Frustrated - 3 weeks no loss.

Iwantahealthierme30

Hi,

I started this back in November and lost 11 pounds so far but for the past 3 weeks I've been stuck between 217-219. I was 219 at Christmas! I hate seeing this on the scale again.

I am eating about 1700-1800 calories (yesterday was a low day) I am hypothyroid on medication but have been forgetting to take it lately. Could that be the reason? I am also on Seroquel and Loxapine (for Bipolar Disorder) I was exercising but have taken the winter off that was only about 200 calories burn twice a week.

My diary is open. Please help.

tinkerbellang83

Are you weighing? There is a big difference between cups/guessing and actual weight which can add up easily.
Below illustrates:

quiksylver296

If you aren't currently using a food scale, weighing everything and logging religiously, no skipping, cheating or forgetting, start there.

JMcGee2018

If you forget your thyroid medication your metabolism will slow and you will need a much higher deficit to lose weight. Get back to taking your medication on a regular schedule (same time every day, set an alarm if you need to) and that should help a lot.

Iwantahealthierme30

I don't weigh but that shouldn't matter because my TDEE is 2300.

crb426

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

I don't weigh but that shouldn't matter because my TDEE is 2300.

I don't understand.
If you don't weigh, and you're not losing, then there's a VERY good chance you're eating more than you think you are.

Even if you think you're eating 500 under your TDEE everyday, you could be off in your count and that would account for the difference. You don't know until you weigh.

quiksylver296

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

I don't weigh but that shouldn't matter because my TDEE is 2300.

My TDEE is 2400. To lose weight, I'm shooting for 1870. I still have to weigh. One has nothing to do with the other.

tinkerbellang83

Little inaccuracies add up. I used to be convinced that I was eating 1200 calories per day when I used to use MFP a long time back, but the fact is I was actually eating closer to 1900 calories per day. Guesstimating and using incorrect user entries can make a massive difference.

sjd421

As a fellow hypo, for more reason than weight lose, you need to figure out how to remember to take your meds daily. It is so important for your overall health!

Rebecca0224

sjd421 wrote: »

As a fellow hypo, for more reason than weight lose, you need to figure out how to remember to take your meds daily. It is so important for your overall health!

This is great advice. Set an alarm or a reminder on your phone, white a reminder on the fridge, leave the bottle next to your toothbrush so you will see it and remember. You are important and your health is important.

dinadyna21

Be careful of the little nibbles as well, they add up too. And they're easy to forget to log, I know I've been guilty of it. Just remember you have control, you can fix whatever's going on that's stopping you from losing weight.

Iwantahealthierme30

Little nibbles isn't a problem, I logged one frozen cherry the other day, haha

Iwantahealthierme30

I just lowered my calories back down. I realized I had been on this higher calorie thing for 3 weeks.

toxikon

A digital food scale is less than $20 at Walmart or Amazon and such a great investment for your health.

I love using my scale - it's easy and I actually use far fewer dishes. For example, if preparing a southwest salad:

1. Put bowl on scale, tare to zero.
2. Add lettuce, record gram weight. Tare to zero.
3. Add shredded cheese, record gram weight. Tare to zero.
4. Add chopped peppers, record gram weight. Tare to zero.
5. Use measuring spoon to add 2 tbsp of ranch dressing. Scan ranch dressing barcode, add to MFP.
6. Add all the recorded gram weights to MFP.
7. Enjoy salad.

It only adds a few extra minutes to your food prep and you'll get MUCH more accurate results.

passenger79

Please don't forget your thyroid medication it's not something you can take occasionally and you are risking your health.

Your body needs it on daily basis it's not like taking paracetamol occasionally for headache .
I am hypo and I have been diagnosed with Bipolar last summer.

I keep bipolar meds by my bed as I need to take them before bed and Levotyroxine I take first thing in the morning .

And what everyone else said about weighing. I thought my portion control was great and it was fact I'm hypo and take other meds why I got big.

Joined MFP and started weighing food and guess what it's not because of tablets it's the fact I was way over what I should be eating everyday.

yirara

JMcGee2018 wrote: »

If you forget your thyroid medication your metabolism will slow and you will need a much higher deficit to lose weight. Get back to taking your medication on a regular schedule (same time every day, set an alarm if you need to) and that should help a lot.

Sorry, that's not how it works. On the onset of hypothyreoidism the BMI might go down up to 4%. However, being poorly medicated can lead to increased water weight and feeling *kitten* and moving less. And eating more. All those lead to a weight gain.

dinadyna21

It's also possible your TDEE is less after losing. Definitely follow what others have said and get a food scale so you can tract more accurately, here's a website you can use to look up foods to ensure you're getting an accurate calorie count: https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list

JMcGee2018

yirara wrote: »

JMcGee2018 wrote: »

If you forget your thyroid medication your metabolism will slow and you will need a much higher deficit to lose weight. Get back to taking your medication on a regular schedule (same time every day, set an alarm if you need to) and that should help a lot.

Sorry, that's not how it works. On the onset of hypothyreoidism the BMI might go down up to 4%. However, being poorly medicated can lead to increased water weight and feeling *kitten* and moving less. And eating more. All those lead to a weight gain.

HypERthyroidism leads to significant weight loss. HypOthyroidism, which OP says she has, can lead to fatigue and weight gain. I know because I was tested for that reason, plus a family history. Turns out I just eat poorly lol.

db121215

I noticed the yogurt you're eating with breakfast is pretty high in calories for one cup. If you can stomach greek non-fat plain yogurt, that will shave off more then 150 cals from breakfast alone. Plus you'll get double the protein which may help you stay satisfied longer. What I found works the best for me is to eat foods with the most nutritional value overall. Less cheese, dairy, breads, as they quickly eat away your calorie allotment for the day. Don't have to go without entirely, just eat it when you can balance it out, maximizing the calories you eat each day. Good luck, every time we eat something is a new chance to give it a fresh go!

Iwantahealthierme30

Yeah, I stopped eating that, it's just that I had it. I found one with lower calories now and not always eating it for breakfast.

callsitlikeiseeit

quiksylver296

Food scale. Really. Treat it like an experiment. Buy a food scale. Keep your receipt. Give it honest effort for four weeks. If you find the food scale helped, win. If not, take it back, but you will have at least eliminated one variable.

Iwantahealthierme30

Thanks for the flowchart which is just about everywhere. I have hypothyroid so it's not that easy.

Marilyn0924

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

Thanks for the flowchart which is just about everywhere. I have hypothyroid so it's not that easy.

If you take your medication as prescribed, you're no different from anyone else. It comes down to accurate logging and eating at a deficit.
My cousin is hypothyroid and has sucessfully lost 30 pounds following a few simple rules: Use a digital food scale and weigh all solids, measure all liquids, eat a moderate deficit.

Iwantahealthierme30

How do you guys manage to weigh everything? You can't weigh everything for the rest of your lives. People look at that like a disorder. I rather not stress about it and give myself a disorder on top of depression and things I already have.

janejellyroll

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

How do you guys manage to weigh everything? You can't weigh everything for the rest of your lives. People look at that like a disorder. I rather not stress about it and give myself a disorder on top of depression and things I already have.

I don't weigh everything (I don't weigh when I'm eating out, for example), but keeping a scale on my kitchen counter is easy. It's no harder than using a measuring cup. If I wanted to keep using the kitchen scale as a tool to accurately log, I don't know why I couldn't do that for the rest of my life.

I don't live my life in fear of other people looking at me like I have a disorder. If someone wants to think I have a disorder, that's their business.

It's fine if you don't want to weigh, but I don't think it's necessary to push your concerns or reservations on it onto people who are comfortable using this tool. Maybe it doesn't work for you (although I would recommend you consider not knocking it until you try it), but it does work for some people. I much prefer weighing to trying to figure out why I'm not losing weight, for example.

Another thing: even if you do decide to weigh, it doesn't have to be for the rest of your life. Some people use it as a temporary tool, just like some people using logging as a temporary tool.

toxikon

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

How do you guys manage to weigh everything? You can't weigh everything for the rest of your lives. People look at that like a disorder. I rather not stress about it and give myself a disorder on top of depression and things I already have.

Sorry, who are these people judging me for weighing my food? My friends and family don't... not that it would stop me if they did!

I'm not an intuitive eater whatsoever. Whenever I go long periods without weighing my food, my weight creeps back up. So why not just keep regularly weighing my food? As I said, it doesn't take much time at all. In fact, I do weekly meal-preps, so I only need to weigh my portions out once a week.

Seems like you have this weird mental hangup on kitchen scales... I mean, they're just a tool. I use my scale for weighing out my soap-making ingredients too. It's just handy.

diannethegeek

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

How do you guys manage to weigh everything? You can't weigh everything for the rest of your lives. People look at that like a disorder. I rather not stress about it and give myself a disorder on top of depression and things I already have.

Something like orthorexia and binge eating were disordered eating patterns that I had. Weighing my food was just a part of being in the kitchen. Takes seconds once you find the right entries, is less mess than measuring cups and spoons for me, and I get to pretend I'm a mad scientist every morning. I can see how it might seem daunting if someone wasn't very comfortable around scales, but to suggest that hundreds of people here trying to help you have some kind of eating disorder because they prefer to streamline their logging instead of mucking about with cups and spoons is rather offensive, isn't it?

Unknown

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janejellyroll

toxikon wrote: »

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

How do you guys manage to weigh everything? You can't weigh everything for the rest of your lives. People look at that like a disorder. I rather not stress about it and give myself a disorder on top of depression and things I already have.

Sorry, who are these people judging me for weighing my food? My friends and family don't... not that it would stop me if they did!

I'm not an intuitive eater whatsoever. Whenever I go long periods without weighing my food, my weight creeps back up. So why not just keep regularly weighing my food? As I said, it doesn't take much time at all. In fact, I do weekly meal-preps, so I only need to weigh my portions out once a week.

Seems like you have this weird mental hangup on kitchen scales... I mean, they're just a tool. I use my scale for weighing out my soap-making ingredients too. It's just handy.

Many baking cookbooks recommend using a kitchen scale rather than cups for things like flour. Those authors don't have a disorder (presumably), they just understand that weight is more accurate than measuring cups.

toxikon

janejellyroll wrote: »

toxikon wrote: »

Iwantahealthierme30 wrote: »

How do you guys manage to weigh everything? You can't weigh everything for the rest of your lives. People look at that like a disorder. I rather not stress about it and give myself a disorder on top of depression and things I already have.

Sorry, who are these people judging me for weighing my food? My friends and family don't... not that it would stop me if they did!

I'm not an intuitive eater whatsoever. Whenever I go long periods without weighing my food, my weight creeps back up. So why not just keep regularly weighing my food? As I said, it doesn't take much time at all. In fact, I do weekly meal-preps, so I only need to weigh my portions out once a week.

Seems like you have this weird mental hangup on kitchen scales... I mean, they're just a tool. I use my scale for weighing out my soap-making ingredients too. It's just handy.

Many baking cookbooks recommend using a kitchen scale rather than cups for things like flour. Those authors don't have a disorder (presumably), they just understand that weight is more accurate than measuring cups.

Exactly. I love when websites provide recipes with oz/g. A "cup of flour" can be a huge range, depending on how you scoop it out of the bag. If you want to bake a good cake, weight measurements are the way to go!