“Andy, everyone tells me my calories are too low, but I’m not losing weight.
I’m 6’2″, 200lbs, and I cycle 40 minutes to work and back each day, and I play tennis or hit the gym 6 days a week.
I’m consistently eating between 1800 to 2000 calories each day.
Am I eating too little? Or could it be a calorie counting mistake, even though I log everything in MyFitnessPal?”
This was an excellent question from a reader, Haris, and I wanted to share my answer…
Let’s immediately discard the “Am I eating too little?” part of this.
We don’t eat too little and our weight suddenly stops dropping.
Your body needs to get the energy from somewhere. This idea is called the “starvation mode myth.”
Now, at your weight, height, and activity levels, it’s true that the majority of people would lose weight on 1900 calories a day. But your weight is stable. So let’s ignore what “should normally” be, and focus on what is.
There are three possibilities:
- You’re logging incorrectly and you don’t realize it. This is very common. Make sure you are weighing everything and not eyeballing things.
- You’re logging your food correctly, but your app has the wrong calorie and macro numbers.
- You are eating what you think you are, but you’re an outlier, and you need to reduce calorie intake more than the average person.
All of these are possible, but if you are weighing everything when logging, then the second one is most likely.
This is the issue with MyFitnessPal, which you have said you are using. It relies on user-generated data, which introduces all sorts of errors. In fact, it’s a bit of a shit show.
I would another app with a verified database. The database will be smaller, but you know everything in there is accurate, and you don’t have 300 ways of entering a chicken breast.
I recommend MacroFactor. There is a small monthly fee, but it’s by far the best on the market. (Enter code “ripped” for an extended two-week free trial.)
Privacy policy.