Don't understand my lack of weight loss

[Fred-Clayjar]

Last week I went to Orlando for vacation. I did lots of walking. I was getting more than 20,000 steps most days. One day I did 27000 steps. I bought groceries and didn't eat out that much. Eating fruits, yogurt, sandwiches and the like. Usually I was taking in 1800 calories. But I lost no weight what so ever. I even gain a couple pounds. I am dumbfounded on why I didn't make any progress when I did so much exercise last week. 

[JenniferinFL]

Sounds like you hit up the theme parks. I'm local to Orlando and have annual passes, so, I feel I can weigh in on this a bit. 

I typically walk around 12000 steps in a typical day. When I do a Magic Kingdom day and walk 30,000 steps instead, I typically lose no weight until two days later. When you walk a lot more steps than usual, you retain fluid in your leg muscles while they recover. Usually, the scale ticks up for me the day after, ticks a little back down the following day and then finally returns to normal the day after that. Seems like spending time in a plane sitting could make that process even take another day. 

[MagsOnTheBeach]

Did you log and measure every bite lick and taste?  I find when I estimate calories I am off.

ITA with water retention in legs too.

[etvete]

I had a similar experience where I went on vacation last week and according to the scale I gained about 4 lbs over the week even though I know that I had a 1000 calorie deficit every day. However, I have also lost 2.5 lbs in the last two days since I got back and anticipate that I will continue to drop the remaining 1.5 quickly. My mom who was also on the trip had the same experience with weight gain but lost all 4 lbs that she gained the day after we got home.

Travel causes you to gain water weight due to the change in schedule, if you are exercising extra (which it sounds like you were), and your body not knowing what to expect. Give it a few days. More likely than not you will drop the extra pounds that you gained over vacation.

[Fred-Clayjar]

I did try my best to log in everything I ate since I didn't eat too much. I may be off by a couple hundred calories. I was burning more than 3000 calories a day and I wasn't eating too much except on one day that I ate some pizza. Probably is water retention in my legs, but I flew home on Sunday and it is now Wednesday. I was 140.5 when I left for vacation and I am now 142.2 lbs.

[Esya]

In that case that might just be what it is for this vacation. I assume you were losing weight before the vacation, so you should be able to get back to that now you are back. While it can be frustrating, a little bump in the weight loss road is normal.

[Fred-Clayjar]

Thanks. I have been dieting and exercising since February. Yesterday I did lose some weight and reached my goal. I guess it was water weight from all that walking that lasted a week. But overall I have been losing weight and my waist size went down from 34" to 31".

[rachiti · Accepted solution]

Do you have a Fitbit Aria or other scale which does percentage body fat?  If not, then you can't tell if you didn't lose as much fat as you gained muscle - which would cancel each other out.  Also, for some people it has to be more than just a mere week for your body to adapt to the changes you've made.  For me personally, it takes a full month to see my weight loss...if I look at a single week it doesn't show up accurately...but if I look at it in month or two month snapshots, my hard work really shows up.  Keep up the good work and things will start to be more noticeable.