logged food right and exercised with defecit but gained weight

[PiPi84]

Logged all my food and exercise but even with a 6270 calorie deficit i gained weight. What happened?

I have been using fitbit for a week but gained weight. I went on two really long hikes and did over 20000 steps but agian still managed to gain weight. Please any insight would be appreciated

Thanks

[christina12]

There are a whole bunch of options for what could be going on, unfortunately. A few that sound possible for your situation could be:

-Check your salt intake. It's possible that you're having a lot of salt, which could cause you to be retaining water.

-Try to make sure you're eating enough. This sounds counterintuitive, but if you're actually not eating enough your body will tend to store food because it thinks it needs to save it for later.

-You might actually be building muscle, which could be offsetting any fat loss. Sometimes this is the first step in the weight loss process. If you didn't walk quite so much before, it's possible that your muscles are building up. It could be useful to do a body fat test every once in a while to see how your body is changing.

-See if you can track your sleep. If you're not sleeping well, your body isn't having the time to recover and burn calories/flush out toxins while you're sleeping. For me, having a good night's sleep can translate to as much as +/- 2 pounds on the scale in the morning.

-Look at the type of calories you're eating. Eating 1500 calories of healthy food vs. 1500 calories of junk food will make a big difference.

Hope one of these helps! These seem to be some of the most common things that affect people when they first start out on a new fitbit routine.

[Kimberly0603]

It's very frustrating to work so he'd and have nothing happen. Are you pairing your fitbit with a good tracker? I notice that the week before and sometime during my period my weight can stay the same or go up 5lb. The week after I drop all the weight and then some. If that's not the case, try pairing your fitbit with FitnessPal. It's free and breaks your food intake up by calories, protein, sodium, fat etc. I know when I have high sodium, I retain a lot of water. I average about 1-2lbs a week and 90,000 steps. Fingers crossed your not losing because your gaining lots of muscle.

[Heybales]

1 week?

And starting a exercise routine that will cause water retention?

And a woman whose base metabolism literally changes through the month?

And getting stressed out about what isn't happening?

Wait a month and unstress. You are retaining water.

But might review your food logging ability for when it will really matter.

Calories is per weight, grams, not by volume, cups and spoons.

Do you weigh everything you eat, measuring only liquids?

Also, for likely attempting a 1000 cal daily deficit, you got over 50 lbs to lose? That's reasonable.

If you have less than that, then you are just shocking your system with big workouts and barely eating compared to before.

[PiPi84]

Thanks all for replying. How much salt is ok in a diet? It is week 2 and yes im stressing because i expected to lose a pound by now and instead bounce up and then back down to my starting point. Frustrating...Oh and I have about 35 pounds to lose not sure what is acceptable to see for changes in order to stay healthy/

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@Heybales wrote:

1 week?

And starting a exercise routine that will cause water retention?

And a woman whose base metabolism literally changes through the month?

And getting stressed out about what isn't happening?

Wait a month and unstress. You are retaining water.

But might review your food logging ability for when it will really matter.

Calories is per weight, grams, not by volume, cups and spoons.

Do you weigh everything you eat, measuring only liquids?

Also, for likely attempting a 1000 cal daily deficit, you got over 50 lbs to lose? That's reasonable.

If you have less than that, then you are just shocking your system with big workouts and barely eating compared to before.

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[Heybales]

Unless you have high blood pressure or other reasons for sodium to matter, the 2000-3000 range is in there as acceptable.

It's one of those things that for the sake of the small minority where it really matters, all are encouraged to eat low.

Also, everyone it seems regarding weight loss says to eat little, so you can drop water weight.

Well, draining some blood will drop some water weight too, but really - does that count in the end?

Neither does false weight loss from eating lower sodium than you'll normally do.

So you did huge endurance walks where you likely burned much more than Fitbit estimated, since you had inclines, and perhaps carried more weight on you.

Endurance cardio asks the body to store more carbs in muscles.

And while starting a diet you do deplete those with with water weight loss the first couple weeks, you probably just had body increase them over normal.

35 lbs would have 750 cal deficit as reasonable until 25 lbs, where 500 would be.

Your stress over it will increase cortisol, and you can indeed elevate that and cause yourself to gain 10-20 lbs of water weight.

So get off the scale and get out the tape measure.

Both should be done on valid day only to minimize known water changes.

Morning after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout.

Any other weigh-ins throw out, or only tag the valid ones - the others are just noise until you have a month of noise to indicate a direction, and you likely won't wait that long.

[Clark]

I agree that a week might be a little early to draw any conclusions from your experiences, but, on the other hand, many people gush about relatively-large weight loss in the first week of their diets/lifestyle changes, so it can be frustrating when it doesn't happen for you.

However, it may be that if you continue averaging about a 900 calorie deficit every day for the next week (this is the average deficit for your previous week (6270 divided by 7)), you will see a better result, so try not to be discouraged by your first week's experience. It certainly sounds like you are on the right track.

Here's what I have found, and my disclaimer is that it applies to my experiences, so your mileage may vary, as they say: Exercise is incredibly important and has many, well-documented benefits to mind and body, but do NOT make a habit of "eating back" your exercise calories. This doesn't mean never do it; it means, don't regularly eat back exercise calories.  When I do, I find that I do not loose weight… sometimes I find that I gain weight! In fact, my most successful weight loss experiences have usually involved no exercise beyond my normal daily routines (walking the dog, playing with my kids, etc.), but did involve a significant diet change, at least initially. 

It makes perfect sense, at least intellectually, that a reasonable daily deficit in calories in vs. out will lead to a weight loss, but for me, anyway, when MyFitnessPall or Fitbit are showing a daily deficit and my weight is not decreasing, it usually means there are too many calories coming in, irrespective of how many I think are going out. 

Please let us know how things went in your second week, and good luck!

[carl669]

just for some perspective:

it look me 6 months to lose the first 65lbs.

it's taken me 8 months to lose the next 32lbs.

and i've still got about 10 lbs to go.

1 week doesn't matter in the long run.  there were periods in the last 8 months where i would gain a couple pounds.  they would hang around for a couple weeks and then magically disappear (taking along 1 or 2 more of their buddies in the process).  so, it'll happen.  just give it time.