Difficulty losing on low sugar

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readeramm
readeramm Posts: 23 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
My doctor recommended a low sugar diet (South Beach). I'm eating about 1400 calories a day which is 100 less than my target for losing 1 1/2 pounds a week plus I'm walking 3 miles 6 days a week which should give me 300 calories more. I'm eating mostly lean proteins (chicken, fish, turkey sausage) with some fat from mayo, eggs, an ounce of nuts a day and low fat cheese. I've lost about 1/2 pound a week for 3 weeks. I've monitored my sodium and that's right on target and I'm only having 2 caffeinated beverage a day. I have a protein shake with dinner to give me the extra fullness I need to not snack in the evening. Not sure where the problem might lie. I've lost and gained weight several times and can usually ID the problem when I get stuck. Any suggestions?

Replies

  • Ninkyou
    Ninkyou Posts: 6,666 Member
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    Are you weighing your food with a food scale?
  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
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    Your diary is closed, so do you use a food scale?
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    Setting your diary to public or giving us some more details might help get you more specific advice. Until then, these are my really general tips. Maybe something will help you out.

    1. If it's been less than 3 weeks or so since you last saw a drop on the scale, don't sweat it! Normal fluctuations happen and unfortunately sometimes we stall for a week or two even when we're doing everything right. Give your body some time to catch up with the changes you're making.

    2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.

    3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.

    4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.

    5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.

    6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.

    7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.

    8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.

    9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.
  • hgycta
    hgycta Posts: 3,013 Member
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    it's not the sugar that's to blame, it's the calories. Calories in must be lower than calories burned in order to lose weight, simple as that. How are you measuring your food? Are you weighing it? Are you using accurate measurements? Something, somewhere, has to be off if you're not seeing results. It could also be muscle since that weighs more. Rather than just focusing on what the scale says, how are you looking and feeling? Is your body composition improving? Are you eating back those 300 calories (if so, maybe you're overestimating your burn)?
  • Tennisskater
    Tennisskater Posts: 66 Member
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    Good luck, your diet sounds very balanced and be patient. I have to keep telling my self, it took a lot of time for the weight to creep on, it's going to time and patience for it to go away. I try to think of this whole thing as a long term lifestyle change, not so much a diet.
  • Traveler120
    Traveler120 Posts: 712 Member
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    There's nothing magical about sugar. The reason you're not losing weight is because you're eating at maintenance for your current level of activity. The simple solution is to eat less and move more. Or eat the same amount but move a heck of a lot more. It's that simple.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    Food scale?
  • Sunny_Bunny_
    Sunny_Bunny_ Posts: 7,140 Member
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    He said it is doctor recommended to have no sugar...
    Anyway, sugar becomes glucose in the blood. So do all carbohydrates. Did you end up just having more carbs in place of the sugar? Maybe lowering carbs in general could help. Did you doctor make this recommendation due to a metabolic syndrome? If so, reducing all carbohydrate further would make more of a difference.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
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    Is there an underlying medical condition which is better managed with low sugar? Most doctors are not well versed in nutrition. Perhaps ask for a referral to a registered dietician, if you can. I agree with the people above who recommend the food scale. I cannot tell you how important that can be!
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
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    readeramm wrote: »
    My doctor recommended a low sugar diet (South Beach). I'm eating about 1400 calories a day which is 100 less than my target for losing 1 1/2 pounds a week plus I'm walking 3 miles 6 days a week which should give me 300 calories more. I'm eating mostly lean proteins (chicken, fish, turkey sausage) with some fat from mayo, eggs, an ounce of nuts a day and low fat cheese. I've lost about 1/2 pound a week for 3 weeks. I've monitored my sodium and that's right on target and I'm only having 2 caffeinated beverage a day. I have a protein shake with dinner to give me the extra fullness I need to not snack in the evening. Not sure where the problem might lie. I've lost and gained weight several times and can usually ID the problem when I get stuck. Any suggestions?

    How much we eat always supports what our weight does. You are undoubtedly eating more calories than you realize.

    Do you weigh your food? Log everything you eat?

    Where do you get your exercise burns from?

  • Pollywog_la
    Pollywog_la Posts: 103 Member
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    What are your macro percentages? You eat protein, fats and carbs (sugar)
    You may have reduced your overall carbs just by cutting back on calories, but you may want to up your fats.
    I didn't start losing til I did that.
    I am very sensitive to carbs, so I have reduced them more than you may need to...under 20g a day.
  • readeramm
    readeramm Posts: 23 Member
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    Sorry, I didn't realize I had to unlock my diary for folks to see it. Now unlocked. I do weigh everything and am pretty meticulous about it. My calorie burn comes from my Fitbit - it doesn't seem excessive and I typically don't eat back many of those calories.

    Doctor recommended low sugar diet because I lost 80 pounds 2 years ago and put 70 back on after a broken foot sidelined me for several months and I fell off the wagon. I got into a cycle where I was always hungry so I'd increase my exercise to get more calories and it was more and more. I was walking 5 miles a day during the week and 8-12 on the weekends. My doctor recommended a low sugar diet because she thought it would help me with the always hungry thing. It really has been tremendous from that standpoint. I'm taking in less calories but I'm not hungry often and when I am it's a manageable level not the voracious appetite I have. I may just need to be patient but I can't help but feel I should be losing more quickly right now. With a history of having been able to lose a lot of weight before, I do have pretty good habits.

    Thanks for taking a look at the diary to see where my issues may be.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited November 2015
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    readeramm wrote: »
    My doctor recommended a low sugar diet because she thought it would help me with the always hungry thing. It really has been tremendous from that standpoint. I'm taking in less calories but I'm not hungry often and when I am it's a manageable level not the voracious appetite I have. I may just need to be patient but I can't help but feel I should be losing more quickly right now. With a history of having been able to lose a lot of weight before, I do have pretty good habits.

    This sounds good.

    How long has it been, and have there been any other changes that might result in water weight?
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
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    Checking in. Have things worked themselves out?
  • ultrahoon
    ultrahoon Posts: 467 Member
    edited November 2015
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    You need to ditch those cup measurements and un-weighed entries like '3 links of sausage' and '2 large egg'. You're not on the largest amount of calories per day, so you need to get your margin of error as small as possible.

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