Is it me? Is it the food? Is it the portions?

[Duffpic]

So.... I got the fitbit for Christmas and can't believe how it motivates me to move!

I do at least the 10,000 steps daily - most days I try to reach 15,000.

I decided to see how this would change the scale without changing my eating habits.  Nothing.  No weight loss.

OK - so I then have tried to tweak my foods a bit - nothing - no weight loss - in fact have gained 4 pounds.

Question - is it really a myth that exercise creates muscle and that weighs more? My clothign is getting loose, yet the scale is my enemy.

I decided today it's time to measure my foods and stop the madness - will see if portion control helps.  I also want recommendations for a good food supplement shake that helps with cleansing?

[Alicat2104]

Ignore the scale and trust your clothes & measurements.  The scale is not your friend.

[Daves_Not_Here]

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Welcome @Duffpic - Congrats on your increased activity, vitality and health.  I had the same realization -- I was the fittest, most active fat guy in Southern California.  I tried some minor diet tweaks but I didn't lose weight until I seriously addressed my eating.

Fat versus muscle weight - yes, muscle weighs more, but you probably don't have significant body recomposition since Christmas based on increased steps.  The 4 pounds may be due to water and/or increased appetite from your increased activity.

Measuring your food -- yes!  That is the key to unlocking weight loss, for several reasons:

• Whatever you measure tends to improve
• You discover how many calories you are taking in and can setup an aggressive calorie deficit
• MOST IMPORTANT - you discover and control mindless grazing

To be most effective, it helps to log all, 100% of your eating, every nibble.

As to a supplement shake for cleansing, that probably warrants a separate post in the Eat Well forum.  It will be helpful to explain what you are trying to cleanse and what you hope to gain by doing so.

[Dominique]

First of all, congrats for your increased activity. However, if losing weight is your priority, you really should focus on what (and how much) you are eating. What’s "tweaking your foods a bit"? Last January, you mentioned you were eating Lean Cuisine Marketplace dinners. I’m not familiar with the product (I don’t live in the US), but I googled it and found it was from Nestlé, a Swiss food giant that epitomizes ultra-processed food (regardless of the fancy/enticing names they give their products). I had a look at one product randomly taken from their broad range: "Roasted Turkey & Vegetables". The description sounds nice: "roasted turkey tenderloins and gravy, green beans with cranberries and slivered almonds". However, this is the full list of ingredients found in the box:

green beans, glazed turkey tenderloins (cooked turkey tenderloins, water, modified cornstarch, seasoning (autolyzed yeast extract, maltodextrin, salt, turkey flavor, turkey stock, flavor, gum arabic), carrageenan, canola oil, sodium phosphate, natural flavoring, salt, potassium chloride, paprika), water, mushrooms, dried cranberries (cranberries, sugar, sunflower oil), 2% or less of soybean oil, almonds, modified cornstarch, skim milk, turkey flavor (flavor, salt, dried turkey stock, maltodextrin, sesame oil (contains soy)), sugar, salt, chicken fat, bleached wheat flour, seasoning (maltodextrin, flavor, enzyme modified butterfat), seasoning (autolyzed yeast extract, flavors, water, chicken powder, chicken fat, sugar, sodium lactate, sodium phosphate, lactic acid), dehydrated onions, potassium chloride, seasoning (wheat starch, extracts of annatto and turmeric color, natural flavor), yeast extract, caramel color, spices, cultured whey.

Is it what you signed up for? If I want to eat turkey and green beans, I’d rather buy these separately and prepare them myself, without all the dubious extra stuff "Lean Cuisine" puts in their package. If you are interested in weight loss and your own health, it makes sense to spend a little more time in the kitchen (hey, any time spent standing is a bonus for people who are sitting all day).

[Heather-S]

Abs are made in the kitchen is a common saying. If weight loss is your goal, 80% of weight loss starts with the food you eat. Calories in versus calories out. 

It’s great you’ve upped your activity level, but I would take a few weeks to log and record all food. You might be surprised how much you’re eating. 

[SunsetRunner]

@Duffpic all what everyone mentioned above. In weight loss controlling the amount of food you consume ( and quality of it ) is very essential. Luckily for us, living in 2018, we have plenty of tools to help us with it ( hence, hard to find an excuse for not doing it 😉 ). Portion control ( and I mean hear "calorie counting" ) will help and the more accurate the better. 

@Alicat2104 true and not true. The scale isn't friend nor enemy. It's a tool. It's one of those tools which are easy to use and hard to master. I weigh myself every day. Recently, I decided to buy one of the smart scales to gather even more data. The point is, the scale shows just raw numbers and a part of weigh-in process is to understand and analyze the data. This is what makes most of the people to hate scales after a while. They don't understand the numbers, they don't see the big picture which is essential to be taken into account when we want to make a good use of the scale. Once we learn that, the scale becomes an incredibly useful tool that we shouldn't really demonize 🙂 I'd rather recommend to learn how to use it than throw it away 😉

[WendyB]

I agree with @Dominique You need to stay away from frozen meals. They contain a lot of sodium.

Much better to eat fresh. You can also take a day to prepare healthy meals for the week. i use to do this when I worked so it was easy to grab and go

Keep plugging away I'm sure you will get the hang of it

[SunsetRunner]

No joke on the sodium. I've been trying to stay within that 2,300 mg daily allowance, not easy! LOL

I also agree with the other poster, logging everything that goes into my pie hole when I'm losing weight is essential.

[WavyDavey]

I came here to defend sodium, but that Lean Cuisine meal is 580mg in only 190 calories!

Since the OP mentioned it, a cleanse is good for a few pounds weight loss. The liver and colon are popular targets. I lost about 2.5% BW on a liver cleanse last month.

[Heather-S]

My goal is to stay under 1500mg of sodium a day, which is attainable if I make my own, fresh food from home.  Throw in a microwaveable meal or a cheat meal and that's out the window!  

[Alicat2104]

Sodium is not the demon it's been made out to be.

You may want to read this - http://thesaltfix.co - or to get the bulk of the info in an hour, listen to this podcast http://2ketodudes.com/show.aspx?episode=71 

[Dominique]

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@Alicat2104 wrote:

Sodium is not the demon it's been made out to be.

You may want to read this - http://thesaltfix.com

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I wouldn’t dismiss the body of evidence accumulated over decades based on a single book.  Just because something has been hammered down for years to the point it has become "conventional wisdom" doesn’t mean it’s invalid.

Yes, there are situations where increasing sodium consumption is warranted: for instance, someone running a marathon in a hot climate. But will the typical overweight, sedentary person with high blood pressure eating the standard junk food diet benefit from eating even more sodium? Probably not. The demon is neither sodium, nor sugar (as suggested by the author of the book), it’s the overall lifestyle. So what needs to be fixed is the lifestyle, not a single micro- (or macro-)nutrient.

[SunsetRunner]

@Dominique I couldn't agree with you more 🙂 We tend to demonize single elements without taking a closer look at the overall big picture. Technically, even vitamin C may be harmful ( very unlikely to happen but such possibility exists if one would try really hard to overdose it ). It is sort of encoded into our lifestyle how much sugar or sodium we use on daily basis and how much control we have. However, if one tries to lose weight then reducing sodium intake ( or rather simply saying - salt ) is very useful as it may help suppress the cravings. The diet-related meals taste bland* for a reason 🙂 After salty things we crave for sugar, after sugar, we crave for something salty. I agree it's a matter of lifestyle. Somebody, who doesn't eat sodium and sugar-packed junk food won't really suffer from adding a pinch of salt into a home-cooked meal. Not mentioning, that we actually need some amount of sodium. But on the other hand, a person who already overconsumed one of the macro/micro-nutrients just by having breakfast would do better staying away from consuming even more. Lifestyle, in this case, is everything.

[MagsOnTheBeach]

I find things like "tweaking my foods a bit" to not be an actual change.  If you have salad for lunch instead of a combo meal, often people end up eating more at dinner than if they had a lunch combo meal.  Something about feeling virtuous for having the salad and now needing to treat themselves. Instead of tweaking, what about logging every bite?  Find some sort of plan that you think you can follow with whole fresh foods and see what happens.  Good luck!

[Daves_Not_Here]

Totally agree with @MagsOnTheBeach - if tweaks and half-measures worked, weight loss wouldn't be so tough. 

I believe it's easier to lose a lot of weight than a little -- to lose a lot, you have to change your lifestyle at which point weight loss happens almost without effort; whereas, to lose a little, people try tweaks which don't move the needle.  I finally realized that if I eat and live like I do when I weigh 240 pounds, I will weigh 240 pounds.