Eating under and working out, yet still the same or gaining
BeeRodMul
Posts: 48 Member
It's kinda frustrating. I've been constistant with being under my calorie goal and staying active. Yet this past week, the scale kept going up a few pounds. Heck, my clothes are looser and starting to see the weight loss on my face. Will a rest day help? A calorie spike just to trigger weight loss? I also feel backed up with my BMs. You think that could be related? Just want answers.
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Try drinking more water for a few days, as in 8 glasses AT LEAST.0
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I do on a daily basis. It may not appear on here but I log it on my Fitbit. Sometimes, I drink 12 glasses a day.0
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In fact, besides the one night I had a glass of wine, all I had was water. No juice or soda. Only water.0
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Women tend to have lots of water fluctuations related to your cycle. Some people will hold on to extra water the week before TOM. I tend to retain water around ovulation time more than the actual TOM week. It could be that. Are you weighing your food on a scale? If not it is possible that your calories in is more than you think it is. And it may be that you are constipated. Make sure you are getting plenty of fiber and if you are make sure you are drinking plenty of water too. Fiber can help with constipation, but if you have too much fiber and not enough water with it it can cause constipation. I wouldn't worry just yet. It sounds like normal fluctuations.0
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If it's only this week I wouldn't worry about small fluctuations. Weight loss will come often quote sporadically with many fluctuations in between. Keep at it with your calorie goals and exercises and the weight will eventually come off so long as you are in a calorie deficit. Make sure your goals are realistic and be patient! We didn't put on weight overnight, and it won't come off overnight either.1
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I would look at diet first. Are you using a food scale?2
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It has only been one week. Sounds like fluctuations to me. Gaining a few pounds in a week would require eating around 3500 calories over your maintenance for each pound. Since you're backed up, that could also contribute. A rest day may help in the way of your muscles holding less water for repair, but a calorie spike won't do anything.3
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I wouldn't go on what scales say 100% when measuring your success.
If you're working out, you'll put on some muscle which is the right sort of gain
If you can see a difference in your body and they way your clothes fit, doesn't sound like there's really a problem. Try taking your measurement as well as weighing yourself OR I like to take a full body photo every 2weeks. You can really see the difference! Then you can really see if your loosing jiggle
As for BM's agreed, the water helps! Licorique tea maybe?
Well done for all your hard work so far!!
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Since you say your clothing is fitting looser then maybe you'd do better by measuring yourself instead of using the scales for now. I am the opposite and can tell more by the scales than my clothing because I stay bloated a lot of days. Every body is different. Be sure to weigh and measure your foods.1
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TheLifeDetoxer wrote: »I wouldn't go on what scales say 100% when measuring your success.
If you're working out, you'll put on some muscle which is the right sort of gain
If you can see a difference in your body and they way your clothes fit, doesn't sound like there's really a problem. Try taking your measurement as well as weighing yourself OR I like to take a full body photo every 2weeks. You can really see the difference! Then you can really see if your loosing jiggle
Well done for all your hard work so far!!
She's not going to put on muscle at a calorie deficit, especially several pounds of muscle in a week. I do agree on waiting it out though.2 -
Share your diary and the cause will probably become apparent.1
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Constipation can certainly do it. Sodium can also do it. By default the macros tracked on MFP show sugar instead of sodium I think, edit your settings and start watching your sodium intake. Try and stay at or around the daily recommended amount (it's really really hard to do). Processed/canned/packaged foods all have a ton of sodium. Unless you're buying fresh foods and preparing them yourself without much added salt I guarantee you're going over on sodium which means bloating and water weight.
Try increasing your water intake daily to at least a gallon of water a day. Reduce or eliminate soda (even diet soda has sodium added). I can easily gain 3-6lbs over night from eating even 1500g of sodium over the daily recommended amount. As far as constipation goes, try mineral oil (take a tablespoon at night before bed with a glass of water) for a few days. It'll usually fix that problem right up.2 -
TheLifeDetoxer wrote: »I wouldn't go on what scales say 100% when measuring your success.
If you're working out, you'll put on some muscle which is the right sort of gain
If you can see a difference in your body and they way your clothes fit, doesn't sound like there's really a problem. Try taking your measurement as well as weighing yourself OR I like to take a full body photo every 2weeks. You can really see the difference! Then you can really see if your loosing jiggle
Well done for all your hard work so far!!
She's not going to put on muscle at a calorie deficit, especially several pounds of muscle in a week. I do agree on waiting it out though.
This^^^ And putting on muscle isn't as simple as just "working out".3 -
eileen0515 wrote: »I would look at diet first. Are you using a food scale?
I would look at her mind set first. It's only been a week and it sounds like she's weighing herself every day or close to it.
OP, it could be anything. Your period, too much sodium, the time you weigh yourself, bathroom habits. It's DEFINITELY not going to be if you're UNDER your calorie goal.1 -
OP, your diary is locked so we can't look at it.0
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It's unlocked!
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I normally don't show a loss for 3-4 weeks at a time. Maybe you shouldn't weigh yourself everyday or even every week. It's not always going to be well I ate exactly X in deficit this week so therefore I should lose exactly x amount of weight.0
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One thing I did notice one of the four pieces on the bottom of my scale is off. Anything to do with that?0
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Bottom line is usually awful to hear: You are not in a calorie deficit.
Either you are underestimating your eating or overestimating you exercise.
Are you using a food scale all the time? Are you accounting for the 'little things' when cooking such as oils and butters etc.1 -
OP, forget about the scale right now. Let's discuss if you're weighing your food and how you're calculating your exercise because....in perfect world numbers, you are WAY undereating.1
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Consider tracking sodium instead of iron on your diary readout. You can always run a report for iron when you need to view it. It'll tell you if sodium is a problem. Or simply run a report for sodium and see if you're going over. Looks like your water intake is good, so unless the sodium is really high it may just be a plateau. You can also up your fiber a bit, I typically eat about 30g a day or more, sometimes closer to 40 along with good water intake and less sodium (well.. I try anyway) and BM's are not an issue. But I also get stuck, even on weeks where I eat lower than my calorie goals. You should be taking a rest day at least once a week, and instead of eating 1k under your goal every day, try either using a calculator like iifym to adjust your macros or don't even count exercise at all, and adjust your diary for a daily goal without exercise, then only eat back up to 20-30% of exercise calories, or not at all. I did that for months and consistently lost weight.
I set my macros as follows when I was trying to lose the most weight::
.8g/lb of protein
.40g/lb fat
The rest in carbs.
I set my fiber requirement at 38g per day (usually because of the high amount of protein I eat) and it helps your body keep things moving if you get my drift. If you're not used to that much try increasing it slowly over a period of weeks. I simply start my day with bran cereal and with added veggies and whole grains throughout the day I hit my goals pretty regularly.
That puts me at 28% protein, 31% fat, and 41% carbs if you're not using the paid version of MFP and can't set the macros by grams. I work out for 60 minutes a day 6 days a week, I'm 6'2" tall, age 46, and currently weigh 192. So that puts my TDEE at somewhere around 2600-2700 calories a day, so with a 15% deficit (I set it low on purpose, I am close to my goal) that puts me at a target goal of 2210 calories per day max. I'm actually currently set around a 20% deficit (trying to get those last few pounds gone). I'm not saying your macros aren't set right for you, I'm just saying try some of the other calculators around the net to get an idea what will work for you. IIFYM works for me currently, and it worked for me in the past when I didn't enter exercise at all, and set my calorie goal around 1800 per day then ate back 30% of my exercise (which netted me around 2000-2200 calories a day). I hit plateaus like everyone else, but managed to average over 2lbs a week over the course of a year doing it this way. My total loss was 110lbs in 365 days on MFP.
Some weeks I'll gain slowly, or a lot if I eat too much salt on the weekends, then the next week I'll lose weight. Usually has to do with retaining water more than going over my calories. As you get closer to your goals it's much harder to lose weight. It was so easy when I was 50-100lbs overweight.
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Oh and the reason I keep saying to look at your sodium is I see a large percentage of pre-packaged foods on your diary. They preserve it with.. yup you guessed it.. sodium.0
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Spliner1969 wrote: »Consider tracking sodium instead of iron on your diary readout. You can always run a report for iron when you need to view it. It'll tell you if sodium is a problem. Or simply run a report for sodium and see if you're going over. Looks like your water intake is good, so unless the sodium is really high it may just be a plateau. You can also up your fiber a bit, I typically eat about 30g a day or more, sometimes closer to 40 along with good water intake and less sodium (well.. I try anyway) and BM's are not an issue. But I also get stuck, even on weeks where I eat lower than my calorie goals. You should be taking a rest day at least once a week, and instead of eating 1k under your goal every day, try either using a calculator like iifym to adjust your macros or don't even count exercise at all, and adjust your diary for a daily goal without exercise, then only eat back up to 20-30% of exercise calories, or not at all. I did that for months and consistently lost weight.
Kinda hard because it's linked to my Fitbit. It gives me something to look into especially if I'm taking a rest day. And the Fitbit tracks my activity, thus based on how many calories I actually burn adjust with my daily calories.0 -
Lots of volume and "whole item" measurements in your diary, are you actually weighing your food?0
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Don't have a scale. As far as chicken and fish, they usually pack as in the weight of it. In the case of chicken, I just take off a fraction of the package.
Sometimes I do leave it around 1200ish in case it's a little more in reality. And then there are times I don't eat everything but left it there just to reach 1200.0 -
I didn't completely read all the other replies but from another post I read last week, I stumbled onto the trendweight.com website which takes your weights from fitbit and graphs them on a trend line. Very heavily statistic-based calculations, the designer used the weight tracking mentioned in The Hacker's Diet. A big focus in the method is the idea that most of what goes in and out of our bodies is water so going on a day-by-day weight change isn't that accurate. I highly recommend reading it (it's not that long although it gets in depth on math) and then look at the trendweight website to see what the actual trend in your weight is doing.0
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Don't have a scale. As far as chicken and fish, they usually pack as in the weight of it. In the case of chicken, I just take off a fraction of the package.
Sometimes I do leave it around 1200ish in case it's a little more in reality. And then there are times I don't eat everything but left it there just to reach 1200.
There's your problem, get a digital kitchen scale for $20 and start measuring your food.1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjKPIcI51lU
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