Am I not getting enough?

[The Forager]

Further to my prior thread, someone had asked me how many calories I get her day. I log my food on fitday, and more or less, I get around 1300 per day. I also do about a half hour of cardio every other day.

Even with low calories and exercise, some days I wake up without losing weight or even gaining half a pound. I don't get it. The math doesn't add up.

What am I doing wrong?

[MysticTree]

not eating enough.

People get hung up on the whole calorie thing. Eat more. Your body thinks it's starving and so is conserving every calorie it gets. Just eat 100% raw food and drink enough water/juice. Exercise. Don't count calories.

[GreginND]

Without more information it is hard to comment. How much do you weigh now? How carefully are you tracking calories? Are there other health issues that might be slowing your metabolism? (thyroid) Are you getting enough calories? (Your body adjusts to lower calories over time by slowing your metabolism) You can try upping your calories to 1800 or so for a week and see if it helps boost your metabolism. Try adding more calorie dense foods to your diet such as fruits, nuts, avocados, etc.

[RawnieColeman]

Depends on how much you weigh, and how much of that weight is either muscle or fat. People with more muscle require more calories, as fat is basically a 'dead' tissue and requires no energy.

A common suggestion is to find your maintenance number, and subtract about 500 from that. I personally find that formula to be too conservative. At that rate you will (on average) lose about a pound a week, when it's perfectly fine to adjust your cals to lose at a rate of 2-3 pounds a week.

Lotta people here subscribe to the philosophy of 'eat healthy and let the rest work itself out'. I followed that plan when I was big into the low carb thing, but I still find it useful to either weigh my food or track cals. You wanna kick your dependency on measuring things eventually, but it's very helpful to know what exactly 4oz of a certain type of food looks like when you palm it, and how many calories it's got.

Anyway, plateaus happen, your body isn't a line graph that will follow a straight line. Sometimes you retain water, sometimes voodoo happens and no matter what you do the scale wont budge. Also, it is better to measure your waist or use a fat caliper in conjunction with a scale. Sometimes you really do lose fat but the scale doesn't show it because water retention. You should give yourself a couple weeks before you call it a true plateau, and start messing with things. Diet's are not meant to be micromanaged on a day by day basis, stick with the plan and try to only weigh yourself once a week.

[The Forager]

Thanks guys.

As far as I know, no health issues. I weight 179 now after yesterday's binge (ha), and last I checked, my body fat was around 25% I think. Definitely more fat than muscle, though I'm trying to fix that. I track the calories nearly obsessively so I know the count is accurate. 1300 is the average but I hit 1500 a lot. I'll try upping it a bit.

[MysticTree]

this is what Alissa says ...

http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?4133-Consider-the-source...&p=36733#post36733