Oh I can do exactly zero push-up… It doesn’t mean I don’t lift bigger and bigger (still tiny, of course, like 9kg dumbbells for biceps) weights when I do my upper body workout. I started with what, 3.25kg? I don’t remember but it was super light. By the way, I started with chest exercises using my 3.25kg dumbbells too 
And 2kg for triceps 
I was weak as a kitten! I still am. But my biceps look better and that’s what I care about.
If something requires core strength, I am the absolute worst. If I try plank, I collapse after 5 seconds. It actually started to bother me so I try to do something about it. Not easy as I am too weak to do the helping exercises… Well fine, I can do them for a few seconds, hopefully that will help… (Sometimes I am amazed I can walk without any core strength whatsoever.)
Increasing weight, stuck in same weights going on 2 years
I agree with this because I’ve been on MFP for years, and never lost any weight until I quit trying to figure all that detail out, and just started walking, and eating normal foods (before keto). I lost 20 lbs, and gained it all back slowly but surely when I quit walking as much, and was still eating all the carbs, especially M&M Caramels, potato chips etc. When I found Keto I found a sustainable diet I didn’t even need to exercise to lose weight and I was, but got concerned about muscle and feeling better in general, so I took of walking again, and added in weight-training and haven’t looked back so far
I don’t count calories, I eat when I’m hungry, and I am watching this old 70 year old body shape up better. Yesterday at the gym, I was telling a young couple about a bbq for seniors I’ve decided to go to, and one of my “men friends” down there said “hah, Denise refers to herself as a senior but we don’t believe her” 
Well, some days my age is glaringly apparent to me anyway 
I still can’t do a pull-up but going to try at some point. My body feels like a bag of rocks when I try them.
Yes, we are all different in some ways for sure. I don’t expect I’ll ever be able to lift a car off someone trapped, but maybe that will be if God or one of His angels intervenes
True, but for me, just staying active is exercise as well as a challenge of pursuing quality of life Before retirement I had a lot of challenges and I think they made me stronger, I started feeling weak when I got away from challenges, so I still say thank God for my T2 that got me into Keto! I think it’s absolutely worked miracles for me and my health.
I often have similar thoughts but it was me not being able to lose fat on low-carb anymore. Not like keto helped anything with that but my body definitely liked the lowering of carbs (and I will lose fat eventually. after a few years on/off carnivore I feel I know the method, I just need to stuck to it).
And for a long, as healthy as possible life and feeling quite well (it’s not exactly the same as being healthy) exercise is vital, I am very sure. Especially for me, I am super low energy without exercise, I NEED it.
Sometimes it’s good we are almost forced to make some changes. Maybe we still would happily eat more or less wrong, making things worse in the long run…
I’ll be the first to admit I know nothing about MacroFactor, nor do I know what TDEE stands for.
But the calorie in/calorie out model is a dead end. If that’s not what MacroFactor is about, then ignore my ill-informed ramblings.
Exercise is an essential way to preserve and improve health, as I can attest based on daily workouts for over 30 years. But it remains a meager way to lose weight.
Definitely true that weight loss is primarily, overwhelmingly, down to diet.
I’d have to run for something like 45minutes to counter the calorific intake of a medium chocolate bar. Not that I eat choc bars anymore.
That said, as I think both yourself and Ifod are alluding to, the health rewards of staying active and fit are immeasurable (even if you are fat!).
Another factor, in general, those who put a lot of effort into their fitness regime will also be very astute with their diets too. You want to feel good and healthy? Watch your diet and stay active.
Really good for mental health too. But of course, i’m preaching to the converted here!
Yeah, TDEE was real popular on Myfitnesspal and it didn’t work for me, it just stressed me out. TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure, and you were supposed to calculate that, then figure in your total calories “in”. Then if you needed x amount of calories to match your energy expenditure, you would eat that many calories and more to gain weight, or less than that to lose weight.
So glad I’m not stuck in that loop anymore.
Yeah, so “TDEE” sounds like it’s just another framework based on a complete misunderstanding of what a calorie actually represents.
There are several definitions of calorie in use. But it mostly comes down to how much energy is needed to increase 1 kg of H2O by 1 degree C.
Not surprisingly, that’s a pretty useless metric when it comes to understanding how one’s diet affects health, weight, muscle strength, cardio fitness, etc.
More specifically, this is how the “caloric content” of food (i.e., the number that goes on the food label) is actually determined in the lab:
Inside a “calorimeter” chamber, food in a sealed container surrounded by water is fully combusted to ash. The amount of heat given off into the surrounding H2O is recorded as this represents the (now burnt) food’s original caloric content.
So now ask yourself: Does your body turn anything into ash? If it did, how relevant to your health would the amount of heat given off by such combustion be to your health and well-being?
So, yeah.
Notwithstanding the widespread use of “calories” in the marketing of food, the caloric model simply misses the point of eating and/or exercising in the first place.
There are no useful insights to be gleaned about healthful eating or the benefits of physical exercise from such simple minded rubbish. Unless you are engineering materials for explosives or comparing jet fuels, ignore “calories” wherever they may otherwise appear. 
I have a friend at the gym that could benefit so much from a keto, especially, a Carnivore diet as he has had injuries from being very athletic. His body looks buff and muscled, more so than anyone else at the gym and he’s now close to 60. He’s shared with me the pain he has, and some surgeries but he doesn’t want to know about Keto, I mean he doesn’t ask me more about it. I believe an anti-imflammatory diet would help him so much but one of his regular meals is down at a sort of chuck-wagon in town that includes meat but he’s nuts about rice with that.
Thanks Karen, missed your post earlier I don’t have any of myself when I first started, wish I would have, I can see the improvement, but I am planning on taking one for my self to see further improvement for sure I’ll check out Tara and thank you so much, Denise! PS I am determined to build muscle enough to where I don’t look so skinny. My skinny jeans looked pretty good when I was fat, LOL, but not anymore, won’t even where them. But I’m gaining muscle, so pretty happy about that and what I’ve learned here
I did super good yesterday and did move my weight up after 2 sets of making that 3rd one easy enough to try more. Did it to the same reps, and struggled but barely made the last rep so I felt I progressed a little, and was sure to go slower. I did my floor exercises at home, those are going good, especially the Bird Dog, I’m gaining a lot more balance. I thought I would never do so well but was fooling myself
I didn’t see your post either Shannon, apologies, but I’ll reply now. For me, I’m used to being alone in all I do so it’s comfy for me to push myself, plus knowing there are people around that see me (at gym, walking at the beach drive), I would have too much pride/ego to sluff off so I work out harder all the time. I didn’t even want to sweat, or grunt too loud, still don’t like to grunt unless it’s that last rep
I don’t pay attention to “numbers” like calories, and energy expenditure. I just get in an hour or two of gym or walk, but if I could do an all day activity like a hike, then I would want to go with others. I eat until I am full, or as @PaulL taught me, eat til satiety, or, until I don’t want to eat another bite.
But whatever works for you a this time is aok, as I’ve learned as I go, especially from the mistakes I’ve made. We sound a lot alike, Denise
I did add a new exercise I forgot to mention, Dead Lifts. I have trouble getting the form but my buddy Roger showed me the right form, and I am practicing that with light hand weights to start.
Going over now Karen to check out Tara. I’ll let you know what I think about it
It’s impossible to calculate though. We can’t calculate our energy need, not even our base one, it’s not how human works. We can just guess something and it’s either close to reality or not.
And of course our BMR changes too, it’s not only unknown, it won’t necessarily stay put…
And we have our fun things… I won’t gain weight just because I eat 600 kcal more, not even if it’s sugar…
CICO still in effect for everyone but it’s very complex. Some of us still can make educated guesses. (Or just eat as little as we can if it suits us like it did in my case. I still ate too much but I rarely overate, it’s something.) In other cases it’s useless.
I saw people sticking to (usually super tiny) macros they got from calculators or by themselves, it was painful to see sometimes… “Oh I am so hungry and some milk would be help with sleep anyway - but I only have 2g fat and 0 carbs left so I will just starve.” That one was memorable. They didn’t use the word starving, that’s mine.
This is great! Go girl! You are my role model, did I say that already? I might have.
TDEE is total daily energy expenditure.
It is, and it’s not. Really not a dead end, but like every single measure we have whether it be calories, blood sugar, hormone levels, ketone levels, scale weight. They all matter, but not any single one of them can be used all by themselves to make real desicions.
The difference between trackers like MacroFactor and say Cronometer would be when you start out, it makes the initial guess of your macros based on the average of people by your weight, height, age, gender etc. Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s way the hell off. Once that happens, people just run with it and expect it to “just work”, which for some it does, and for way more people it doesn’t.
Take me, when every macro guesser (calculator) figured me out back when I had trashed my metabolic rate, they all had me eating about 1000cals more than I could actually deal with, and I wouldn’t lose, and that (was) a dead end, because the guess was wrong.
MacroFactor is set up with your WOE, whether Keto, Low Carb, High Carb, High or low protein and comes up with it’s numbers, then you set your goal whether it be gain, lose, maintain etc. As you track and weight in daily (ideally), it watches your scale weight, and it’s fluctuations, it uses AI to determine your normal fluctuations, so it doesn’t overreact and make decisions it shouldn’t and starts to determine whether the plan you’re on is working for your goal, if it decides it’s not, it’ll start adjusting your macros within line of your selected WOE or macro %'s slowly until it starts seeing the trend line move in the right direction. So if you have a huge day or two of eating, or under eat here and there, it won’t change it’s advice because it’ll be recognized as a simple fluctuation and only makes changes based on trends and not the day-to-day up and down. Literally, what we always tell people to take into consideration and not go nuts because they ate at a restaurant and gained a transient 5lbs that’s not really fat.
So the nitpicks of CICO not being perfect don’t matter, as the decisions are being made based on what your actual metabolism is doing in real life, not just saying eat this and it’ll work. When I had to rebuild my metabolism with reverse dieting for over a year, if I had MF then, it would have been effortless vs what I had to do.