CrossFit Newbie Trying to Lose Body Fat. Am I eating too much?

O

oneiric1975

New member
OK so 12 days ago I decided to join a local CrossFit gym in an effort to finally shed this weight. I am a 27-year-old female, I am 5’5 in height and I weigh 269 pounds as of today (the day I started I was 274).

A while back (about 3 1/2 years ago) I was my highest weight of 323 pounds and I did keto for 1 & 1/2 years and lost about 96 pounds but then with the pandemic, I gained back about 43. I have a very sedentary job and was able to lose all that weight through diet alone, since I never was able to stick to the gym.

I’ve tried losing the weight that I’ve been putting on, but nothing was working and my body was no longer shocked by keto, and I felt like nothing I did would move the scale.

So I decided to join a CrossFit gym very close to my house and essentially we are doing a beginners Boot Camp that is eight weeks long and the Boot Camp is three days a week in person and one workout at home. However, I go to the gym on Sunday and do the at home workout there. Otherwise, it wouldn’t get done in my own house.

I have given myself a caloric budget of 1,816 cal per day but I wear my Apple Watch which tracks my heart rate and calories throughout the day and it tracks my calories burned during my workout. I feel like the calorie estimations on the watch are pretty high granted, I am a bigger person, so I do burn more calories, but the thought that I burned almost 3700 cal in one day seems like a lot and I’m scared to align my eating based on these figures. however, in the same respect, I’m nervous that I am underestimating the amount of energy I expend and potentially am I under eating, which is causing me to hold onto weight? I am eating more than 1800 cal but that’s because I am moving more and I’m getting more of a calorie bonus from my watch but my net calories are significantly lower than my 1800 cal goal but I just feel like eating 2700 cal when I’m trying to lose weight makes no sense.

Below is a chart of all the food. I’ve eaten this week because I’ve tracked everything that’s gone into my mouth. Maybe someone has nothing to do and wouldn’t mind analyzing the numbers below to see if any of it makes sense. I guess the bottom line is how accurate and “Bible” are the calorie estimations from the Apple Watch?

Week of Sep 19

Code: 
Budget  Food. Exer.     Net      +/-
1,816   1,989   1,015   974  -842
1,816   2,038   1,252  786. -1,030
1,816   2,051   717   1,334 -482
1,816   2,145   992   1,153 -663
1,816   2,297   752     1,545    -271
1,816   2,847   1,438. 1,409  -407
1,816   2,380   819       1,561  -255

                  Fat (g)   Carb (g)    Prot (g)

Totals 675 1,231 1,231

Daily Avg 96 175 175

Percent 38% 31% 31%
 
@oneiric1975 Loosing 5lb in 12 days suggests you’re not eating too much. Keep doing what you’re doing for another 4 weeks, see where your rate of loss settles as the first week usually isn’t representative. Readjust then. Don’t listen to your activity tracker calorie count.
 
@oneiric1975 Seems like you’re trending in the right direction! I wouldn’t count on any kind of wearable for calorie counting. I wear an Apple Watch and a Whoop and they never come close to telling me the same calorie burn per day. Don’t pay attention to it. Maybe aim for a caloric range per day - between 1800-2000 calories per day. Increase your protein intake. With CrossFit you are going to build muscle and you want that! Lean muscle is going to help your calorie burn at rest and it’s worth building up. I’d aim for 120-130g per day if you’re at around 2000 cals per day. As others have mentioned, weight loss is coming from a calorie deficit. The easiest way to achieve that is with food. We never burn as much exercising as we think we do. Something that really helped me was divorcing myself from thinking of CrossFit or any exercise as calories burned. Instead I thought about my performance gains - how’s my endurance, how’s my lifting, etc. Exercise because it’s good for your body and your mental health. Focus on nutrition for weight loss. Good luck, sounds like you’re on the right path!!
 
@oneiric1975 CrossFit is a great mode of exercise for getting in shape.

Losing weight is always going to be about eating less calories then you consume. Watches are notoriously bad at estimating calorie burned. To the point they are unusable.

Find a tdee calculator online. Set it for sedentary. Then cutting. Aim for those calories. If your doing CrossFit and hitting those calories. You should expect to see about a pound of weight loss per week. Some weeks could be down 3 lbs. others up a pound. Sometimes it could not move for a while. Just keep at.

I would keep track of steps. Whatever your at. Add 50% a day to the total. After a few weeks. Add another 50%.

It took a long time to get there. It will take a long time to get it all off.
 
@oneiric1975 Don’t eat more on days you workout. Don’t eat back your “exercise calories”. Keep tracking your food intake. You have lost 5 lbs in 12 days which is great progress already.

Sustainable weight loss takes time. Like 1-2 lbs per week weight loss (though at the start it’s often more, especially if you have more to lose)

It should take just as long as it took you to put it on, if not a lot longer. If you lose too fast from “shocking your body/starving yourself” instead of building healthy habits, the weight will just come back.
 
@oneiric1975 So you just started CrossFit 12 days ago. That's a BIG life change. Why not just focus on sticking with that for the next 3 months and don't worry too much about your diet?

Will you need to work on your diet eventually? Yes. But too much change all at once is not the path to success. Get the exercise habit dialed in - its soooo much more fun than working on diet and so much more rewarding.

Long term is the name of the game here. You know that from the yo yoing with keto, right?
 
@oneiric1975 Your TDEE is around 2300 calories. -500 and you're at 1800calories.

You should be around 1800 calories to lose a lb a week.

Calories in vs Calories out. You can't outexercise a bad diet.

All fitness trackers extremely over estimate the amount of calories you burn working out.
 
@oneiric1975 I recommend using CF as a catalyst to getting healthy. Or that is what I did, at least. Focus on having as much fun as you can, and not getting hurt. Because consistency and longevity are what matter for pursuing health. (You probably won’t stick it out too too long if you don’t enjoy it some. Or at least that is always the case with me. And getting injured stops everything in its tracks. Also it sucks to get hurt .)

If you also focus on your diet, you’ll probably see lasting results in the long run that you can keep up if you stay consistent.

I’m not saying it is easy but I firmly believe the best diet in the world, hands down, is the one you can keep up to live a healthy life.

I personally like Intermittent Fasting and eating real foods. Gin Stephen’s book “East. Fast. Repeat.” Is a good book to understand and encourage. Also Michael Pollen’s book Food Rules (really short) is brilliant and super helpful.

Hopefully that is helpful and you totally can do this! Seriously you can do it!!!!

Also walking every day or on non gym days is probably the easiest way to shed pounds and is super healthy, especially if you sit in front of a computer all day (I do). Shooting for 10k steps a day is what folks say. Or work your way up to it over some months. Only problem is 10k steps takes a while and is no fun in bad weather. I’d go as far to say regular walking is better than CF for long term health; probably stretching too, but at least consistent movement of the body.
 
@oneiric1975 5 lbs in 12 days is a good loss rate. The scale will be fluctuating if you are introducing weight training as some months you will gain muscle weight while losing fat. Honestly, my experience is to not bite off more than you can chew. You seem to be going hard in your diet and workouts without establishing either of them first. Some people have great success with this, I never have. To each their own. Imo working out should never be viewed as a way of losing weight. There are so many other benefits than burning calories. So I encourage you to change your thought process about working out and have it not associated with weight loss "success" or "failure". Weight loss is all about a calorie deficit which is more easily controlled by food intake instead of energy expenditure. It's way easier "burning" 2000 calories a week by swapping oil for water when cooking than adding several hours of running into your week.

Because it's all about calorie deficit, I often like to eat and calculate a day of eating when I am maintaining my weight. My rule is to aim for 300-500 calories a day less if I'm hoping to lose weight. When I plateau, I readjust. If you maintained your weight eating say 3,000cal/day you definitely don't need to be dropping to nearly half your typical intake to lose weight. 300 less calories a day is 2100 calories less a week and so on and so forth. Food consistency = 🗝️

All the best to you on your journey and I hope you enjoy the process and see the results you are hoping for.
 
@oneiric1975 I know it’s basically impossible, but don’t worry about weight loss. Turn up to CrossFit every day. Eat enough that you have the energy to do it. Repeat.

You need to be thinking a couple years out, not months. Every day you work out, you get a little better.
 
@oneiric1975 You are eating too much. By a lot. Most at my gym that are losing weight are weighing their food and closely counting macros. Most are using something like noom or a nutritionist to help with the psychological side of over eating.

The first time I weighed my food and monitored calories closely I found that I was over MyFitness Pal estimates by a good 20% on a consistent basis. So when I was estimating 2500 calories I was over 3000. It is even harder with HIIT like CrossFit because you will be hungry all the time. Also, don’t forget calories from alcohol, it this applies, it is a LOT more calories than you might think. For women especially that are told 2 glasses of wine won’t have a big impact will see this. 2 glasses of wine can be a lot more than the claimed ~150 if they are heavy pours, 5 oz is much less than you think. So what you thought was two glasses at ~300 calories can easily be 500-700 calories. Same goes for beer.

It will take you about 2 months to see significant sustainable weight loss with CrossFit. You will gain a lot of muscle and water weight while losing fat, but your weight will likely stay the same or decrease slowly.

It is also very hard balancing nutrition for athletic performance with that of weight loss, so you will have to likely trade off one for the other.
 
@evyjo This. Wine is one that really sneaks up on you. A serving of wine vs what you pour, and then people tend to just say "Oh it's wine, and it's good for your heart!"

Giving up alcohol helped me drop a lot of weight surprisingly fast.
 
@dawn16 I stopped drinking too. Lost 10 lbs in less than 6 weeks combined with CrossFit and cycling. A couple of heavy pours of wine or some gin and tonics creep up on you over the long haul.

The other diet killer that I didn’t mention is snacks. When you go to the store do not buy any pre-packaged foods. No chips, no pretzels, nothing. If it comes in a package, you don’t need it and don’t buy it. Keep lots of water and fruits/veggies around for snacks. By the time you use raw fruits, veggies and meats to make something, you won’t down 400 calories of junk foot in three handfuls. Or eating an apple takes much longer than chips and is far better for you. Carrots, even better. Banana, great, still sweet, but takes longer to eat.
 
@oneiric1975 Crossfit makes you gain serious muscle mass. You may be losing fat but gaining muscle concurrently, which would mean not a lot of scale movement. However, you will see that change and as your muscle mass gets to an equilibrium with your workouts, the fat will continue to burn off. Keep rolling with it. Crossfit is dope.
 
@oneiric1975 To answer your bottom line: the caloric estimations from devices like Apple Watches and whoops are wildly inaccurate. I would ignore it completely.

You should not be subtracting calories burned or using a net value like you show in your log. You only need to be worrying about your calorie/macro goal and hitting it consistently. Do not subtract ‘calories burned’. Ever. 4 workouts/week sounds like it’s perfect for you to achieve your goals, which is awesome! But it’s not so much exercise that you need to be concerned about replenishing those calories.

Looking at your log.. every day you ate in excess of your goal. yet your log the way it is has it seem like it’s ok because your nets are all showing negatives. That’s inaccurate, and could be slowing your progress. Now I don’t know anything about your body composition, so I can’t give you hard answers about what an appropriate calorie goal would be, but no matter what the number, you should not be factoring in calories burned and eating over your goal like you currently are.

I think it’s awesome you’re dedicated to this process, kudos to you for doing the damn thing and keep it up!!
 
@oneiric1975 To calculate the maximum amount of body fat your body can lose in a single day You can determine how many calories are required to sustain your current weight. If for example, you needed 3,500 calories per day to sustain your current weight, which is a lot of calories in a day, then the maximum weight in fat that you could lose in a single day would be 1 lb. The only way to lose more weight than the amount of fat possible that you can lose per day is if you lose additional water weight, which is very easy to do when you begin working out or begin to change your diet. Over time that should balance out and you should not be able to lose more than 2 lb of fat per week. Although at your level you may be able to lose between 2 and 4 lb of fat per week for a month or two. 2 lb a week may not sound like a lot, but it takes up a lot of space probably more than you realize and the results will pay off quickly. If you just reduce the amount of calories you consume each day and then make sure it at least 40% of those are filled by protein, You will reach your goal sooner than you think.
 
@oneiric1975 In your position, I'd be tempted to simplify this process, especially as fitness watches tend to overestimate calories burned during exercise.

Keep doing CrossFit, and don't worry about how many calories that burns. It'll average out over weeks, so you can treat it as a constant.

Set a fixed calorie budget for the day, and let it go over on some days and under on others. Again, it'll average out over the weeks.

Weigh yourself fortnightly and see if things are going in the direction you want. If not, adjust calories accordingly
 
@oneiric1975 I know it can get frustrating, and you've seen what things like Keto do (you just gain it all back). That's the downside of stepping on the scale and calorie counting, it can be frustrating because it's slow. FWIW, just don't even count the "calories" from your watch. Forget that, just chalk that up to "deficit".

The other thing is to watch out for the little things. A bite here, a cheat there. We tend to underestimate how much that adds up to. When tracking calories, I tend to only count the meals and planned snacks, but not the handful of chips in passing, or the piece of candy I sneak one afternoon. You get into a mindset where you put those out of mind, but they add up. I don't think it's something people do on purpose, it just gets frustrating tracking everything, but it's especially frustrating when you don't see progress and you think you've been tracking everything, but you haven't really.

For me the wake up call was when I was exercising my ass off and eating whole food meals and I went in for my physical thinking I was Superman and my blood test came back with a scary high LDL. I couldn't believe it! But then I started really thinking about all the things I put in my mouth that I wasn't keeping track of and it started to make sense.
 
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