Too much exercise ???

kateorgan

So I started Fitness Pal properly last week and was all happy and motivated - to the extent that I remained within calories most of the time and exercised daily - walking for 1 hour a day approximately at various speeds!!1 So now here I am 1 week on and I have lost 0 pounds!!!!! Not 1!!! Not even an ounce!!!!

Am I just doing too much ? I'm slightly devastated :-(

tkrall

Don't get frustrated! It takes awhile for your body to adjust to what you have just started. This is a very slow process. I wouldn't say you are doing to much exercise, Remember MUSCLE weighs more then fat. So you could possibly creating muscle. Not sure of the weather where you are but it could also be heat. Water weight is a big thing when its hot. Keep trying add a little strength training into your walks everyday. Try ankle weights when walking to burn more calories. Good luck!

4lafz

Do not worry - same happened here for TWO weeks. Then I lost 4.6 and have been going down .8-2.2 lbs a week. It will come. We didn't get this way in a short time and it is gonna take awhile for it to come off slowly so you can keep it off! Best of luck!

burtam

Took me 3 weeks before I started seeing a loss after exercising. Now I average around 2lbs a week.... Don't give up!

andi93

I saw a nutritionist who told me there are two keys to it all in regards to exercise: 1) drink lots and lots of water after exercising,and throughout the day anyways. You need to drink a lot because then your body will stop retaining so much water. The body retains water when you dont have enough, which is why people lose water weight in the first few weeks of exercising (since they usually drink more). But you should drink plenty of it everyday, working out or not so that your body doesnt hold on to it thinking you aren't hydrating it enough.
ok, 2) - when exercising, you need to stay in your target heart range. I was walking all the time and told my nutritionist about the frequent NYC trips and how we would walk all day, 5 miles maybe. And she simply responded that while that exercise was great, it wasnt nearly as beneficial as it could be whne in my target heart range. If you google how to find target heart range, you'll be set. So that way when you do your walking on the treadmill or wherever, you'll know when to walk faster or take it down a notch. Hope that helps ! and Don't be discouraged, as the others said- its a slow but worthwhile process. Rather you lose 1 pound each month and next year be 12 pounds less than be 12 pounds more !! Good luck!

stroutman81

I'd focus heavily on managing your expectations. The expectations you have currently only service to cause frustration. Weight loss is not a linear phenomenon. Reason being - you've got many factors that contribute to what you weight. These include fat mass, lean mass, water flux, bowel matter, etc, etc. Some of these variables can be rising while others are falling.

Set a longer term perspective and track the trends over time. If, say after a few weeks, things haven't changed a bit... then it's time to analyze what you're doing and possibly make some changes. If this time arises... it's certainly no reason to get frustrated. We can't simply pick a fixed nutritional schedule and pair it with a fixed exercise schedule and expect it to work. And if it starts out working, we can't expect it to work indefinitely.

Rather we need to understand this is a continual, ongoing process of tweaking things (food and exercise) in response to how your body is reacting. Really let the idea sink in because once you get it and believe it, you'll be a lot less frustrated when you have to modify your approach as you'll understand that it's HOW THINGS GO in this game.

And no, you're not doing nearly too much.

If after a few weeks nothing has changed, we can look more specifically at what you're doing on the nutritional side of things if you'd like.

kateorgan

Hey thanks everyone!!! I went out for a walk this evening and had a long think about it!!! The weighting scales is now in the back of the wardrobe and I have decided to keep it up anyway. I feel a lot better than I did a week ago so even if the weight takes a while to come off at least I feel better!!!! My sis reckons I should also look at my portion sizes which I hadnt thought of so going to do that too :-) Hopefully next weeks update will be more positive!!