What do I need to do to lose weight?!!??!

[rowan]

Okay, Obviously I know what I need to do to lose weight, the problem is that it isnt frikin working.

In August, I was 9st 6 and 6lbs from my goal weight, I was almost happy with myself.. then I went on holiday and unfortunatley the people over there did not cater to a vegan lifestyle and wouldn't even try, so I had to eat 'normal' things and do my best to pick off the non vegan things, but even then the food was laden with oil and other nasty things. So I gained 5lbs (whilst my boyfriend ate more than me and gained nothing, great!). After coming home I gained another 2lbs and decided to start losing the weight.

I tried slimming world for 3 weeks as it was working wonders for my mum, but I didn't loose a single pound. not even 1/3rd of a pound. I was eating mostly 'free foods' and not 'syning' over the recommendation, also was waking dogs up to 4 hours a day and going to the gym for an hour a day.

Last week, as this wasn't working, I started calorie counting instead. Now I've been eating the calories my fitbit it recommending (but never over 2000 a day), and going to the gym for an hour and a half a day, doing high intensity exercise, weights and lower intensity, as well as walking mostly all day (im a dog walker) and attending classes like zumba and boxing. I eat well, I'm a vegetarian but get plenty of protein, don't eat much fat or too many carbs, my meals are generally made up of a protein, a carb then lots of vegetables. (e.g Tofu sausage, new potatos and peas, broccoli, carrots etc) And drink a lot of water.

Last time I was this weight everything worked and I got to 9st 6 pretty fast. I'm doing everything I did before so why is this taking soooo long, I even stepped on the scales this morning and it said I gained 3 pounds. I'm just getting so so fed up, everyone around me seems to be able to lose weight so fast.

Please can someone help, I'm loosing the will to try.. what more do I need to do??

sorry for the super long message! and I know people will probably think I'm retaining water because of more exercise, it's just that everything I'm doing worked last time, and shouldn't I have lost at least 1 pound by now?urg

[Maxit]

Give it another week - 

[SunsetRunner]

Maxit is right. You need to wait out your metabolism. Keep up all th good things you're doing and that pound will drop off.

(What exactly is a "stone"?) 

Pete

[whome]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

(What exactly is a "stone"?) 

Pete

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Siixteen pounds, if I remember correctly - unit of weight used in various parts of the UK (or maybe all of it)

Good luck to you @rowan - just keep at it - don't stress yourself too much and DO NOT try to take too large of a calorie deficit - only eating 2000 a day is not enough if you are burning 3000 - not long term anyway

[Heybales]

Stress is just oozing from your post.

Guess what stress causes?

Elevated cortisol. Gues what that causes?

Upwards of 20 lbs retained water.

Calm down, or you will actually keep causing your worst fear - weight gain, even if just water.

Always do the math. You'll need to translate for your measurements.

If you think it's fat gain, then you ate 3500 calories OVER maintenance (not goal eating level, maintenance) for each lb in whatever time it took.

Think of it this way - if you ate 250 over true maintenance (assuming Fitbit isn't underestimating like it does) daily for 2 whole weeks, you would slowly gain ...... drumroll please ...... 1 whole lb.

So that also spells out what fast gain is - water.

If these new workouts are very high intensity cardio, they are huge carb burner. Guess what body does to improve from that exercise? Add more muscle glucose stores, which has attached water.

That's not the whole 3 lbs, but could be 1 lb of it easily.

Suggest you slowly eat more until eating at maintenance. Like add on 100 calories daily for a week at a time.

Unstress your body and your mind during this time, hide the scale.

Then take that 250 cal deficit this close to goal weight.

[SunsetRunner]

In reading your message, the very first line says "I need to lose weight".  Thus, the first conclusion to reach is -is that true and why is it true?  Is your body fat too high?  Is your body image too low?  Are you far out of the normal BMI ranges and how far?  Is your ideal weight more aggressive than the your ideal health standards?  Are you unable to attain fitness standards that you want to do such as pushups, situps, or a 5k time because of your weight?  Putting these concepts in place come BEFORE the other nuances of your description. Thus, a reasonable outcome may be, you do not need to lose weight at all!