Feeling discouraged.

LauraSrock18

I am feeling so discouraged! I start tracking calories again wanting to lose 15 lbs. I’ve consistently tracked/weighed my food & have stayed active & working out. My job is extremely active & I also was doing lots of cardio for awhile. The month of December I lost 4lbs & the month of January I lost 1.8. This month I am currently up and down. I will go up to 180 & then back to 179. My lowest this month was 178.8. I am so frustrated & overwhelmed & part of me is wanting to give up. It seems like I just can’t lose this weight.

MichelleSilverleaf

15lbs will come off very slowly, and requires you to be consistent, precise and most of all patient. Looking at long trends and taking measurements can help you see the loss where the scale might not always reflect it. A 250cal deficit can easily be masked by fluctuations.

JohnnytotheB

Don't give up. When the weight is coming off it feels great! Once it stops or slows it gets hard. Did you run your numbers on this site to come up with the best daily calorie count goal for weight loss? What type of foods do you eat? The tracking you do should indicate if you are high in calories, low in fiber, etc. You may need to think outside of the box on the eating. Do you eat out a lot? If so, restaurant food is typically higher in calories, fat and salt then what is indicated. I'm just throwing guesses out there. Maybe rethink your strategy. I hope this helps. I hope others provide good feedback for you as well. Do you have more specifics on what you eat/how you eat, etc?

brenn24179

sometimes you eat too much and don't realize it, I do low carb and it helped me a lot but I think you have to find your thing that works.

Saskatchebun

I am right there with you! I would suggest running your numbers as someone suggested and also start weighing your food. Its not askhch a pain as it sounds and its really eye opening even if we think we are eyeballing amounts correctly. Even an extra tbsp of peanut butter a day can add up to hundreds of calories a week. You're doing AWESOME with your exercise and healthier lifestyle and being consistent with that, keep it up and see what's happening diet wise. Good luck!

veganbaum

I am going to quote myself (slightly edited) from a thread you posted shortly before your wedding, because it seems to me that you are still in the same frame of mind you have been in for quite some time, by your posting history.

veganbaum wrote: »

I say this with all kindness,

I think you really, really need to reflect upon how you approach weightloss. I'm wondering if you have really read and considered the responses you've received in your other threads because it seems like if you had, you wouldn't still be posting the things you have as frequently as you have.

Looking through your diary, I think if you simply focused on logging better and eating a more varied diet, you would make progress. It seems like a lot of days you eat close to goal. However, it doesn't seem that you weigh your food. Weighing your food is not a necessity, but if you're not losing weight, you should tighten up your logging. In your case, weighing your food would probably be a good starting point.

I only mention varying your diet because I recall you posting about hunger. It seems you eat very few vegetables. Or if you do, you're not logging them and you should probably start doing so. Adding vegetables might help with hunger, due to volume and fiber. You also seem to eat a lot of snack-type foods, like chips and crackers. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're struggling with hunger, those calories might be better spent on more nutrient dense foods.

Think about how far you could have come over the past SIX months if you had focused more on the basics instead of bouncing around being worried about carbs and IF'ing and keto (I think you had a post about that, if not, I apologize). Developing good habits now is more likely to lead to weight maintenance after the loss.

TavistockToad

LauraSrock18 wrote: »

I am feeling so discouraged! I start tracking calories again wanting to lose 15 lbs. I’ve consistently tracked/weighed my food & have stayed active & working out. My job is extremely active & I also was doing lots of cardio for awhile. The month of December I lost 4lbs & the month of January I lost 1.8. This month I am currently up and down. I will go up to 180 & then back to 179. My lowest this month was 178.8. I am so frustrated & overwhelmed & part of me is wanting to give up. It seems like I just can’t lose this weight.

You've only got 9lbs to lose now so it's going to be slooooooow.

We're only 2 weeks into February and you've seen consistent loss up to this point so what's to get frustrated about? Just keep going with your deficit and the loss will happen.

Psychgrrl

Weight loss is more like doing a marathon instead of a sprint. And if you quit, you'll never lose the weight. Hormones, water retention, food weight can all mask actual weight loss. And with this little to lose, it will be very slow.

Double check your logging--are you weighing everything? Including pre-packaged food like frozen dinners and things that come in their own packages like slices of bread, pieces of cheese, and eggs? Are you double-checking the entries in the database to make sure they're accurate?

A weight-trending app might help you. If you weigh yourself daily, in about a month, the algorithm will predict where your weight trend is heading (up, down, steady) and you can adjust accordingly. It helped me understand better how my TOM impacted my weight, how certain dinners (high sodium) affected me, and what different workouts looked like the next day. Took all the anxiety and mystery of the scale out for me. Happy Scale is for iPhone and Libra is for Android. They're free.

size102b

I’ve still got 40 lbs to lose and since 4 th Han I’ve been up and down the same 1.5 lbs and weigh the same in the last 6 weeks before that I lost 32 lbs and 50 inches in 21 weeks. All that changed was I changed up my exercise to higher impact cardio

What was your weight history before this ? Have you ever been very over weight ?
Have you yoyoed weight ?

Me I’m struggling as I do weigh and measure all what I eat and drink mine inky stopped coming off when I changed exercise so I’m abit list like you as if we know we are strict people telling us we are not really makes us feel sadder

callsitlikeiseeit

Dilvish

Cardio. Everyone still believes the best way to lose weight is cardio exercise. It's not. Unless you change the routine regularly, your body simply gets used to the exercise and you burn less. Add weights/resistance to the cardio and you should get right back on track.

Additionally make sure your tracking your intake as accurately as possible. It's one of the easiest ways to ensure you are maintaining your goals.

elisa123gal

when my weight loss slowed and I was really doing a great job eating right. I stopped weighing myself.. why? Just because I knew I'd get discouraged and I didn't want to quit. I was six pounds from my illusive "goal weight". So, I kept with my eating plan and exercise and just forged ahead and lived my life. I did start getting smaller, I could tell by how my shorts and blouses fit.

So..if the number on the scale is making you almost blow the 1/3 of weight you've lost.. step off..and keep moving ahead. you can do this!

kshama2001

There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

AnnPT77

Dilvish wrote: »

Cardio. Everyone still believes the best way to lose weight is cardio exercise. It's not. Unless you change the routine regularly, your body simply gets used to the exercise and you burn less. Add weights/resistance to the cardio and you should get right back on track.

Additionally make sure your tracking your intake as accurately as possible. It's one of the easiest ways to ensure you are maintaining your goals.

Your body doesn't "get used to your exercise and you burn less". You do burn slightly fewer calories (in pretty much all ways) as you lose weight (less energy required to move smaller body); but at constant body size, the identical exercise (same type, duration, pace) burns roughly the same number of calories. That's a consequence of physics.

Why do people believe this myth that we burn fewer calories when we "get used to an exercise"?

Because, as we get fitter, the same exercise feels easier . . . but this is the adaptation that essentially defines fitness. And, as we get fitter, a heart rate monitor may estimate that we burn fewer calories doing the same exercise . . . but this is an example of limitations/mis-estimates of heart rate monitors, not that you actually burn fewer calories.

Plus this whole "body confusion" "switch your exercise" nonsense was spread by sellers of fitness equipment and videos, who want to sell us more stuff. Don't believe it.