Stuck on The Scale For over a week now!

Toshberry25M

I eat between 1400-1480 cals a day(that's what MFP gave me) And i feel like it's too much food sometimes!? before i was eating 1200 but was under eating with all the workouts and activity level in a day... I have it set on moderate cause at least 5 times a week i'm doing 30 plus minutes of treadmill / 100 jumping jacks/ squats/ i weight train 3 times a week for 30 minutes.. i do like 10-15 mins of AB workouts and i juggle 2 kids and being on the go almost everyday.... am i over eating!? or over "working out!? i don't have cheat meals... i stay under my cals every day and i only drink water and unsweetened tea and sometimes drink a 70cal can of light starbucks coffee... i'm 5"8 (162 Ibs) i'm 25 and like i said my active level is on moderate! should i lower it to lightly active!? or what!?? i wanna see the weight move down not stay still.. almost every morning eat oatmeal with a banana and a spoon of peanut butter.. eat all white meat lean meat , i could eat more veggies but i devour fruit all the time... i eat salads all the time.. what can i do to get the scale moving again!? i wanna get to 140 and be lean and toned as is why i weight train help!?

JeromeBarry1

Welcome to the wonderful world of weight loss! Be patient, be persistent, be truthful with your food diary.

RecognitionT

A week.

One week.

Seven days.

concordancia

Since you are already at a healthy weight, you should not expect to lose very quickly. .5 lbs/week won't even show up on a lot of scales.

What you need is patience, consistency and a plan you can continue to live with after you reach your goals. You might even find that with consistent strength training, you end up liking your body at a higher weight than you are currently envisioning.

L1zardQueen

Patience grasshopper

jecm254

Have you tried taking your measurements to see if your waist size, thigh size, etc. are going down? Remember that muscle (per cubic cm) weighs more than fat. You might be losing inches but not weight.

charlieandcarol

Aside from their has only been one week advice which is totally true...

Just double check your activity settings, I think you may have misunderstood that part. On mfp the activity level you choose excludes purposeful exercise. It is just asking about your level of activity as you go about your daily routine. The app is designed to give you the amount of calories you need to lose the amount of weight per week you chose assuming no purposeful exercise. You then log your exercise each day and the app is designed for you to "eat back" your exercise cals so will adjust your daily calories to be eaten accordingly. Because of difficulties in estimating calories burned for an exercise some people eat only a portion back or none, some eat them all.

If you set your activity at high to include exercise and then log exercise you end up counting exercise twice and this can affect your weight loss rate.

Toshberry25M

yes i'm looking more lean , i believe i'm gaining muscle and filling in the room when i lose "fat" !? i get compliments all the time it's just i wanna look good to myself ya know!? i know your not suppose to go by the scale but when it stops and your doing everything right you just...wonder what you are doing wrong or what you could be doing ... should i drop the cals back down? to 1200? or would that be too low on fuel for WT!!?

charlieandcarol

Do you weigh your food?

Also you need to be consistent for at least 4 weeks rather than freaking out and chopping and changing

Toshberry25M

yes weigh my meat... i don't weigh every single bite but i go by labels and serving sizes and what not

Rocknut53

Toshberry25M wrote: »

yes weigh my meat... i don't weigh every single bite but i go by labels and serving sizes and what not

You need to weigh all your foods. You will be surprised.

positivepowers

SCoil123

Two things...
1. One week is rarely enough time to see results. I’ve gone months without a loss then had a whoosh of a few pounds. Weight loss isn’t linear so you may need to adjust expectations there
2. Your activity level on MFP should not include exercise. It’s designed to be based off of your regular daily activity excluding workouts as a baseline.

Best advice - Be patient and update your activity level based on regular daily activities. Add workouts separately and eat back 50-75% of the extra calories to allow for over estimates on burns. Weigh and track calories carefully because once your in a healthy weight range and close to goal there is very little room for error. An extra few hundred calories a day is easy if you don’t weigh and can ruin a deficit

Froggyh

The above posters are absolutely right that a week isn't long enough to really judge things.

That said, I see that you eat a spoonful of peanut butter in your oatmeal. Are you weighing that? I have a "heaping teaspoon" of PB in my oatmeal, which weighs around 45g. 45g of PB is actually 3 *tablespoons* and has 270 calories. If I assumed that it was a teaspoon or tablespoon I'd be logging less than 100 calories for nearly 300 calories' worth of food. If I were eating at a 250 calorie deficit, that would nearly wipe out my deficit with a single ingredient!

fb47

1 week isn't enough to gather any strong data. Do you weigh yourself everyday and then average it out at the end of the week? Have you compared your average weight of the last week vs the previous average weight weeks? I suspect no is the answer to both questions, so how do you know you haven't lost weight? Do you track and weigh your food?

1houndgal

Toshberry25M wrote: »

yes weigh my meat... i don't weigh every single bite but i go by labels and serving sizes and what not

This could be the cause of a weight stall. Use a food scale and weigh all of your food accurately, then log it. Extra bites of food do add up in the long run.

cwolfman13

You aren't going to lose weight every week in a linear fashion...you will have weeks with no loss...weeks with bigger losses, weeks with smaller losses...weeks with gains, etc.

mslrtpnc

Forget the weight - focus on how you feel and look. Are you seeing a difference? Also - don't believe the numbers if you register the calories you burn from exercise in this tool. The numbers are off and it's closer to 1/2. Another suggestion is to start looking at HiiT training to mix up your exercise. Cardio alone won't do it. HiiT has always worked best for me trying to break through plateaus.

AnnPT77

A few comments:

1. A week on a new routine is too short to assess anything. A week is not a plateau. A week is "barely just started the new routine". Stick with it for 4-6 weeks, then assess.

2. People hold onto water weight for muscle repair when they start a new exercise program, up to several pounds of it, and it can temporarily mask fat loss. If you've recently amped up exercise, this could apply. If you added more calories, you likely added additional sodium and/or carbs. Even if still at a totally healthy level, more than usual of those will also hold a little extra water weight as they're metabolized. Extra calories also means extra food that increases average digestive system contents. None of those is fat, so if they cause a scale jump or stall, it's nothing to worry about. It'll balance out soon.

3. You may be underestimating food calories, for reasons others have explained well.

4. Without illegal performance enhancing drugs, no one gains measurable muscle in as week. Well, OK, under utterly ideal circumstances - perfect intense training program, calorie surplus, plenty of protein, relative youth - a lucky woman might gain a quarter of a pound of new muscle mass in a week, and you could measure that . . . in a lab. Look better, get fitter and stronger (through neuromuscular adaptation)? Yes. Add enough new muscle - in a calorie deficit - to equal any reasonable rate of weight loss? Sadly, no.

Patience! It sounds like you basically have a good routine going, with maybe a need to tighten logging a bit. It will produce results. Stuck with it for 4-6 weeks, then let us know how things are going! I'm betting on good news.

ITUSGirl51

1 week is not enough time to make a difference. I suggest stop weighing every day if you are going to get upset about the scale not moving down every couple of days. It will cause you to quit trying or cut back on your food to an unsustainable level. I can do everything right and lose nothing in two weeks then 3 lbs will drop off. Weight loss is not linear. It takes time and patience to lose real FAT. Only water weight comes off fast.

loe_loe23

Toshberry25M wrote: »

yes i'm looking more lean , i believe i'm gaining muscle and filling in the room when i lose "fat" !? i get compliments all the time it's just i wanna look good to myself ya know!? i know your not suppose to go by the scale but when it stops and your doing everything right you just...wonder what you are doing wrong or what you could be doing ... should i drop the cals back down? to 1200? or would that be too low on fuel for WT!!?

literally in the same boat as you girl.. except I'm at a month now of the scale not going down.