Weight will not shift

[Al29v1]

Hi

My weight seems to be completely stuck - its not going up but its certainly not going down either. 

Currently 202 lbs

Goal  175 lbs

Male - 5'7 age 45.

I have had some really active weeks - consistently hitting 10,000 steps and staying in  calories with food but cant shift it except for a fluctuation of 1- 2 lbs. Getting depressed! 

[EmjayH · Accepted solution]

Maybe take a day off. Don't go crazy but take a cheat day. That might re start it 

[Dominique]

You may want to have a look at @Baltoscott’s journey on the Weekly Weigh In thread. He started the year at 202.3 and is currently at 179.8. He’s obviously been doing something right. I think he’s about 6’ 0, ie. slightly taller than us (I’m also 5’ 7).

Here is his first post documenting his journey (in 2017):

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Manage-Weight/Weekly-Weigh-In/m-p/1807854#M51479

and here is the latest one (posted today):

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Manage-Weight/Weekly-Weigh-In/m-p/1952521#M54772

Otherwise I inputed your numbers in this online calculator. This would put your BMR at 1760. Without more information about how active you are, I would say (based on the 10K step count) your activity level would be somewhere between light and moderate, and your TDEE would correspondingly be between 2420 and 2728. If your Fitbit says you’re burning much more than that, it’s probably overestimating your expenditure (this is quite common with HR-based trackers). At your current activity level, you would lose about 1 lb per week if eating an average of 1900 calories. It’s not a lot of food for a guy your age and your size, so you’d have to play it smart and include a lot of food that is filling and has low calories (e.g. veggies). If you’d want to eat more, or be able to include some junk food, your energy expenditure would need to be higher. Scott has had some pretty crazy high step counts lately:

His "low" step days for the past month are all above 10k.

I think the Weekly Weigh In thread (and the other similar threads that have been started on this forum) are great for accountability and peer support.

[Al29v1]

Thank you that's very helpful.

[Baltoscott]

Thanks for the tag @Dominique

@Al29v1 -  I had a couple things going for me this time around.  

First my wife got focused on losing weight around Thanksgiving.  It is really hard for her but she had a coach and a workout partner and she and some other folks in a group were posting a picture of each meal they ate on line to keep each other accountable.  Anyway, with her more focused on dinner (the main meal we eat together) we started going out less and it was easier to keep track of what I ate as well.  (I've always done pretty good with breakfast and lunch, but we both work long days and we were eating out too much for dinners).

Second, and more importantly, I cut back on drinking (beer and wine) by at least half.  I usually don't get home until 7:30 PM or so, and I had gotten in the habit of having a beer while we got dinner together and then another beer or a glass of wine with dinner.  And usually at least a couple of beers or glasses of wine on Saturday and Sunday as well -- probably 15 - 20 drinks/week.  When I started thinking about cutting back on calories, that was low hanging fruit!  Figure 6 oz of wine is around 130 calories, and a beer can be 150-300 / 12 oz.  (I like IPAs and the ones at 6-7% alcohol are around 220 calories/ 12oz bottle.  I pint would be more!).  Anyway, I figured I was averaging about 400-500 calories/day just from beer and wine.  I honestly didn't realize I was drinking that many empty calories!  So I made January a mostly dry month.  (I think I wound up drinking at two dinners while my wife and I were traveling on holiday).  If you cut back 500 calories/day and do nothing else, you should lose around a pound a week!  After January, I decided that going forward I will only drink on odd numbered days (i.e., today is the 21st, so I can have a beer tonight if I want; but since tomorrow is the 22nd, it will be water or iced tea with dinner).  Totally arbitrary, but it means I drink at least half the empty alcohol calories I was drinking last December, and it doesn't require any thought.  (I will break the rule every once and a while; I drank for my wife's birthday and when we had family over for Easter, but then I go dry on the next odd number day).  

Cutting back on alcohol also has a side benefit in that it is easier for me to avoid some other high calories foods I ate a lot.  When you go out to eat the first thing they do is take your drink order.  You start off with a beer or a glass of wine while you are hungry and it is easy to start stuffing your mouth with warm bread and butter, you never think of substituting a green veggie or a salad for the fries that come with your burger, and the calories just start adding up.  And, of course, there is always a second or third glass/bottle when dinner comes.  (I usually start with water now, and don't order a drink until after dinner comes now -- if it is a odd day).  

Another thing I do when I'm trying to lose weight is track my food.  You really need to do this for a while just to figure out what works.  And you need to track everything you put in your mouth.  You don't have to do it forever, but the longer you do it the better you will understand your eating habits, and the better your "intuitive" sense of what you are eating will become.  When I started in January, (the dry month) I was eating about 1500 calories/day.  My wife was doing a lot of low veggie smoothies for about 2 weeks so that was part of reason the calories were so low, but I kept at that level for about 4 - 5 weeks.  I was up to around 1700 - 1800 calories/day late February early March and have been around 2000 calories/day since mid-March.  I am starting to increase and expect to be eating 2500 - 3000 calories/day by the time I get into my goal range of 165 - 170 lbs.

I do exercise a lot.  Probably more than most people.  But that is really a lifestyle I've had for years.  I bike commute to the train station in Baltimore and take a train to DC three days/week, and then I just do the same bike trip in the morning before I start my two work at home days (around 15 to 20 miles on the bike every day).  I walk to lunch in DC; usually somewhere that requires a mile or two round trip, and I will usually get another couple of miles walking throughout the course of the day for various reasons.  I walk the dogs at home (adds 1 to 2 miles/day) and I lift weights 3x per week.  

I agree with Dominique that fitbit may be overestimating your calorie burn.  I've been losing around 1.5 lbs/week since January, but, according to fitbit, I should be losing 3 lbs/week.  My metabolism may be slower than the averages they use to calculate these things, or maybe I am not counting what I eat as good as I should, but I don't worry too much about that.  As long as I'm consistent in the way I count, I can measure what I eat this week compared to what I ate last week and adjust accordingly as weight goes up or down or stays the same.

[A_Lurker]

@Baltoscott- as I woman I admit that I really detest you men and your after work alcohol habits. 

I say this as you're not the only guy I know that dropped their evening drinking habits and appear to lose weight easily.  Makes me wish that alcohol had been my 'extra calories' issue.  However, you definitely exercise more than most people.  You definitely need to take credit for that.  I know that trying to keep up with you for even a week was extremely hard for me. 

[Baltoscott]

@A_Lurker -- i think my wife would echo your comments.  It has been much harder for her to find and eliminate extra calories.  Her recent success is probably due to making our food at home more often so she knows exactly what she is eating, and more accountability by sharing pictures of what she eats with her workout friends.  She eats out for work a lot and she doesn't like eating the same thing over and over so that makes logging calories in a lot harder and usually less accurate.  That is probably her biggest challenge.

[desertgunner]

How long have you been losing weight?  If its been a few months and you have been 100% accurate with your calorie tracking and your weight hasn't shifted for 2 weeks, it might be time for a reset.  Return to maintenance for 1-2 weeks accurately tracking everything then begin your cut again, (don't go below your BMR).  If you are in a deficit, it will happen.  Remember the old worn-out cliché, "its a marathon not a sprint".  Stay strong.

[Mukluk4]

The other option is to increase your activity.

[rheashard2]

It is important to remember that muscle weighs a lot more then fat! Have the same problem. I keep repeating sentence 1 before I get on the scale. I keep my goal to 0.5 pounds a week. This significantly reduces that frustration. I have been told by many doctors and exercise trainers to do this. Look at fit of clothes. The average cloth used today has little shrinkage or stretch. They don't change. Were as the scale can reflect that high, low fluid intake or the fluid retention no matter how slight from that salted treat. Not to show that I don't get depressed with the scale. But my clothes have gone down from 24-26 woman's to 16! If this is your trend keep repeating sentence 1 with an added fat floats, muscle don't.

[Dominique]

@rheashard2: in another post, you said you lost 50 pounds since getting your Fitbit. It is very likely your change from size 24-26 to size 16 was caused primarily by your 50 pounds weight loss, not by gained muscle mass, even though muscle is indeed denser (takes less space for the same weight) than fat.

It’s relatively "easy" to lose fat. You can lose fat doing nothing: all that is needed is to eat less than you expend. Eat at a 500 calories deficit and you should lose about 4 pounds in a month time. Gaining muscle is hard (and very slow). You cannot gain muscle doing nothing. You have to do something, do it right and do a lot of it. And even if you do all the right things, it’s almost impossible to gain 4 pounds of muscle mass in a month time.

All this to say that if your weight stays the same for some period of time, it’s almost never because you lost fat, but gained the same amount of muscle (by weight) at the same time. The (much) more likely reason is that you are eating about the same amount of calories as you are expending energy, even though you’re adamant you’re eating less.

[rheashard2]

I did not mean as in a muscle builder mass. It is easy to see the muscle tone and increase in my calves, arms (especially those under arm 'bat wings'), behind and abdomen. Recently, I hurt my foot and could not walk for several months. I went from a size 14-16 back to a 20 in pants. My weight went up 5 pounds! Definitely not enough to justify that much of clothes size increase. I started walking again. Slow but steady my pants went back to 16. These are progressively getting looser. The scale is showing little change. I am one of those unfortunates whose age, heredity and sex is programmed for super fat saving. It took over 2 years to get that 50 pounds off. On the surface it looks like 2 pounds a week. In actual fact it came off in clumps of 4 to 5 then status quo for weeks.

[JenniferinFL]

I know this is already answered, but, I just wanted to add that one of the food items you eat may not have an accurate calorie count on the label. This obviously compounds if you eat the same food frequently. 

For instance, I wasn't losing as much as my calorie counting and fitbit indicated I should be burning. I had this breaded frozen chicken I was eating pretty often that I thought could be the culprit. I switched to a different brand of frozen chicken and I'm losing weight again. This breaded chicken was listed as being like 220 calories for 4 ounces, but, I'm assuming the actual number was quite a bit higher than that. Additionally, it was delicious, so I was eating it 2 out of 3 meals a day. Similar breaded chicken is more like 300+ calories for 4 ounces. Basically, I took what was a logged 1000 calorie deficit and turned it into more like a 500 calorie deficit with just this one food that was inaccurately labeled. That may not be your issue at all, but, just wanted to throw it out there as another possibility. 

[Esya]

@Al29v1

Would love to hear an update about this.

[A_Lurker]

@JenniferinFL- you brought up a good point about packaged foods.  I was looking for a link about accuracy on food labels, however, I couldn't find the one I was looking for.  I did find this instead:

https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/how-accurate-are-calorie-counts.html

On top of this, even if you look at fresh, whole foods, there can be variation as well.  I'm going to use pineapple as a good example (not sure why but I'm craving it at the moment).  I'd be willing to say that there is a fair variance in fresh pineapple.  Some will be sweeter/riper than others.  I think you can probably drive yourself insane trying to count accurately.  I pay more measuring/weighing attention on higher calorie/lower bulk foods (ie. butters, oils, cheese) and not worry so much about veggies.