Gaining weight on a strict diet

I keep it under or around 1300 calories daily. 6-7 days a week my workout is
15 min stretch
30 minute cycle of body weight workouts at a high intensity
45-60 minute jog, swim, or bike ride, depending on my mood.

The workouts I do nearly match my calorie intake, and I walk wherever I can. Plus all the calories I burn in other daily activities.

So why have I gained 5 pounds in the 2 weeks I have been doing this diet? The math doesn't make sense unless I am photosynthesizing.

Couple of things to check: are you creating TOO large a calorie deficit? For your weight and your activity level, your stated intake seems drastically low to me.

Also, the one day you have food logging info makes my heart hurt. You need to feed your body with actual food with real nutrition. I'm a big fan of treats, but dang! With the deficits you're describing, your body needs some actual fuel. It's possible that you've gone overboard (too little nutrition to feed that much activity) and your body is fighting back.

5lb could normally be easily explained away (muscle gain, water retention, food still in your system) but in this particular case I'd guess you need to actually up your calories with some good old fashioned real food.

Or maybe that photosynthesizing thing.

Just my $0.02!

Because based on your food journal you eat 1300 calories of pizza and chili fries.

I agree with Lisa, looking at your one day of food intake makes my heart hurt.

With that said, I am not sure if you are a woman, but you could be around your cycle. Other options are that you are over estimating how many calories you are burning when you work out and that you are underestimating how many calories you take in. If you are really eating things similar to the one day you logged, I would say its the latter.

Ha, my diet philosophy is something like "if I eat healthy stuff I will probably cheat and eat junk food. If I just eat small amounts of junk food what am I going to do? cheat and eat a salad?" I am used to eating whatever I want and not gaining weight, but I am at that golden age where my metabolism is slowing down.

Definitely still working on developing a working diet, but I am a big fan of the exercise routine I have. There is a lot of room to change it based on how I feel that day, and it is about the same calories/hr as long as I follow the guidelines I posted. I wake up every morning definitely feeling it.

I can't imagine how much water you are retaining with all that sodium in your diet. Cut half of that out and increase your water and you will probably drop that 5 immediately.

What is it that makes pizza and chili fries bad for weight loss? bread, potatoes, tomato, meat. other than cheese aren't these things safe for diets? I thought the risk was in eating too much of it because it tastes so darn good. If you make it a point not to over eat them shouldn't these things actually be healthy?

With your diet philosophy you will yoyo diet. Believe me. I never use to gain weight, I would eat in n out twice in a day and not see a lb added. However what I have learned is that its about health. Its about providing your body nutrients to repair cells and keep you operating. Gaining fat is just one way your body is telling you that you are not healthy. Not everyone's body tells them these things, but your body is starting to tell you that you need to eat better. If you choose to eat junk food FS is probably not the best place to get advice.

If you were making these items from scratch maybe you could get away with this statement. If you were making these ingredients that are natural for your body to digest, maybe I would agree with you. But I highly doubt that is the case, in which I highly suggest you arm yourself with some knowledge.

It is a lot to learn! I thought it was a simple matter of burning more calories throughout the day than you ate. Thank you for the input.

NO. The "a calorie is a calorie" theory is flat out wrong. The only reason the kCal is the universal measurement for nutrition is that in the early days of nutrition it was the cheapest easiest thing to measure, and when you have a strict budget and a 500+ sample size, you use the easiest to measure variable.

While it is true that the basic formula is "energy used - energy intake=Total energy" This is a gross over simplification that does not take into account how your diet affects hormone levels, vitamin deficiencies, etc.

There is no end-all, be-all diet that is perfect for everyone. At the end of the day the perfect diet is the one that works best for you, but I'm telling you right now the you're on clearly does not work for you, nor would it work for anyone. It's unhealthy and unsustainable. If willpower is the issue try to gradually swap things out. instead of chili fries, get some sweet potatoes slice them thin drizzle with olive oil and roast them in the oven. If the issue is hunger up your protein, it'll increase satiety and you'll feel fuller all day. There are many paths to health, you need to find the right one for you.

High Five Sbutler!

Thank you Sbutler. Kanan I wish you were more patient with somebody new to the website.

Just quickly reading through the posts, and not sure that anyone was inpatient with you, to be honest. I know exactly why my gain of 800gms happened this week, unhealthy calories! I exercise a similar routine to yours and watch what I eat. I noticed that in your food diary that I saw, you eat a lot of carb, and fat. Knock those on the head, and you will see a difference! Lots of protein, less fat, less carb, most nutrients from vegetables. Seriously, it's only hard if you start analyzing why you feel deprived!

sbutler is saying some truth. If you really do expend more calories than you eat, you will lose weight, guaranteed. The problem is while it's relatively easy to determine how much you are consuming, it's at best a guessing game on how much you are really expending.

Metabolism varies significantly from person to person, exercise/calorie calculators are full of s##t and it's easy to push your body into a nutrient deficit that will cause it to slow your metabolism. That nutrient deficit may be pure calories, or it may be simply eating the kinds of things that mess with your blood chemistry which can alter your metabolism.

For example, I've been told drinking diet sodas will cause your blood to acidify, which means your body has to compensate which in turn messes with your thyroid which in turn slows down your metabolism.

Eating pizza and chili fries (and similar junk food) as the staple of your diet is going to cause you to be deficient in protein, which is the most important macro-nutrient when you're doing a heavy workout program and also completely deficient on many important micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals) -- and taking a mufti-vitamin isn't going to make it all better.


I think it's also possible you are eating too little and causing your metabolism to plummet. If you are male and average height, you should be eating at least 2600/ca a day with the routine you are describing. I you are _really_ doing 1300 ca workout and only eating the same amount, you're creating a massive calorie deficit (probably 2500+ calories based on your weight) which means your body is shutting down, just like a fire that has no fuel. At the very most, you want to aim for 1500ca/day deficit, and that's considered extreme and _dangerous_ my a lot of medical professionals. A health target is 500-1000/day (or 1-2 lbs a week).

Ya gotta eat, and like everyone else said eat RIGHT. Some basics:


Your daily calorie intake should be divvied up like this:

Assuming you are male of average height and taking into account your workout plan, you should be eating at least 2600ca/day (which would give you a ~1000ca/day deficit), and the balance of macro nutrients should be about: 50% from carbs, 30% from protein, 20% from fat. If you eat _healthy_ (unsaturated and poly-unsaturated) fats like nuts, beans, legumes, vegetable oils, etc. you can go higher in the fat category but that also means a lot less "volume" of food since fat is very calorie dense.

Again if you are male of average height and around 35, here's a breakdown of your metabolic needs:

BMR (calories needed just to stay alive): 2100ca/day
Calories needed for basic daily acitvities (cooking, eating, couch potatoing): ~200ca/day
Calories needed for daily exercise of 1300 calories: 1300ca/day

Total calories to maintain weight: 3600ca/day

Desired weight loss: 2 lb/week (max safe) == 1,000ca/day

Calories to eat/day: 3600-1000 = 2600.
Absolute minimum (likely unhealthy and likely counter productive): 2100ca/day

Now the above is only a starting point (like I said, all people are different), and I've guessed on a few important things (gender, height, age).

When I started my diet plan "for real" in January, I visited a dietician and a persona trainer and they both agreed that for me (male, 32, 6'4", 270lb at the time) that 2,000ca/day was an absolute minimum coupled with 5 days a week of moderate exercise (6-800 ca workouts or so) for a daily deficit of around 1,000ca/day. I've been following that plan, poorly (due to work travel, family emergencies, etc.), for three months and have lost 25+ lbs. If I had been following it well I probably would have lost 30-35 instead.

All without starving myself and including 1 day/week of "binge" eating where I eat whatever the hell I want: pizza, eggs, sausage and pancakes, etc.