What do you do when you're discouraged?

[LauraT45]

I've only had my Fitbit Charge HR for 2 weeks, but I'd been watching what I eat and walking for a couple of months prior to getting the Fitbit as a gift. I wanted the Fitbit because I thought that it would  motivate me to move more.  I have been meticulous about logging everything I eat and/or drink (I don't drink sodas, milk, etc. . . so really it's only my morning smoothies that I drink besides water).  I make sure to get my 10,000 steps every day, and I bike a few days a week as well. So far, I have lost 3 pounds. In two and a half months. My weight will fluctuate between 180 and 183, but never drop below 180. When I started using my Fitbit on April 25, I weighed 183. Today I weigh 180. I am 5' 5"  - I need to lose around 30 pounds to get my BMI down to a healthy range. And remember, this has been the norm for the past 2.5 months. . . . I didn't expect the fitbit to be magic and make me start losing 5 pounds a week, but I expect to lose something.  

It's incredibly frustrating, especially seeing posts about people losing 8 - 10 pounds in 1 month, and the scale doesn't seem to be moving for me. Honestly, if I'm not going to lose weight, I'd rather just eat the **ahem** cake and be happy. I would think that in 2.5 months, I would have lost more than 3 pounds.

Any advice or insight? Thanks in advance.

[Niki.]

Hi @LauraT45 - Are you also doing other excersize - ie: weight training, resistance training etc...  This will build muscle (I'm talking toned, not body building or anything)... Building muscle will help your body burn more calories while at rest.  Cardio alone, burns calories while you are actually doing the excersize but very little after.

As far as nutrition aspect - do you use many sauces, butter etc... it can sometimes be these little things we don't think of but that add up to many calories - a coffee with cream, and a sandwich at lunch with Mayo & creamy salad dressings etc... 

Hope that helps!

[Marcy]

I feel for you. It is hard to lose weight. Since you appear to be maintaining your weight, dropping your calorie intake seems to be the logical next step. Kudos on your 10k daily steps.

[USAF-Larry]

You say you are "watching" what you are eating, @LauraT45, but are you journaling it? If you are not keeping a journal of what you are eating, you will be surprised at the calories & fats that sneak into your diet. When you journal, you will keep record of whether your are using 1 tablespoonful of salad dressing, or 1/4 a cup - the label tells you the serving size, and the amount of sugar, fat, and calories for that serving size.

When you have a snack, is it of fresh fruits & vegatables, or is is chips, crackers, and peanut butter? Keep a journal on that, and you'll be surprised again.

Don't be discouraged if things aren't going as you would like, but change what you are doing. As you've found, if you keep doing the things you've always done, you will get the results you have always gotten. Time for a lifestyle change.

[Lily-Mari]

when im discouraged i like to talk to my friends.

[CarolS]

I'm sorry, Laura.  I know it's discouraging to be stuck.  You just want to say, "Whatever!"  and stop caring.  I find I do better when I track and record my food - it sounds like you're already doing that.  Are you using a specific program to track?  I had the most success when I used a free program called Fat Secret.  (Admins, I hope it's OK to post that - if not, please delete my post and let me know.)  

I found that when I was using that program, if I weighed everything in grams on my food scale, I had a more accurate count of what wwas going in my mouth.  I didn't consider "cheating" to be something I shouldn't have, but rather not actually recording it.

Don't give up, be kind to yourself, and I think you'll eventually see the results you want.

All the best to you.

[Lily-Mari]

the person i find encouragement from the most is my mom, who is also a fitbitter.

[SunsetRunner]

link it with myfitnesspal and log what you eat/drink, fitbit will tell myfitnesspal how may steps you have done everytime you sync, and then it will work out how many calories you have left according to your settings, choosing between losing 2lbs to gaining 2 lbs or anything inbetween in 0.5 intervals

[emili]

Hi Laura- the only way you will lose weight is if you are in a caloric deficit. If you are not losing, it means you are eating to or above your TDEE. You have to figure out what that number is using an online calculator and then decide what a reasonable deficit is. Then you weigh, measure and log your food to ensure you stay in deficit. Then you adjust based on what the scale tells you- then magic happens. And your discouragement turns into a fist pump and self motivation to see what else you can do that's this awesome.

[FitBeforeFifty]

I would only consider the time you've spent logging everything you have eaten as relevant. Trying to "eat healthy" isn't data ... it's just a feeling.

For me, there is always about a 2 week lag between starting tracking and seeing results. Sometimes this is explainable -- if I start a new workout routine there is going to be some added water weight due to soreness/inflammation --- and sometime it isn't really explainable.

The bottom line is weight loss and fitness results don't happen overnight. The bottom line is if you are doing the right things eventually you will get the right results ... it just doesn't happen in a linear fashion.

[FitBeforeFifty]

As an example, here's my weight over the last few weeks -- I only weigh on weekdays. As you can see, my weight is bouncing around and it doesn't look like I'm making much progress:

155.4, 155.4, 154.2, 153, 153.2, 155.4,

154.4, 154.2, 155, 154.2, 155, 151.8,

153.2, 152.4, 152.8, 153.4, 153.2, 153.2, 151.8,

152.2, 151.8, 151, 152.4, 151.8

If you graph this, however, you see something different. I don't really care about the aboslute numbers. Am I losing 1/2 lb per week or 1 lb per week ? I don't really care. What I really know is that I'm eating right and increasing my activity level and that the trend is in the right direction.

[OCDOC]

 @LauraT45

Some possibly depressing numbers for you, but maybe it will give you perspective and help dispel the discouragement.

You want to lose 30 pounds. If each pound is 3500 calories, you have 105,000 calories 'in the bank'. If your body is burning 2000/day total, it would take 52.5 days to burn this store if you ate zero and burnt nothing but body fat.

Calorie intake reduction almost always causes the basal metabolism to slow down, so one needs to exercise more to 'break even' and keep the total burn at 2000/day. If you aim for -500 per day, and manage to keep this deficit (with exercise) in the face of a dropping BMR, then you will theoretically lose one pound a week.

None of this is easy..if it was easy nobody would be overweight..we'd all smarten up and drop weight tickity boo.

There are lots of ways to speed up loss, but no one way works for everybody.

Either accept that weight loss is a SLOW process, or experiment with different 'lose weight faster' options until you find one that works for you.

Take comfort in the fact that you have millions of people sharing your discouragement, but continue the good fight!  Rob  PS I like the 'take comfort talking to my mom' suggestion 🙂  

[SunsetRunner · Accepted solution]

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@LauraT45 wrote:

I've only had my Fitbit Charge HR for 2 weeks, but I'd been watching what I eat and walking for a couple of months prior to getting the Fitbit as a gift. I wanted the Fitbit because I thought that it would  motivate me to move more.  I have been meticulous about logging everything I eat and/or drink (I don't drink sodas, milk, etc. . . so really it's only my morning smoothies that I drink besides water).  I make sure to get my 10,000 steps every day, and I bike a few days a week as well. So far, I have lost 3 pounds. In two and a half months. My weight will fluctuate between 180 and 183, but never drop below 180. When I started using my Fitbit on April 25, I weighed 183. Today I weigh 180. I am 5' 5"  - I need to lose around 30 pounds to get my BMI down to a healthy range. And remember, this has been the norm for the past 2.5 months. . . . I didn't expect the fitbit to be magic and make me start losing 5 pounds a week, but I expect to lose something.  

It's incredibly frustrating, especially seeing posts about people losing 8 - 10 pounds in 1 month, and the scale doesn't seem to be moving for me. Honestly, if I'm not going to lose weight, I'd rather just eat the **ahem** cake and be happy. I would think that in 2.5 months, I would have lost more than 3 pounds.

Any advice or insight? Thanks in advance.

---

If you want to see significant weight loss you have to keep your body from getting use to your workout routine. Switch up your workout routine by walking, elliptical, spinning and weightlifting. Walk for 2 hours 5-6 days week. Take one day off each week from walkig and do strength training.  Most importantly watch the amount of sugar you intake.   Limit your fruits intake. Do not eat smoothie for breakfast.. You want protein, fiber and carbs for every meal.   On days you plan to get in 20k steps eat brown rice the night before to give you energy to have a great workout.  Do that and you'd start seeing more results.    Good luck!

[LauraT45]

Thank you, everyone, for the encouragement and advice. While I have been tracking absolutely every calorie I consume, maybe I need to push myself a bit with more challenging workouts and add more protein to my diet. I'm going to try those adjustments and hopefully see some results. I do need to add in strength training - I have not been doing that. I'm going to more closely monitor my sugar - while I haven't been snacking on chips, etc., I have been eating a lot more fruit. Maybe that is part of it as well.

Thanks again for the input!

[Lily-Mari]

Happy stepping.

[BWright1175]

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@LauraT45 wrote:

Thank you, everyone, for the encouragement and advice. While I have been tracking absolutely every calorie I consume, maybe I need to push myself a bit with more challenging workouts and add more protein to my diet. I'm going to try those adjustments and hopefully see some results. I do need to add in strength training - I have not been doing that. I'm going to more closely monitor my sugar - while I haven't been snacking on chips, etc., I have been eating a lot more fruit. Maybe that is part of it as well.

Thanks again for the input!

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You said earlier that you were meticulous about logging everything you eat/drink, but how exactly are you counting those calories?  For example:

Do you grab the serving size of 6 Triscuits, or do you weigh out 30g of Triscuits?

Do you eat a half cup of low fat cottage cheese, or do you weigh out 113g of low fat cottage cheese?

Do you use 2 slices of Healthy Life Italian Bread for your sandwich, or do you weigh to ensure those 2 slices weigh 41g, and adjust the calories accordingly if different?

And for higher calorie items that may not give a precise weight... try and figure it out, as overestimating has a larger caloric impact.  For example, coconut oil is 120 calories per tablespoon.  As it's easier to measure the volume of a liquid than a solid, I melted enough coconut oil to fill a tablespoon, then weighed it (12g, by the way).  So each morning, instead of pulling out a tablespoon or trying to guestimate the coconut oil for my oatmeal, I just weigh it as I add it.

Basically, if a food label provides you with a weight measurement, use it.

I'd also recommend you look up some more advanced formulas for how many calories you're actually burning each day based on all of your vital stats, including figuring out heart rate zones (fat burn, cardio, peak) that are tailored to you and your activity level, not the standard data that fitbit provides, as it can be highly inaccurate.  For example, per fitbit's formula I'm in the fat burning zone once my HR goes over 90.  Using more advanced formulas that take more information into account (including my resting heart rate), my actual fat burning zone doesn't start until around the 120 mark.  So fitbit "thinks" I'm burning more calories than I actually am... so I rarely eat the recommended calories that fitbit tells me to.

[Ukase]

You will likely see a variety of answers given. 

Some are good, some possibly not so good. 

When you're trying to lose weight, and you're not succeeding, the first thing you have to look at is this math problem: 

    Calories in - Calories out = Z

   3600/16 = 225

If we could make a few assumptions: 

Assumption 1 = Your hydration level is constant

Assumption 2 = The caloric values you're writing down are accurate

Assumption 3 = You're weighing yourself at the same time every day with no clothes on - or the exact same clothes on each time. 

Ok, now, have you ever heard that odd sound when you yank the needle off the record while it's spinning? Imagine that sound! Because these assumptions - the first two are crazy. 

There's just no possible way to maintain the exact same hydration level. All you can do is just shoot for drinking the same amount each day, whatever that value may be. 

Assumption 2 is tough! Not because it's hard (but, it is tedious) to write down what you eat - but because the caloric estimates are a rough guess. 

So - here's your new plan. You weigh 180 pounds. Select your dietary plan - easy, medium, hard. 

Or, choose your caloric deficit. For two weeks - work to have at least that value for your caloric deficit. 

If you've chosen 250 calories - this refers you to this little problem I wrote from above: 3600/16 = 225

"They" say a pound is roughly 3600 calories. So, 16 ounces are in a pound - so, by my reasoning, every 225 calories I'm at a deficit - that's 1 ounce I lose. 

Yeah. One ounce. Let that sink in. We can go full tilt on donuts and Nutella - and pack on a pound or more in one day, heck, if it's me, I can put it away! I could put on 2 or 3 pounds a day if I make my mind up to do it! 

But the losing of weight, in particular fat, that's got to go more slowly, or your metabolism will work against you. 

"They" say if you lose more than 2 pounds a week, that's too many. I don't know who "they" are, but I think that depends on how much you weigh. If you're over 200, I think you could try for 3 pounds in a week and be okay. 

But, you're 180. So, it's 2 pounds a week. 

So - back on track! A caloric deficit for two weeks and measure your progress. 

14 days of a caloric deficit of 500 = 7000 calories. Just a bit less than 2 pounds. 

If you get on the scale after 2 weeks and you haven't lost at least 1 pound - you'll need to try to increase your caloric deficit to 750 calories a day. Or, increase your activity so that you burn 250 calories more. 

Then revisit it after two weeks. 

It may also help to tell us what you're eating, when you're eating it and when you're exercising. 

Some of the more savvy nutrition folks that lurk the forums can share some wisdom with you if it looks like you're doing something wrong. 

[Marcy]

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@LauraT45 wrote:

...I need to push myself a bit with more challenging workouts... I do need to add in strength training...

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@LauraT45, Ok but not now! Certainly keep active. But with 3lbs in 2.5 months, you need to reduce your calories. While losing weight, you will likely not have enough motivation left to maintain a "challenging" new workout or the energy for "strength" training. Set yourself up for success.

[diamondc]

Hi Laura,

Have you had any progress since this post?

[engus]

One thing to also keep in mind is in the begining, it is not always just about weight loss, as we become more active our bodies lose fat and gain muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat.  Are you noticing a difference in the way your clothes fit? Body measurements? These types of observations can be more telling of overall progess.

Keep up the great work.