Some important questions (!)

elizabethbettycooper

I am fairly new here, been on this for about a month now (34 days) and I have learnt a lot of things from the forum discussions, however I have a few questions and I was hoping y'all could help me out?

1. I've only been on this journey a month and I've sort of just stopped losing weight? Am I going through a plateau and is it even possible at only one month in? (tho I might be over thinking this, as it's only been one week and there's been no change, but to be fair, the previous weeks I've lost weight each week)

2. Is it better to weigh yourself or take measurements?

3. How often do y'all reccomend weighing in? (atm I do it every week)

Also, I'm not sure if I should mention my weight and height so I'll just leave it here anyways ;

I'm female, 19
SW : 97kg
CW : 92kg
Height : 1.74/1.75 m
Been on this journey for 34 days now as said above.
Thank you and any help at all is appreciated!

Nony_Mouse

1) it's been a week. That's not in any way a plateau.

2) both, take photos too

3) I weigh daily, but if you can't handle the fluctuations (which are completely normal), you may be better off weighing less frequently. Though, doing that you can easily miss that you were lighter on the scale the day before and the day after, and the day you weighed was just a blip. Use a trending app (Happy Scale, Libra, or Trendweight - web-based, syncs to Fitbit but you don't need a fitbit, just an account and log manually). Weighing daily and using a trending app will show you that you are trending downwards, despite fluctuations. Learn to ignore the fluctuations, or you will drive yourself crazy.

You also mention in your other thread that you are only eating 1200 cals and going to the gym 6 times a week. This makes your calorie deficit too aggressive, and in fact detrimental to both your weight loss efforts and your health. Set MFP to 1 lb per week loss, log your exercise, and eat at least half of your exercise cals on top of the baseline cals MFP gives you.

You may want to read this on why aggressive deficits and loads of exercise are a bad idea: https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html/

elizabethbettycooper

@Nony_Mouse thank you so much for answering! I'll look into it

nutmegoreo

Why is there a tiny bum in your title? (!)

Mine's more like ( ! )

That's my only important question right now. I may have more depending on your answer.

Edited for spelling

elizabethbettycooper

@nutmegoreo lmao for emphasis

nutmegoreo

:bigsmile:

Nony covered most of what I would say. If it's close to TOM or during TOM, it's not uncommon for there to be some water retention. This is just part of our wonderful cycle and it should all shift at the end of that week.

New exercise routines and a higher salt intake one day will also cause these "stalls" on the scale. Monitor the overall trend. I like taking pictures, measurements, and weight. Much more complete representation of progress.

PAV8888

Listen to the Nameless Mouse!

About the only nit that I would pick is that at your current weight, and until you enter the overweight range, and subject to things being easy enough for you to comply with long term, I would not put a hard 500 Cal deficit limit. What i would aim for instead is a real deficit of ~20% and up to 25% of TDEE.

This can probably be accomplished by the 1lb + some of your exercise calories seeing Nony discussed. Or may require tweaking.

I would also remind you that exercise is for health not just weight loss and not *necessary* for weight loss. Pick activities and exercises you like and can do long term. Calories can be burned many ways and daily activity is just as (or even more) important as exercise for that.

This is in reaction to the 6x a week exercise which I somehow suspect may be a new thing. Nothing wrong with it. Far from. But controlling your weight is not dependent on making it to the gym and that is an important realization for the long term.