Healthy Changes for going on 3 weeks with no weight loss

[Kogo78]

Hi all!  I'm starting to get super frustrated, so maybe someone has a little insight that might help.  I recently learned I have Type 2 Diabetes, and because of that, I have adopted a low carb diet to help get and keep my blood sugar at an acceptable level.  I track everything I eat in MyFitnessPal and have not once gone over my allotted calories for the day.  I'm not undereating either though.  Yes I tend to have some calories left at the end of the day, but not a ton either, so I don't think this has anything to do with my body going into starvation mode.

According to the macros, I'm generally eating around 50% fat, 25% protein and 25% carbs.  Could I be eating too much fat?  Perhaps... but if I'm still under calories, would that matter?

I'm only exercising 1 day a week right now for about an hour, and then light yoga or stretching another day or so for maybe 15-30 minutes.  Also noteworthy, I've noticed during that 1 day of cardio a week, I feel much weaker.  Not tired, but like my muscles are weaker and more fatigued.  I did google and see that low carb diets can cause that in the beginning due to your body trying to switch from burning sugar to fat, but I don't think that situation would also result in no weight loss.

I DO feel my clothes are a tiny bit more comfortable, but to not have lost ANYTHING in 2 weeks tells me I must be doing something wrong, right?  

In good news my blood sugar #'s are already showing improvement, but umm... if I'm making all these changes, I want to see it reflected on the outside (and scale) as well.

Any help would be appreciated! 

[GBO323]

I would try another food tracker. MFP tends to be generous with activity calories earned (in my experience for sure). I use the FitBit food tracker and it's been working well for weight loss. Another good one is Cronometer as it connects to FitBit for free.

The ultimate thing to remember is it's about the calorie deficit. Once that is consistent, the weight will come off.

[Glenda]

@Kogo78 I googled "what is the best ratio of carbs, protein, and fat?"  They said, It depends on age.  Only children age 1 -3  should eat as much as 40% fat. with 20% protein.  Age 4 - 18 carb 40%, protein 30% and not more than 35% fat.  Older adults should not eat any more than 35% fat either.

[Heybales]

How much weight do you have to lose to get to healthy weight?

How much did you pick to try to lose weekly?

If you make it unreasonable and extreme - your body will adapt and get stressed out.

Stress causes increased cortisol - that causes retained water weight, upwards of 20 lbs is possible that way.

How many weeks of scale fat loss could that hide?

So make sure you measure many spots too - scale isn't always the best indicator of what is happening anyway.

I'm surprised you were given more fat% instead of protein% to do - or was that just at the start here?

Because indeed, protein can set off insulin response like carbs, whereas fat can cause both carbs & protein to cause less insulin response.

The tough day of cardio suggests you are probably under-eating by too much.

Just because you can pick a 2 lb weekly loss, doesn't mean it's wise to attempt it.

And to the way MFP works - your eating level was based on it estimating your daily burn calories with NO exercise expected, and whatever activity level you selected.

On the day you exercise, you should be eating more to keep the deficit reasonable. Normally 1 day a week not that bad, but combined with too low of eating in general it could be pretty bad day.

And you also could be more active in daily life than you selected on MFP, which also determines eating level.

In that regard Fitbit synced with MFP would be informing it of your daily burn, and MFP would adjust to keep the deficit the same no matter how active you are. Unless you don't sync and don't log workout and picked wrong activity level.

Just saying, even if you picked a reasonable rate of loss, you could be very wrong about activity level and you are actually more active, and then not logging the workout - and you are dealing with what could be considered an unreasonable deficit now.

Oh - don't log the workouts on MFP, database entry not needed since Fitbit already handling that.

[emili]

Weight loss is generally a result of less calories in than out. High fat foods even good fat are typically higher in calories, so I suspect somewhere there is an error in your calculation. You may be saving calories in carbs, but you may be exceeding them in fat. Try to switch it up for a few days and see if there is a change in weight. Take one fatty thing out per meal and add in something else like a veggie. See what happens.