Judge me please

Options
2»

Replies

  • jennybearlv
    jennybearlv Posts: 1,519 Member
    Options
    asilmegan34 wrote: »
    Or rather, my diary because I am stuck in a rut and I feel so defeated. I cannot lose weight and I am gaining inches in my stomach area.

    Short background:
    I've lost 70 pounds in 3 years and I have overcome an ED. I have been doing strictly calorie restriction to lose weight for the last 6 months. I hit a plateau and I was so tired of looking flabby and felt crappy so I started cardio and lifting weights. I've gained weight and have been unable to lose.

    Right now I work out 5 days a week, I get in at least 12-15K steps a day (fitbit), and I do 3-4 days a week of strength training with cardio. I feel sore everyday from exertion but I figure that's a good thing.

    I feel like my weaknesses are:
    - Eating too many carbs
    - Not measuring all of my food via digital food scale (just purchased one today)

    Does anyone have advice for me to get things moving in the right direction? Should I cut my calorie intake more? Realistically I have 20 pounds left to lose. I do measurements and I have lost 11.5 inches total in various places in 6 weeks but it has drastically plateaued to .5 inch per week if that. My clothes feel tighter in my stomach area and I feel like I look bigger, and my progress pics don't really show much change at all.

    Thanks for helping out someone who is totally clueless.

    I would love to lose .5 inch a week. I lose weight just fine, but I'm lucky to lose .5 inch a month. That is the great thing about measuring our progress in different ways. Just because the scale doesn't move you can still lose in other ways. That looks like success and progress to me. I'm thinking you could just be bloated, especially if your stomach is getting bigger. I had that happen last week. Sudden mysterious 2 pounds extra on the scale with an inch more in my waist measurement. We lose fat all over though, and it happened overnight so I knew it wasn't real.

    Adding that food scale could make a big difference. It sounds like you are shrinking just fine, but that scale could really boost your losses.
  • 2011rocket3touring
    2011rocket3touring Posts: 1,346 Member
    Options
    andrea4736 wrote: »
    ...The food scale will most likely help a lot as it is really easy to misjudge how much you are eating. If you are sore from strength training, you are most likely retaining water. If your profile pic is current, you look great! Weight loss slows drastically the closer you get to goal.
    Nailed it.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,883 Member
    Options
    asilmegan34 wrote: »
    CafeRacer808 wrote: »
    asilmegan34 wrote: »
    - Not measuring all of my food via digital food scale (just purchased one today)

    I suspect this will have the biggest impact on whether or not you start losing weight again. As we get closer to goal weight, logging accurately becomes extremely important. Weigh everything, including packaged or pre-portioned foods like crackers, bagels, slices of bread or bacon, etc. Do this consistently and I'm fairly certain the scale will start to move.

    I agree. I came across a post on here where someone showed the difference of the serving size of bagels for nutrition facts on the bag versus the scale, and it was off by a decent margin. I dont use condiments much because of this, because I am way too lazy to get an accurate measurement so I'd rather just not eat it.

    Condiments are easy. Let's use mayo as an example, and assume you're weighing in grams, but the principle works for other things.

    Remove the cap from the mayo, unless it's a squeeze bottle. Put the whole bottle on the scale. Zero (tare) the scale. Take the bottle and spread or squirt a nice blob of mayo on your sandwich. Put the bottle back on the scale. The scale will have a negative number on it. Let's pretend it's -11 grams. Log 11 grams of mayo (that's how much you took out of the bottle & put on your sandwich. Done.

    Here's granny's full standard list of food-weighing tips, while we're talking about it:
    • Assembling a salad in a bowl, a stew in a pan, sandwich on a plate? Put the bowl/pan/plate on the scale, zero, add an ingredient, note the weight, zero, add the next ingredient, note the weight . . . .
    • Using something from a carton or jar, or cutting a slice from a hunk of cheese? Put the container or chunk on the scale, zero, take out portion, note the negative value (it's the amount you took out).
    • Eating a whole apple, banana, unhulled strawberries, corn on the cob? Weigh the ready-to-eat food, eat the yummy parts, weigh the core/hulls/peel, subtract & note.
    • I like to keep a few clean plastic yogurt-tub lids around to weigh small items, like a handful of nuts or chopped hardboiled eggs or something. Drop the lid on the scale, zero, add item, note weight, eat or use - just a quick rinse of the lid under the faucet & you're done.
    No measuring spoons to scrape out, or wash, except when you need to measure liquids . . . and you can weigh some of them, too.

    While I'm cooking, I usually scribble the items & grams on a junk-mail envelope, and log the whole list on MFP when I'm done, so I don't have to worry about spills on my device.

Categories