Nothing is changing! Frustrated!

[BMXMOM]

For the last year or so I have fluctuated in weight between 160-168 lbs.  On August 8th, I joined a 9Round gym (kickboxing) by my office.  I have faithfully gone to the gym every weekday after work since that date and workout for 30-35 minutes each time. 

I use My Fitness Pal to track my eating habits and I feel that I do a pretty good job of maintaining a relatively healthy diet.  I try to stay away from prepackaged foods and refined sugars.

I took measurements, etc before I started working out.  Today, I did those measurements again and would have expected after nearly two months that SOMETHING would have changed.  But NADA - not a single number has changed - still 168 lbs, body fat percentage is down maybe 1/2%, measurements are EXACTLY the same as they were on August 8th.  

I'm totally stumped - I can fluctuate 5 lbs in any given week but since I started working out again, my scale stays almost exactly the same every time I weight myself - I might be up or down 1-2 lbs.

I can't figure out where to go next with this.  I have started doing some weights after dinner each night in addition to the 9Rounds workout but I can't figure out why I am just stuck!  

Any ideas as to what I could change up to jump start this process - even if I lost only 10 lbs before winter, it would be enough to wear my winter clothes more comfortably.

[wmchapman]

If indoor activity isn't doing it for you, try outdoor.

I "gym'd" for decades with zero results - it was all about time, the fastest way to get exercise over and checked off the list.  Frustrated, I let go of the paid exercise method and switched to morning and evening walks.  Required a lifestyle change because I had to give up the non-activities (habit) I normally had done at those times, socializing hour, evening news programs or after dinner chill time. Took about 3 weeks to adapt; but here are the results - did everything else the same as you @BMXMOM, a half hour sweat out doesn't do it for those of us that are already "fit", it just shuffles the weight around and we must eat.

You got this, you have the discipline and desire, trade an hour of something in the morning and something in the evening for the scale if it is the scale that concerns you.

1 hour AM active minutes, 1 hour evening. EVERYday.

[BMXMOM]

I wouldn't say the scale concerns me as much as the fact that nothing has changed for inches ANYWHERE on my body after 2 months of changing my workout and eating habits.  You'd think I'd have lost at least a 1/2 inch somewhere but nothing.  

I don't want to have to purchase a new winter wardrobe but if I don't lose at least a couple inches around my waist and tummy, that's what I'll have to do - I'm not going to spend another winter sitting in my chair at work uncomfortable all day in pants that dig in to my belly.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'll try to mix it up by taking the dogs for walks each evening after I get home from work.  Wrangling 170 lbs of dogs every day ought to help somehow you'd think 🙂

[wmchapman]

Perfect, I hear you on the belly part. Take time to convince your body it doesn't need to store energy for you.  That's the problem with the quickie workouts, your body knows that need for a burst is coming.

The difference between my first year and my second year was I started eating a piece of fruit before heading out the door for a walk (my mother's voice in my head warning not to eat before swimming - lol) What a difference it made on the inches when my body "knew" it was always going to be fed before exercise...I can't sit after the evening meal now, it tells me to get a few miles in. Life is better, different for sure, but most important is energy level is high 24 hours a day so you never run out of steam no matter the project.  I can't remember ever being exhausted now, used to plop all the time dead tired. This, more than the inches, is what will shock you.

[MagsOnTheBeach]

Are you measuring food?  Logging every bite? Exercise makes me super hungry.  I have a protein after, but instead of a serving, I want more.   It's weird to battle feeling hungry with more exercise.

I just hit 169 for the first time in 15+ years, and for me what works is removing poor sources of carbs.  I switched to ezekiel bread, sweet potatoes, and baked potatoes without butter, vegetables instead of pasta, and no juices other than tomato juice or other 100% vegetable juice.  For bread and starchy vegetables, I have up to 2 servings a day, I have up diet everything and artificial sweeteners.  I have up to 3 pieces of while fruit a day.  For me, the biggest weight changes come from diet, the biggest muscle changes come from exercise.  For exercise I try to get in a minimum of an hour a day - 30 running and 30 walking.  

Have you had a recent full physical?

Good luck finding what works for you!  

[Dominique]

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@BMXMOM wrote:

I use My Fitness Pal to track my eating habits and I feel that I do a pretty good job of maintaining a relatively healthy diet.  I try to stay away from prepackaged foods and refined sugars.

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I agree with @MagsOnTheBeach that the change you’re looking for will come primarily from nutrition. Not only the qualitive side (healthy vs. non-healthy), but especially the quantitive side (calories). I assume you’ve linked MyFitnessPal to Fitbit: have you had a consistent deficit (calories out as estimated by Fitbit - calories in as tracked with MFP)? If so, what average deficit? Two months is long enough for you to have seen the scale budge, if you had been in an actual deficit. Since you appear to be maintaining, you need to either decrease your intake or increase your activity, or a mix of both.

[Daves_Not_Here]

@BMXMOM - I am agreeing with @wmchapman on where your focus needs to be.

Establish and sustain an aggressive caloric deficit and the pounds and inches will come off.

Don't "do a pretty good job of maintaining a relatively healthy diet", sustain a caloric deficit.  

Don't "try to stay away from prepackaged foods and refined sugars", sustain a caloric deficit.

In your 6 paragraph post, you only dedicated 1 paragraph to your eating.  No mention as to how your calories in are less than out.  And your stall is the irrefutable empirical evidence that you do not have a caloric deficit.

The other 5 paragraphs spoke to your exercise.  Let's say you have a tree to chop down.  Now you can go to the wall next to the tree and smash your head against it for the next 5 years, and while it may sound like chopping, that tree is going nowhere.  You need to take an axe to the tree.

PS - I feel your pain.  I was in the exact same rut, working out like a fiend and going nowhere.  It was not until I shifted my priority to sustaining a caloric deficit did I start to lose.

[DavidSchneier]

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@Daves_Not_Here wrote:

@BMXMOM - I am agreeing with @wmchapman on where your focus needs to be.

Establish and sustain an aggressive caloric deficit and the pounds and inches will come off.

Don't "do a pretty good job of maintaining a relatively healthy diet", sustain a caloric deficit.  

Don't "try to stay away from prepackaged foods and refined sugars", sustain a caloric deficit.

In your 6 paragraph post, you only dedicated 1 paragraph to your eating.  No mention as to how your calories in are less than out.  And your stall is the irrefutable empirical evidence that you do not have a caloric deficit.

The other 5 paragraphs spoke to your exercise.  Let's say you have a tree to chop down.  Now you can go to the wall next to the tree and smash your head against it for the next 5 years, and while it may sound like chopping, that tree is going nowhere.  You need to take an axe to the tree.

PS - I feel your pain.  I was in the exact same rut, working out like a fiend and going nowhere.  It was not until I shifted my priority to sustaining a caloric deficit did I start to lose.

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I  worked out every other day for five years. At least thirty minutes of intense cardio plus at least 30 minutes of intensive weight training and plenty of healthy eating. I successfully managed to maintain my weight at around 255-260 lbs. Unfortunately, I was also around 40-50 lbs overweight despite all of my consistently great efforts.

Once I shifted focus to calorie management and pursued a consistent calorie deficit, the weight melted off. I aggressively achieved a 750 calorie daily deficit by making smarter food choices, drinking gallons of water (well, really, three liters per day) and exercise.

I'm officially down 70 lbs.

Exercise will not generate weight loss results unless you're training to be an Olympic swimmer. Shift focus, be honest and vigilant, and your winter clothes will start fitting better by Thanksgiving.

[BMXMOM]

Thank you all for the great suggestions.  

Yes - nutrition is where my focus needs to be.  I could swear that I do eat healthy and yes, Fitbit is tied to My Fitness Pal.  I do show a caloric deficit on a consistent basis - sometimes it might only be 200 calories and other days it might be 700 calories.  Maybe my focus needs to change to measuring my food more precisely, including weighing things and such.  I do not drink soda or juices - pretty much only water with the exception of coffee in the morning.  

I am currently on a medication that my Dr says can stall your metabolism but good grief - you'd think after two months, something would have changed.  Even assuming my eating habits stayed exactly the same (I was maintaining before), I guess I would have thought adding more physical activity would help.  

Well...to the tracker it is!  I will do better at food tracking for the next few weeks and see if I can get anything to give.

[rachiti]

How many calories has it said you've burned when you've tried to accurately measure your workout calories?  We're talking using an app that looks at the activity, your fitness level, your weight etc. when it's calculating it's numbers.  

Also, scientific studies have found that oftentimes once someone starts doing "exercise", oftentimes they're more sedentary the rest of the day/week which negates the calories burned from exercise.

Additionally, you may need to go for more than just one month before you see serious results or increase the duration of your workouts or add weight training.

Finally, even though your weight & body fat haven't changed, it doesn't mean you're not healthier than you were before you started.  How do your clothes fit?  According to my Fitbit, my weight is the same as it was three months ago and my body fat is up by just a touch...HOWEVER, I've gone down two shirt sizes & in the past week alone I've had four people say how much slimmer I'm looking. I have hypothyroidism so it causes my metabolism to be slow.  On most days even eating 2500 calories (I have a LOT of active minutes and miles at work every day), I'm still at a 2000 calorie deficit to see just a 2 pound loss after an ENTIRE month.  Sometimes even the scale isn't accurate in measuring overall health.  Do NOT let the lack of number change discourage you - you ARE healthier than you were before you started.