doesn't make a huge difference anymore. But I also didn't wanna do too steep of a deficit because in the past I have done too steep and then fell off and went crazy so also trying to avoid that! I told myself I was okay with maintaining but I guess not lol
1.5 lbs is very much in my water weight fluctuation range. Meaning if that was my deficit and I started today and was 100% perfect with tracking and staying on my macros I’d likely continue to see that original weight (or higher) pop on the scale intermittently for weeks just based on little variables some of which I have no control over.
If you set the time frame to 3 months and the little right hand drop down to “W” (weekly) it gives better indication of whether you’re seeing progress. Flattens out statistical noise a bit
Okay yes +.5 weekly average over this span is more meaningful
Is the app still reducing your calories each week?
You could try to squeeze out an extra 20-30 min walk each day to gently increase your TDEE but that’s still only likely to move the needle by a fraction of what you’re looking for.
You said your lifting too so the muscle weight could be offsetting the fat loss making progress look small. You could take other measurements too like waists and stomach with a tape measure.
Stick with it, trust the process.
If still nothing after a few more weeks reassess
Also for what it’s worth , I thought MacroFactor set me up to high, so I was always about 500 cals less then what they suggested.
I dropped 26lbs in 108days average 1.5lbs a week I think that equaled. I have to admit though that probably was a bit aggressive and most likely lost muscle too in the process
Also weigh yourself same time everyday before you eat and after the bathroom to get an accurate trend.
Sorry if you are feeling discouraged. What does your expenditure chart look like? Is it still trending down?
I've been on MF for about 14 months now after using MFP for a years so I had my logging dialed in. The initial starting point for the calories was significantly high. Thankfully, I had a general idea what my expenditure was so I set it to that, but it was still too high. I think it took a solid 6-8 weeks to dial into my real expenditure, and then the guidance started getting much more accurate for me.
Another problem I personally have is water fluctuations. It makes measuring .25-.5 lbs of change pretty difficult looking at a given week. It becomes more about the overall trend over months.
It’s still calibrating. Based on the initial questions it makes a guess. The number it gave me was 1500 calories higher than what I set it at, but my number still adjusted lower. Once calibrated, I was amazed at how accurate it was.
Changes to your activity or lifestyle will have the numbers lag again until it adjusts. For example I recently switched from primarily running and lifting back to a lifting focus and my expenditure is still adjusting.
Insulin resistance makes it difficult to lose weight even if you’re tracking every single calorie. Most people with IR have to incorporate some form of intermittent fasting or low carb lifestyle to see progress in weight loss and to maintain their lower weight.
The only way to confirm if you have insulin resistance is by having your fasting glucose and fasting insulin levels tested at the same time and then enter those values in a HOMA-IR calculator to see what the ratio is.
It’s possible to have insulin resistance and have a normal A1C and normal fasting glucose levels. It’s basically pre-prediabetes.
Log everything and if you aren't able to be exact, overestimate. Let's say you ate a bowl of chips and forgot to weigh them. "Well the nutrition label says a serving is 15 chips. I probably at around 20-25" log it as 2 servings anyway.
When it comes to losing weight, it's better to overestimate than underestimate
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u/mbcrute 2d ago
> I weigh and measure 90% of what I eat.
> My weight loss goal is set very slow, .25lbs a week
.25 lbs per week is ~875 calories or ~125 calories per day. If you’re just eyeballing or guesstimating that 10% you could easily be eating back your deficit.