4 weeks - no movement on the scales

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laurendunlop83
laurendunlop83 Posts: 7 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey, I'm a bit confused. I have been working really hard for the last 4 week. Sticking to a 1200 kcal a day target. Trying to make sure that I have a good balance between carbs and proteins albeit I do have a bit of work to do on the % of carbs I'm consuming. I have been working out consistently following a lunch time programme of weights 3 x per week, yoga x1, pilates x1, walking 7 days per week and swimming where I can.
But after 4 weeks of work the scales haven't shifted at all.
I'm 16st 9lbs currently so have plenty to loose and have had success before using MyFitnessPal particularly in the first few weeks so I'm stumped as to what I'm doing wrong.
I've been told that I'm building muscle but as I've only been at this for 4 weeks and have come from an otherwise sedentary lifestyle I find that hard to believe.
Bit concerned as I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Anyone else been in a similar position?
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Replies

  • Old_Cat_Lady
    Old_Cat_Lady Posts: 1,193 Member
    edited July 2017
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    Open your diary to the public to get help finding mistakes you might be doing such as not weighing your food, etc. Go to settings. I think 1,200 is too little with all that exercise. Make sure you are not pregnant.
  • Luna3386
    Luna3386 Posts: 888 Member
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    Is 1200 the number mfp gave you?

    How often are you weighing?

    Are you using a food scale?
  • princeofmind
    princeofmind Posts: 95 Member
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    I don't know your age or height but I just put your weight into a calculator with the age of 40 and the height of 4ft 10. Going from the picture you're probably under 40 and 4ft 10 is the smallest you can be before being classified with dwarfism so you're probably taller than that. So the calories you need to eat a day to lose weight would likely be higher than the calculator told me. But even with those numbers I worked out that a woman of your weight at 40 years old and 4ft 10 would have lost 6 lbs by eating 1200 a day for 4 weeks.
    This leads me to believe that you are eating more than 1200 a day.
    With the numbers I put into the calculator it looks like you are consuming closer to 2000 calories a day.
    Is there anywhere in your diet that you can think that you might be eating more calories than you realise?
    Misjudged portion sizes rack up the calories very quickly.
  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,831 Member
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    You seem to have started exercising recently. Exercised muscles retain more water and a new exercise regimen exacerbates that effect.
  • Chadxx
    Chadxx Posts: 1,199 Member
    edited July 2017
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    It seems a few folks have reading comprehension issues. SMH
  • timtam163
    timtam163 Posts: 500 Member
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    It's hard to know for sure; sometimes you just hit a plateau, sometimes you're too deprived and your drop of energy makes you burn fewer calories either during the day or during exercise. Maybe you are eating proper portion sizes but using a more generous drizzle of olive oil on your salad than you thought. Or maybe you're experiencing a medical issue. If you're about to start your period also, it could mask weight loss with fluid retention; usually I drop as much as 2-3 lbs from pre- to post-period.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,020 Member
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    Chadxx wrote: »
    It seems a few folks have reading comprehension issues. SMH

    I took it that way first, and couldn't believe Liam Neeson was telling me that OP was building muscle in a deficit. I stared at the woo button. Thought, but the rest of it makes sense. Reread the first sentence. Finally caught the double negative.

    I remember a sort of brain twister from when I was a kid. It was a sentence in a triangle or a square -- some form to artificially constrain the line length, while also distracting you. You were supposed to read it aloud. Almost everyone would read it and skip a word that was repeated at the end of one line and the beginning of the next. It was a "small" word, like an article or "not." They just wouldn't see it. I think something like that is going on here. We expect to see a normal sentence without a double negative, so we do.
  • Chadxx
    Chadxx Posts: 1,199 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Chadxx wrote: »
    It seems a few folks have reading comprehension issues. SMH

    I took it that way first, and couldn't believe Liam Neeson was telling me that OP was building muscle in a deficit. I stared at the woo button. Thought, but the rest of it makes sense. Reread the first sentence. Finally caught the double negative.

    I remember a sort of brain twister from when I was a kid. It was a sentence in a triangle or a square -- some form to artificially constrain the line length, while also distracting you. You were supposed to read it aloud. Almost everyone would read it and skip a word that was repeated at the end of one line and the beginning of the next. It was a "small" word, like an article or "not." They just wouldn't see it. I think something like that is going on here. We expect to see a normal sentence without a double negative, so we do.

    That is an intelligent response. I can understand misreading the first line. That is easy to do but then the entire rest of the post would contradict it. That is when an intelligent person would catch that and go back a re-read the first line.


    As for building muscle in a deficit, even if someone is able to, it wouldn't prevent the scale from moving because any muscle gained would be offset because the calories out would increase by an amount equivalent to what it took to build that muscle.

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