Working out for 5 weeks already, not a pound lost

[Amburnes]

I've been working out for 5 weeks so far, mixed with intermittent fasting. I start eating at 11 am and don't eat anything past 6:30 pm. My diet consists of a lot of protein, veggies and fruits with occasional bad snacks. I usually eat around 1,300 calories a day. I do cardio 5x a week at medium intensity, occasionally doing HIIT. I occasionally bike for 30 minutes once or twice a week. I also mix in strength training and abs. 

I am currently 5'6 and 146 pounds, and I have been at this SAME weight for 5 weeks now. I have also been measuring myself and there is little to no change in my measurements! I see no visual difference either. What am I doing wrong???

[Gabriella51]

Yikes!  If you're truly consuming 1300 calories a day and exercising as you do, this is surely a puzzlement!  Do you know if you are insulin resistant?  Maybe check that out on Google....hard to see a doctor these days!

[Amburnes]

Yeah, I'll look into that. There have been a few days where I've gone over 1,300 (such as my brother's birthday, we had cake and treats) and ate around 1,600-1,700, but this has only happened maybe 5 times in the past 5 weeks. I know I could be gaining muscle which will replace the weight of the fat, but there's no visual or measurement changes!

[SunsetRunner]

Do you track your food, @Amburnes ? And weigh and measure it? I find it helpful to do that when I plateau. It keeps me “honest” and helps avoid what I call portion creep. 

[GarryB24]

I would get a cheap scale and weigh your food. You must be eating more calories than you think or something else is wrong. You should be losing weight. As long as you are running a deficit, the weight should be coming off.  You don't want to eat too little either. Seems like you eat 1300, but you do a good amount of cardio too.

[Phoenix14]

How many calories a day does your Fitbit show you are burning? That's the key, you have to have a calorie deficit.  Your metabolism may be such that you are burning about 1600-1700 calories a day. If you are not measuring and weighing everything you eat, you could be actually closer to 1400-1500 calories consumed. It's frustrating and annoying and tedious, but I literally measure and weigh everything I eat.  I have a food allergy so I have to cook a lot of my own food from non-traditional ingredients. I use MyFitnessPal.com website to create my own recipes to compute calories and nutritional values, and enter them here under Create New Food.
You'll get there! There is a lot more work to "Move More, Eat Less" than a lot of people think, and but that's also why a lot of people don't stick with it. But not us, not this time. 🙂

[bodylogicbyjeff · Accepted solution]

Here are some Fitness Tips for Beginners - Hope it helps - GOOD LUCK!

1. Plan your meals, resistance training and cardio at least a day in advance. I plan mine a week in advance and prepare all my meals for the coming week on Sunday mornings. This way I don't have to think about anything, I just wake up and I know what exercises I have to complete that day and what meals I'll be eating.

2. Treat your weight loss like a marathon, not a sprint. If you lose more than 2 pounds per week, you’re likely losing more muscle than fat.

3. You must find a way to track your food, weight, body fat, cardio and strength training.

4. You must have a plan and a goal that is time sensitive and specific. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there!

5. Give yourself one cheat meal per week. One cheat MEAL, not a CHEAT DAY! I find that it's not that hard to eat clean for 6 days in a row when I know on the 7th day, I can have some pizza and brownies for one meal. I definitely enjoy my cheat meal, though I find that the morning after my cheat I don't feel quite as good, which makes it easy to get back to eating clean for another 6 days!

[Phoenix14]

Respectfully, the term "cheat meal/ cheat day" really bothers me. If you have to "cheat" on yourself, then this probably is not going to be a relationship with food that will produce lifelong healthy rewards. If your diet is severely restricting something you love to eat, you're not going to be happy with the journey. It's about finding what to eat and how much in a way that can help you get to healthy and happy for years down the road.