Weight and inches loss rut

mariannawonder

Hello everyone! This is my very first time posting on the community but I'm in a bit of a rut so I thought maybe someone can offer me some advice that could help fix that.

A little background about me- Im about to turn 29 and have been on and off dieting, healthy eating and working out since I was 21. When I was 21 I woke up one day and realized I was 215 lbs, had to start buying a size 16 everything, and generally felt terrible about myself. I have a really bad stomach and spent a lot of my teen years and 20s in and out of doctors offices and hospitals dealing with that. The past few years it's been more manageable but still the lamest thing about my body.

I'm a third year law student and right before year 1 I got myself down to the upper 170s, which was my greatest achievement other than getting a decent scholarahip to law school. Between the hours of work and stress my weights gone back and forth a few times between the 170s and 180s, until spring where I got really committed and got down to 173, the lowest weight since adulthood. It was mainly from tracking food, I wasn't working out more than like 2-3 days a week because it was finals but I was happy. My motivation was being engaged and knowing this summer I'd buy my wedding dress and in the fall I'd have my engagement shoot. Then summer happened and I became a summer associate at a law firm with all the perks and went a little too crazy. August 1st it was all over and I was about 184. I spent all of August and all of September so far kicking my butt. I've worked out 6-7 days a week, a mix of running, elliptical when I'm too sore, weekly personal training that's mainly weight lifting with some running afterwards, occasionally lifting solo, yoga, Pilates, boot camp classes and barre. I try to mix up what I do each week so my body doesn't get used to it, and I've gotten significantly better at running (even better than I was in the spring). I've also been maticulaously tracking on my fitness pal, always trying to over track when I'm not sure about something. I cook 90% of my food myself or make my fiancé follow my recipes (he's okay with instruction but I'm a better cook haha). I have my macros set to 30% fat 30% protein and 40% carbs. Generally carbs at night make me bloat or make my stomach feel meh so I usually eat them mostly with breakfast or as snacks. I have a Fitbit and a heart rate monitor chest strap so I use the two to calculate my fitness during the day and I estimate my food planning in the morning to what I'm planning on doing. If things go well and I have a lot of extra calories left I have some halo top ice cream because yum. I'd say I average eating between 1300-1600 calories a day, and always have at minimum a 750 calorie deficit on my Fitbit, but usually 1000.

So here's my rut. Despite all this hard work and wedding/self worth induced motivation, I'm hardly losing anything. I did the first two weeks, but then since August 16th I've lost like 2.5 lbs. I've gained muscle and lost fat but not enough that it makes sense. I don't have all of my data with me right now because I track most of it on a notepad but in the past two weeks none of my measurements have gone down, I have only lost .1% fat and gained .5% muscle and .5 lbs. In the two weeks before that I lost a pound, and my muscle fat % changes were a little more, and I lost about .5 inch in my hips, chest and legs, but honestly that is even less than I'm used to over such a time period. My waist won't go down which is what I need most for my dress.

I keep trying not to be too hard on myself and to keep working hard and be patient but this is getting long enough now that it's making me sad. I feel like all my hard work is for nothing. I won't feel better until I lose the summer weight and start working towards my long term goal again, but there's 5.5 lbs standing between me and that.

If anyone has any advice of how I can make this a more effective or positive experience I'd love to hear. I sometimes wonder if im not eating enough or if I'm eating too much, or if I should go back to my old really structured diet from when I was less active, but I don't think I can sustain that anymore. I am thinking about getting some kind of online nutritionist membership to try to get some help with this but I also feel like a lot of nutritionalists are full of *kitten*, and I can't cut cheese out of my diet or there will be no joy left in my world.

Sorry for this being the longest rant ever, I just figure the more I share the more help someone may be able to give!

Thanks in advance!!

queenliz99

Do you use a food scale to weigh everything? It sounds like your calorie intake is higher than you think.

mariannawonder

queenliz99 wrote: »

Do you use a food scale to weigh everything? It sounds like your calorie intake is higher than you think.

I weigh almost everything. I don't always weigh veggies but I've been cooking since I was 15 and have a really good eye for that stuff (and always build in a little extra just to be safe) and I obviously can't weigh stuff when I eat out but otherwise yes. I even weigh food cooked when I'm dividing it up when I've cooked in bulk to make sure each serving is even.

RoxieDawn

Can you open up your diary?

ilex70

The food scale is usually a key factor on the intake side.

For calories out it sounds like you are using your Fitbit and heart rate monitor and then eating back exercise calories? That can be really tricky.

Some posters here say use MFP and eat back calories that it gives for your activity, some say eat back half those calories because MFP is overly generous. And then many advocate for using the Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) method.

Maybe working with TDEE is worth a try if you aren't seeing progress by eating back estimated calories. Just find a TDEE calculator to get your daily number and then try to hit that calorie target everyday instead of bumping your intake up and down adjusting to each days activities.

Personally I hardly every ate back any exercise calories when I was aggressively trying to lose weight. Since I'm working more on vanity weight now (within normal range for my height) I'm eating more. Snail pace weight loss though, so may change it up.

queenliz99

My Home/Settings/ Diary settings

jemhh

You sound like a classic yo-yo dieter who needs to chill out.

My suggestion would be to start looking at the long-term now and forget about "summer weight" vs other weight. Your profile shows that you have 30 pounds to lose. Set your MFP goal to 1 pound per week. Log your exercise and eat 50% of those calories plus your entire MFP goal. Weigh yourself once a week but gauge the trend over the length of your menstrual cycle, not day to day or week to week. Specifically, compare your weight the day after your period starts this cycle against the day after it starts next cycle.

Ignore your fat/muscle percentages at this point. Comparing week to week and even month to month is pretty useless. If you must track them, get a DEXA done now and then again in December at the earliest.

RoxieDawn

And I will add this, per your OP you stated "I've gained muscle and lost fat" and if this is the case then you are eating a lot closer to maintenance and your deficit is really small to nothing..

How are you getting these 100% precise measurements in your fat loss to muscle gain ratios you mentioned?

While you can gain minimal muscle in a calorie deficit, these taper off fairly quickly, and it could be masking the scale weight.. But.it seems like some of your attention has been to the details you are trying to maintain and perhaps less on the actual calorie deficit goal, etc.

edited to add: no need to go back to old ways of dieting, just setup MFP to lose 1 pound per week, weigh and log food accurately according to that precise calorie goal, eat back 1/2 exercise and do this for a min of 3-4 weeks. Weigh daily on your body scale if you must but def weekly. Trend your weight. Your monthly cycle is also huge when factoring all of this in. Also daily fluctuations, etc. can all drive a person crazy and if I read this right you have 5.5 pounds to lose, stop all madness and just adhere to the calorie deficit.

mariannawonder

The diary is open now.

I wouldn't consider myself a yoyo dieter. I focus on cooking healthy 90% of the time and track so I don't get off course, but sometimes in life happens. I've never gained more than 10 lbs before I stopped and got back on track. I'm pretty sure that for 8 years of effort that's not so bad and definitely not yoyoing.

In terms of the suggestions about not eating my activity calories- I see that point. I don't eat them all but I definitely eat some. I keep my thing set to 1200 and then add in steps and workouts so I only eat more when I've earned it but don't eat them all (I have between 200-500 left most days). If one day I'm starving I eat some more because hunger makes it hard to study but I try hard not to. What are people's thoughts on eating based on activity vs a flat amount of calories per day? I figure if I still have 1000 deficit I'm not eating to maintain but maybe I'm giving myself too much data.

I haven't gotten to read all of the comments yet because I'm in the midst of a 3 hour class without computers (on a short break phew), but I'll read them later. To anyone whose actually trying to give me good advice and help me out thank you!