HELP- Scales not moving

[Rooke2018]

Help Needed please:

I'm a 28 year old female looking for advice! I have set myself a daily target of 1200 calories, I drink 3600ml + of water a day, and exercise (mainly cardio and body weight resistance training) 4 times a week, where I burn between 180 and 360 calories every time.

My fitness pal (at the end of every day) has told me that in 5 weeks i will be between 9st 5lbs and 9st 8lbs and my FITBIT tells me I have a calorie deficit of -1000 a day... and yet I haven't lost ANYTHING in two weeks? Scales have stayed the same...

Always within my Carb/Protein/Fibre ratios and have even recently lowered my carb intake and up'd my protein.

A bit lost and a little frustrated so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tori

Note: I am currently 10st 2lbs and 5ft 6"

[BFFF]

Hey Tori! I spent years thinking 1200 calories would get me to my ideal body composition; it won’t promise! In my latest attempt to lose weight, I increased my calories to 1600. Stay away from processed junk. If it comes in a box, it’s processed. I am also doing more intense workouts for less time. You do not need to spend more than an hour in the gym. A daily workout for me looks like strength training for 30 minutes and hiit cardio at the END of the workout. Strength training will deplete your glycogen stores (stored energy from carbs) then your cardio will be more effective at tapping into your fat stores once glycogen is depleted. I love my current hiit stairmaster finisher. It’s super simple: step on level 8 (or wherever your beginning level feel slow to moderate) 2 minutes then up to 12 or 14 for one minute. Do this for 20 minutes and you will be sweating!

Good luck!!

[BFFF]

Also, if you’re in to podcasts, I’ve learned a lot from Brian Keane! He has a sexy Irish accent and he’s extremely knowledgeable!

[Rooke2018]

Thank you for your reply. All of my gym sessions are HIIT based or spinning so I agree with you on that one.

I cook from fresh too. Part of the reason this is so frustrating is that I am doing everything the 'text book' tells me to do and getting no where.

I have done this before and used to maintain 9st 7lbs so this extra half a stone is puzzling me as to why it won't shift this time.

Any other key pointers will be greatly appreciated  

[Esya]

There can be quite a few reasons actually:

1. You are a woman, so our hormonal cycle makes us gain and lose water weight over a month. After 4 weeks you can tell if you actually lost weight.

2. If you just started with the work outs or increased the, you might be retaining water as well.

So basically you have to give it a few weeks to see what your weight is really doing. It is a good idea to create a free account at trendweight.com. You can link it to your FitBit account. It will plot your weight changes over time and add a trendline to it to show what is really going on. It makes it easier to look past the fluctuations.

Then if you are still not losing after 4 weeks the following might be happening:

3. You might burn a bit less than reported by your FitBit. This can be true if you are wearing a HR enabled FitBit.

4. You might eat more than the calories you log on paper. Even if you log very precisely, everything is an estimation.

Judge your weight after a 4 week period and then you can either increase the caloried burned or lower the calories eaten. Go at it again for 4 weeks and re-evaluate every 4 weeks (otherwise you cannot know what changes have what impact).

Now, for the less popular opinion. Judging from the numbers in your post I think that your goal is unrealistic. My mind does not do stones, lbs and feet, so I used google and saw you are currently sitting close to 65 kg and your goal weight is 60 kg. That means that you are very close to your goal of 9st 5lbs. The closer you are to your goal, the longer it will take to get there. This is because when you weight less, you burn less and ideally you do not want to eat below your BMR so your organs get enough energy to keep working properly. A 1000 calories deficit is therefore typically too large when you are that close to your goal weight. The approach that is considered more healthy is to eat at your BMR level and lose the rest through being active.

I would not worry too much about your weight if I were you. You have a healthy normal weight for your length. Instead I would focus on being healthy. If you focus on eating healthy (but enough for your BMR, you can find free calculators online), getting enough sleep, drinking water (3600ml+ is not needed per se) and being active and working out it is going to take longer, but you know you will be doing it in a healthy way. Then you will naturally find the weight that suits you.

[BFFF]

How is your gut health? Omega 3 intake? Are you using any natural supplements to get to your desired body comp more efficiently? 

[DanielleinDC]

Are your clothes fitting more loosely? My weight hasn't changed much--I have a few upticks here and there--but a pair of jeans that fit me perfectly when I bought them a few years ago I can now pull on and off without unbuttoning. I need a belt for most of my pants now. So my waist is getting smaller, although my belly sadly is not.

Remember that a pound of muscle takes up less space than a pound of fat, so if you're burning fat and increasing muscle, you might not see it on the scale, but you will notice in how your clothes fit.