exercise and not losing weight

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lydiadragon
lydiadragon Posts: 2
in Motivation and Support
I started karate 4 weeks ago for exercise. I have been following my calorie count and I have noticed that ichave not lost any weight. I have however dropped a pants size. I want the weight to go away too though. Any ideas?

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  • mommyvalarie
    mommyvalarie Posts: 13 Member
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    Try swapping some of your calories from starch to fruits,veggies and proteins, and drink tons of water. It's good that you are dropping inches, so if you stick with it eventually you will see a difference on the scale too
  • Graceious1
    Graceious1 Posts: 716 Member
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    Well done dropping a pant size. That is what is known as a non-scale victory. You have lost fat and have probably built muscle. You will have many of these such as increased energy, different body shape, moving up the karate ranks. There are so many. What type of food are you eating? I do taekwondo (black belt grading is next week) and martial arts is a wonderful exercise to build into your routine. Feel free to add me because I am a great supporter of women in martial arts. Keep it up!!!
  • jennk5309
    jennk5309 Posts: 206 Member
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    You dropped a pant size!!! I think a pant size is about 12-15 pounds so that's at least how much fat you dropped. You just added muscle in the process. Be proud!
  • whitenski1
    whitenski1 Posts: 1
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    Don't Worry about the weight, if you body shape is changing for the better then you are getting much healthier and doing the right thing. Either get a body fat scales or throw the scales out.. (this will give you a rounded picture of what you are doing).. muscle (as you are probably aware is much denser than fat, about 10-12%) and pound for pound burns 8X more calories. the increased muscle will mean quicker fat burning resulting and a more athletic body and the results will last longer. You will also find that when you go on holiday you will hopefully find that your not taking too many steps backwards.

    Good luck and focus on the improvements in your performance and changes in your bodies shape.
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
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    mommyvalarie wrote: »
    Try swapping some of your calories from starch to fruits,veggies and proteins, and drink tons of water. It's good that you are dropping inches, so if you stick with it eventually you will see a difference on the scale too

    So swapping calories from X to calories Y will help her lose weight how? It's still the same amount of calories.
  • distancegirl19
    distancegirl19 Posts: 2
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    If you managed to drop a pant size, but have not seen it on the scale, you dropped fat and traded it for muscle and that is awesome. Muscle is way more dense than fat, so you can be significantly visually thinner, but weigh the same amount.

    Muscle also 'uses' more calories than fat to maintain itself, so by gaining muscle you've boosted your metabolism too. That means you are going to burn more calories doing your normal daily activities, which will help you toward your overall goal.

    Hang in there, the scale is going to move for you soon!
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
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    distancegirl19 wrote: »
    If you managed to drop a pant size, but have not seen it on the scale, you dropped fat and traded it for muscle and that is awesome. Muscle is way more dense than fat, so you can be significantly visually thinner, but weigh the same amount.

    Muscle also 'uses' more calories than fat to maintain itself, so by gaining muscle you've boosted your metabolism too. That means you are going to burn more calories doing your normal daily activities, which will help you toward your overall goal.

    Hang in there, the scale is going to move for you soon!

    This is not true. You do not trade fat for muscle. If it were that easy everyone would have a beach body. Also, gaining muscle mass takes a surplus of calories and a heavy lifting program. There are such things as newbie gains but it's not something that would stall the scale weight.
  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
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    Lot of wrong information above (not ardita).

    Op are you weighing all your food and logging it ?
    What sort of deficit do you think you are running?
    Are you eating back exercise calories?
    How are you measuring burns?

    The normal answer to all these questions is that you are somewhere around maintenance.
    You can wait to see if it moves again, but you may need to make changes that will either move your calories down or your burns up.
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
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    999tigger wrote: »
    Lot of wrong information above (not ardita).

    Op are you weighing all your food and logging it ?
    What sort of deficit do you think you are running?
    Are you eating back exercise calories?
    How are you measuring burns?

    The normal answer to all these questions is that you are somewhere around maintenance.
    You can wait to see if it moves again, but you may need to make changes that will either move your calories down or your burns up.

    Wow, now that I've read all the posts, even more than I though.

    OP, let us know the answer to 999tigger's questions!
  • Jolinia
    Jolinia Posts: 846 Member
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    Sometimes the body holds water to repair muscle. It's inflammation, but not the bad kind. So you might have this going on, especially if you keep ramping up your exercise from becoming more proficient and having more endurance. As others have said, go with the pants size for your progress instead of the scale for awhile.

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