ARCHIVED Ask A Dietitian 2/21/13 - 2/7/14 Topic

Asunlovingmom 02/27/13 replied to Dietitian
Thanks!

Dietitian 02/28/13
Hi Everyone - I will be posting replies to all questions on Thursday!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD, CDE

Dietitian 02/28/13 replied to Dietitian
Hi Everyone - be sure to check out the nutrition articles on the main website (or via Library in your MyNetDiary app).
Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD, CDE

Meaganator 03/01/13 replied to Dietitian
Hi, I'm hoping you can help me figure out why I've stopped losing weight so early on in the process. I've been eating a "clean" diet, minimal processed foods and staying within my calorie goal. Also I've been doing 30-40 minutes of cardio about 3-4 times a week and rock climbing twice a week.

This was going great, but I have not lost anything for almost two weeks. I feel like its too early to plateau, I've only been doing this for a little over a month now and started plateauing 3 weeks in. I still have about 27 pounds to go! Please help!

Dietitian 03/02/13 replied to Meaganator
Hi Meaganator - the bottom line with a true weight stall is that you are not creating the calories deficit needed for weight loss. The error can come from many places.

Be sure to consider accuracy with calories intake and exercise calories burned. Here's an article to help you: http://www.mynetdiary.com/weight-plateau.html

If you want me to give you more speciific help, you can go into your Community Profile and change your Information Sharing settings to share data. Right now, I can't see much. Let me know when you change your settings if you want me to peek at your data.

And by the way, hydration affects body weight quite a bit. If folks really upramp their activity, there can also be an expected increase in body water if they hydrate properly.

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD, CDE

Nickyj 03/03/13 replied to Dietitian
Hi Kathy,

I have lots of trouble getting into the swing of regular strenuous exercising and I'm wondering if I'm recording all my ancillary exercise like cooking and shopping correctly. Should I be recording these when my activity level is usually sedentary?

Thanks!

â?¢ Nicky

Meaganator 03/04/13 replied to Dietitian
Thank you for your response Kathy!

I've changed my settings so you can get a better look at my information, please let me know if you see anything I could be doing wrong, I still have not seen any progress.

I read the article, I definitely do not think that I am making mistakes with measuring my calories, I've been measuring everything I eat pretty diligently.

It's possible that I could be miscalculating how many calories I burn since I don't have a heart rate monitor. But even with just estimating (based off of what is in the app and calories burned on the elliptical machine, etc.) I don't usually take in more calories than my set amount just because I exercise, I like getting the extra calorie deficit.

I don't do a good job of recording how much water I drink, is it possible that I am not drinking enough?

Dietitian 03/04/13 replied to Nickyj
Hi NickyJ, we use the Institute of Medicine's DRI equations to estimate energy expenditure. Sedentary as well as the higher activity levels all include activities of daily living, including incidental walking up to about a mile (2000 steps) so you do NOT need to log those types of activities. What confuses people is that the exercise database has tons of activities listed, including ones that MyNetDiary users do not have to log.

In case you haven't seen it, the calories article is helpful and has more info too: http://www.mynetdiary.com/customizing-calorie-goals.html

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD, CDE

Dietitian 03/04/13 replied to Meaganator
Hi Meaganator - I just looked at your data and I don't see anything that jumps out at me in terms of a potential source of error except for possibly a few things.

Hide "User Contributed" foods from view
I typically recommend going into your Account settings and choosing to turn off display of contributed foods so you only see Support's entered foods and your customized entered foods. That will decrease the likelihood of calories error from other member's custom-entered foods.

Ice Cream Error
I have come across this with my own light ice cream as well as helped a client once with a frozen yogurt issue. Most light ice creams will contain about 65 grams per 4 fl oz (1/2 cup) volume measure. If you eat the ice cream at home, then I would weigh your ice cream portions vs. scooping out a 1/2 cup. I discovered that I was consuming about 50% more calories than intended because my 1/2 cup measure was too "generous" and weighed a lot more than the 65 grams. I mention this because I noticed your "serving" is about 113 grams - which for most light ice creams would give you a calories closer 226 kcal vs. the 130 they list. I don't believe that 113 grams of light ice cream only provides 130 calories- that is not consistent with other light ice creams.

But besides those 2 issues, I don't see any other potential sources of error.

Keep on trying - the weight will come off. Let me know how it goes. I would NOT go lower in calories intake - your average is just a tad below 1200 kcal. I would avoid dipping below 1000 kcal - that is too low.

Did I give you the link to the calories article? Here it is: http://www.mynetdiary.com/customizing-calorie-goals.html

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD, CDE

Nickyj 03/04/13 replied to Dietitian
Thanks Kathy!

So if I'd like to include those exercises I should reduce my calorie goals to compensate?

Nickyj

ARCHIVED Ask A Dietitian 2/21/13 - 2/7/14