Not loosing weight like I Should

[kathsdg]

Hello All,

I started at 71 kg for 166cm lost 2kg in the first 2 weeks by counting my cals at 1200 cl a day.

I started my journey on march 16th, I walk 8000/10 000 in the week and up to 25 000 steps at weekends.

I usually eat less than 1200 cal a day but am not hungry.

Its been a month but haven't lost a pound in three weeks.... I exercises everyday ( 20/30mn mini stepper at home + weight lifting 20/30mn)

With me burning my 2000 cal a day and in taking 900/1100 cal a day I should be loosing a pound a week..... WHY NOT!!

Its so depressing standing on the scales and not seeing a difference even though I have noticed I am less bloated and lost cm on my waist.

Am I  eating too little? I do have my cheap meals and have been gone on a long weekend not counting and eating what I wanted by was walking 30/35000 steps a day ( didn't put on weight)

Thanks

[SunsetRunner]

If you have lost centimeters then you are losing fat. The scale doesn’t always reflect fat loss.

[LakeishaTherese]

Muscle is more dense than adipose (fat) tissue. As you build muscle the number on the scale will either stay the same or even go up. This is one of the times that you'll have to go by the tape line measurements. 

But I get the frustration. I started using fitbit a week ago and have actually gained instead of losing. I didn't do measurements so I'm not 100% sure where I stand as far as progress goes. And it is frustrating and discouraging.

[kathsdg]

started dropping on the second week so don't despair. Do measure yourself once a month of every 2/3 months.

[idahoerics]

I counted calories for the past 100 days and logged my weight (almost) each day. I also lost a lot of weight when I started, but there were two stretched where I weighed the same between points that were three or more weeks apart. One was right at the beginning, much like your history. I think your body adjusts to sudden weight loss for a while by lowering your metabolism and you have to address that over a longer term. There were also plenty of other times when my weight went up a few pounds instead of down. There are a lot of variables missing from your statement. For one thing, when was that weekend, and what did you eat? If it was recently, high salt/sugar/carb foods will probably cause you to retain quite a bit of water for a number of days and raise your weight. As a woman, there is also the issue of your biology that can alter your weight in the short term. On the other hand, you may need to be more accurate about your cheat meals and weekends off - I don't mean you shouldn't have them, but you may want to try to account for them. Finally, I think the amount of time we exercise is only part of the equation. I also exercise about an hour a day (moderately, but enough to break a sweat). However, there are 15 other waking hours a day. If your body turns down the thermostat (mine did, I was cold, dizzy and tired and my resting heart rate went from 60 to about 50) your weight loss may stall. To combat this, I completely changed my diet, avoiding processed foods (high carb, high sugar) in favor of foods that digest more slowly (vegetables and lean protein). I also did everything I could to keep my metabolism going the rest of the day - parked further away from work, took the stairs, used a bathroom in another building and anything else I could think of. Overall, I would just say that you need to be patient with yourself and keep evaluating what you are doing honestly and keep coming up with ways to be a little more healthy and active as you go, and it will work in the long term. Good luck!

[Dominique]

A few comments:

• weight loss usually isn’t fully linear, especially for women (impact of hormonal cycle)
• body weight can fluctuate quite a bit due to water retention (again, even more so for women, same reason as above); it’s unlikely muscle gained would offset fat lost (water fluctuation more likely explanation)
• one month is still a relatively short period
• estimating energy expenditure with an activity tracker isn’t exact science: there’s a margin of error (trackers tend to overestimate calories burned)
• there’s also a margin of error when counting calories consumed (people often underestimate them)

If you know you are doing the right things in terms of eating and exercising, keep doing it. Consistency always beats perfection.

[Daves_Not_Here]

Agreeing with all here.  Your weight oscillates within a 4 pound window due to water.   So you can "lose" 3 pounds and the scale could indicate you gained 1 pound.

[kathsdg]

That's the frustrating thing, I have changed my diet since January. Going more organic hardly any carbs, no soda, cake, sweets, precooked/ready meals. Eat out rarely.

I know I have a slow metabolism because I always struggled with my weight. I see other people eating what they want and being slim and I cant. No icecream cookies chocolate.

I changed from cow products to Goats ( yoghurt) and drink Almond milk in my tea. No bread part from one slice on weekends with breakfast . Hardly any cheese.

I mean what else can I do?

My usual day is:

Breakfast: cold porridge ( almond milk+raw oats+chia seeds) 1/3 cup + half a banana = less then 200cal

Lunch 100/200gr lean protein+ 1 to 2 cups of veggies maybe + a 1/2 cup or 1/3 cup carbs ( rice/potatoes) = less 400 cal

Dinner soup or salad = less 400 cal

[idahoerics · Accepted solution]

It does not sound like you should eat less. Personally (without anything other than my own experience) I think your basic metabolic rate is very important - the rate you burn calories when you're not working out. My understanding is that is driven by muscle tissue, so I would try to get more weight lifting in (not more days!, but gradually more intensity and longer sessions). It also does not sound like you are eating enough protein! So you may be losing muscle even though you are lifting weight. I eat about 40 g protein (the content of the food, not what it weighs) three times a day. Your body does not store protein, so eat some with every meal! It also helps to have a trainer or at least a friend to keep you motivated and use the right form to avoid injury. Now unless you are in your teens and 20's, building muscle is hard and slow, so you will need to give yourself more time than a month to see much results. You need to be in this for the long hual, maybe 4-6 months to see much change. Finally, in the end, my advice is to focus on being a healthier version of yourself (which it seems like you are on the way to doing) and the scale will follow along.

[SunsetRunner]

@kathsdg "see other people eating what they want and being slim" - this is only because you probably can't see a big picture of those people. The level of activity, what do they eat when they're not having an ice cream or not wolfing down a cheesy slice of pizza. I stopped believing there are people who can eat what they want and not gain a single pound. At least not on this planet 🙂 The thing is, if you do it from time to time, your body will "fight back". There is some level of natural resistance to weight gain/loss. That's why single meal won't bring an extra pound of body fat and that's why calories deficit over one day may have no numeric result when you step on the scale. Your body has mechanisms to regulate and balance the way the factory called "human being" works.

I'm going to be speaking from my own experience, so some people may not agree ( which is absolutely normal and expected as we are all different ). Looking back, eating with high-calorie deficit allowed me to lose my weight quite smooth and relatively quick. However, I made my metabolism to slow down dramatically ( one of the ways of "fighting back" ). Eating less you're going to be losing fat but also muscles ( approx. 1lbs of muscles per 4lbs of fat  ). Mind that muscles contribute quite a lot to your energy needs and losing 1lbs of muscles will take away approx. 50kcal from your BMR. It's just one of the examples. Your body will do everything to prevent you from starvation and your weight-loss may be going completely different than expected. I understand that weight-loss is a "game of numbers" but unfortunately, this game may have slightly different rules for everybody. I find myself now one of those people, who can eat anything. Yes, true - up to some degree. Working on my muscles increased my BMR and overall metabolism and I can have a nice cheesy pizza and not gain any weight - from time to time and maintaining my current lifestyle. I'm sure people who see me wolfing down those slices think "Argghhh! This guy can eat anything and he's slim!". The thing is, they don't know 99% of other things that are involved in being slim that I do 😉 So don't get too depressed and focus on your own case. There is always a solution.

Answering your question - eating less will make your body to struggle and it will try to fight back and keep whatever weight it has now. I'm not going to say anything new as it's been said before - add exercise and weight training to gain some muscles or rather to recover muscles that you have burnt during when dieting.

[Dominique]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

muscles contribute quite a lot to your energy needs and losing 1lbs of muscles will take away approx. 50kcal from your BMR.

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Yes, a more muscular person will have a higher BMR than a less muscular one of the same weight/height/age/sex, but the difference is far less than 50 calories / pound of muscle.

Some time ago, I performed a calculation using the Katch-McArdle equation, which estimates BMR based on body fat %: with it, I found that carrying 5 kg more muscle mass would translate in 106 extra calories in BMR for me. That’s less than 10 calories per pound.

In this link, Dr. Tim Church (professor of preventative medicine at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University) puts it even lower: 6 calories per pound.

This other link also puts it very close: 6.4 calories per pound.

[SunsetRunner]

@Dominique I looked closer following your links and did a little bit of own research too and looks like "50kcal per lbs" is closer to the myth rather than reality as you wrote. Thanks for correcting me. I'm not sure how people came up with a number of 50 though. Interestingly, looks like the brain can burn some calories, too. Scientists even went as far as examining if "thinking hard" burns calories 🙂 However, it seems like it is not as many to make it really relevant ( actually it can go both ways as the brain is regulating our metabolism and certain states of mind may affect the metabolism differently ). So work hard with brain and muscles 😄

One thing I have to correct in my previous reply is that I didn't want to make an impression as if building muscles is a silver bullet here that solves the problem. What I meant is that eating little less healthy from time to time has no real impact if our eating habits for most of the time ( and I mean here really most ) follow a lot more healthy ( I like to term "conscious" ) eating rules. This is where the people "can-eat-anything-and-doesn't-gain-weight" come from 😉

[kathsdg]

@Dominique and @SunsetRunner woke up this morning and actually lost a few pounds... yes it can be water weight that dropped or could it just mean that I finally passed my stagnant weight barrier?

Nevertheless it has boosted me even if its just a pound or so.

Thanks to your answers I now realise that I am in for the long haul and that I just have to keep at it.

My new reference should be how my clothes fit and how I feel and not numbers... so hard to resist the number temptation.

Reminds me of a post I saw here about some one becoming obsessed with the numbers as she was slightly OCD.. I can defo relate.

Thanks All