Losing motivation
kymmaidoua
Posts: 2 Member
Hello. Help. I’m losing motivation. Over the last three months I’ve been working hard on trying to lose weight and get fit. I’ve been hitting the gym consistently 5 days a week and doing a good mix of burn, build and base workouts for 30-45mins. I have changed my eating habits to a low carb and high protein diet and counting calories at 1400/day based on my BMI. But I’ve only lost 3lbs. Because I’m gaining muscles I get that muscles is heavier but I’m still not feeling like the inches around my mid section is coming off. Sure, I admit that from time to time I will have a decent beer or a decent carb packed meal. What changes do I need to do?
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Replies
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kymmaidoua wrote: »Hello. Help. I’m losing motivation. Over the last three months I’ve been working hard on trying to lose weight and get fit. I’ve been hitting the gym consistently 5 days a week and doing a good mix of burn, build and base workouts for 30-45mins. I have changed my eating habits to a low carb and high protein diet and counting calories at 1400/day based on my BMI. But I’ve only lost 3lbs. Because I’m gaining muscles I get that muscles is heavier but I’m still not feeling like the inches around my mid section is coming off. Sure, I admit that from time to time I will have a decent beer or a decent carb packed meal. What changes do I need to do?
That... is generally not how that works. It’s not impossible to build muscle in a deficit, but it’s not going to be a significant amount for a woman who isn’t concentrating on strength work.
The usual reason why people don’t lose as fast as they’re expecting is that they’re making mistakes in logging and so either eating more or burning less than they think. If you open your diary, people may be able to see if you’re making any of the common errors.16 -
You may be eating more than you think. Are you using a food scale?
You may want to open your diary temporarily so we can see if there is any obvious problems.
Also, do you need to eat low carb for medical reasons or for satiety? If not, and you are not enjoying it just stop. To lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. It doesn't matter what you eat.12 -
You just need to keep going. Fitness and weight maintenance is a life long endeavor.2
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It all depends on how much you have to lose and your height etc. Someone who has 100 lbs to lose should expect to lose more than three pounds in three months at 1400 calories but someone with 10 lbs to lose might be thrilled with 3 pounds. Muscle gain is very hard to do at a deficit. I'm not an expert but most on here who are would say it's not possible. So what is going on? If you have alot to lose and you are not losing then I would suggest monitoring your intake more closely and forget about "cheat" days or meals for a while. Those can often be tracked back to people's problems. Low carb makes little difference in rate of loss after the first week or two once the water weight is gone. In all honesty calories are king. If you don't have much to lose I would say be patient. My last 20 lbs took a year to lose. If you give us more information you will likely get more useful help. For example, gender, height, weight, goal weight etc. Are you weighing your food on a food scale? That is the other most common question.6
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Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound9
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Weigh I mean2
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Well said.jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Weigh I mean
It bothers me when people oversimplify things like that.
There is too much misinformation out there as it is.
OP: You need to develop the proper dedication & discipline.
By definition, "motivation" will wane.
There is a high probability that you are eating more than you think and/or exercising less strenuously than you believe.
Those two variables are the foundation of CICO.4 -
jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound
...but muscle does weigh more than fat. A specific volume of muscle weighs more than the same volume of fat.
If you want to claim that muscle doesn't weigh more than fat it just takes up less space, you also have to say that iron doesn't weigh more than meringue it just takes up less space. And in fact that nothing weighs less or more than anything else, it just takes up different amounts of space...10 -
You are eating 1400 cals, working out and only lost 3 lbs in 3 months? You eat more than you think. Simple! Eat 1400 cals every day and not just once a week.7
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Regarding motivation.
Try setting mini goals for yourself , take pictures of yourself through your progress and set mini rewards that you can obtain when you hit your goals. Like say if you lose 10 pounds then allow yourself to buy yourself a shirt or get a manicure. Or if you log your food for 1 week , do something special that you may like.
Challenge a friend to beat to a mini goal. Just some ideas.
Regarding your actual progress . You are getting some good advice. I suggest checking out the sticky at the top of the forum.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300319/most-helpful-posts-general-health-fitness-and-diet-must-reads#latest
It gives you a LOT Of good information. Like regarding "counting calories". How you measure what you are eating is REALLY important. I weigh everything in grams myself. So instead of saying "1 medium apple" it's weighed and it maybe 125 grams.
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But people are rarely referring to specific volumes when they say it.
They are referring to weight in relation to overall/comparable mass.
It is the same reason you should not *really* be weighing things in kilograms.
Kilos are a unit of MASS, not weight.
* Disclosure: I'm trained in physics as an Engineer5 -
You don't really need motivation. You really need habit/routine. One is impossible to maintain day to day - the other is not.
Make accurate logging your habit. Get that right. Then adjust. Once the logging/weighing accurately is habit, motivation won't matter.
When you do what's habit even when motivation is not there, guess what? That can become motivating in and of itself. Everybody can do this when they're motivated. Those that succeed do this when they are not. But it is not magic - it's just habit.
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But people are rarely referring to specific volumes when they say it.
They are referring to weight in relation to overall/comparable mass.
It is the same reason you should not *really* be weighing things in kilograms.
Kilos are a unit of MASS, not weight.
* Disclosure: I'm trained in physics as an Engineer
Are people referring to weight in relation to mass? How... I'm glitching on how that would even work. I mean, what?
I have always understood 'muscle weighs more than fat' to be a shorthand for 'a smaller volume of muscle may weigh the same as a larger volume of fat', which is true. This would be supported by the way that the people who say it tend to add that the person should take their measurements as those may be a 'truer' reflection of progress; the idea is that the same weight of muscle would take up less space. Which makes perfect sense. It's not usually what's happening, but replying to it with 'muscle does not weigh more than fat' is more than a bit misleading, to my mind.4 -
Usually when people say that they are implying they think they lost a (hypothetical) 2 pounds of fat and magically replaced it with 2 or more pounds of muscle, right?
This is often accompanied by no supporting evidence of sufficient time or even of an exercise program which could have caused that muscle to grow, but that is another problem.
That is my point - they are implying they replaced two disparate body tissues of differing chemical composition and volume (we agree on this, I think) with the exact same (or even "appropriate") weight of muscle to make this possible.
They are saying their "weight" and/or size (mass) is not changing in a given number of days or weeks, so maybe they already lost X amount of fat and replaced it with X (or even Y) amount of muscle.
Supporting this way of thinking leads to even more skewed expectations than they may already have, IMO.
They are thinking, from my point of view, in terms of their weight, not the volume or composition.
Causing cognitive dissonance at least gives them reasons to ask more questions instead of saying "Yeah, that is right. Sort of..."
I understand why it is an easy "shorthand" way of saying what most people think they mean.
I even accept that there may not be a clear way to get the point across to people without actually making it sound more complicated.
But it is exactly this sort of miscommunication and intermingling of terms and measurements that caused the Mars Climate Orbiter to crash into the planet it was supposed to be checking out.
Anyway, I cannot change the world. But in my corner of it I hope to educate people at least.
Live like you wanna live.6 -
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
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Thank you everyone who commented!1
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jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound
Be careful with this statement. I said the exact same thing on a different tread and got woo’ed and trashed several times.
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longkathleenann9291 wrote: »jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound
Be careful with this statement. I said the exact same thing on a different tread and got woo’ed and trashed several times.
You were just corrected. Hugs2 -
Silentpadna wrote: »You don't really need motivation. You really need habit/routine. One is impossible to maintain day to day - the other is not.
Make accurate logging your habit. Get that right. Then adjust. Once the logging/weighing accurately is habit, motivation won't matter.
When you do what's habit even when motivation is not there, guess what? That can become motivating in and of itself. Everybody can do this when they're motivated. Those that succeed do this when they are not. But it is not magic - it's just habit.
This, 100%
OP, I've been at this process for 7 years now. Motivation doesn't mean anything-committing to seeing this through until the end is everything. I do that by establishing realistic and sustainable habits that I do every single day, no matter what's happening in life.
I've successfully managed my weight through holidays, vacations, family tragedies and emergencies, job changes, a move, times of extreme stress and illness (shingles etc), and then the hundreds and hundreds of days that are boringly mundane and routine.
Figure out what habits you need to create, to be successful at this long term, and then learn how to build those habits into your life
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jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound
...but muscle does weigh more than fat. A specific volume of muscle weighs more than the same volume of fat....
What weighs more? A ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?
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jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound
...but muscle does weigh more than fat. A specific volume of muscle weighs more than the same volume of fat....
What weighs more? A ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?
Neither, they both weigh a ton. What’s your point?2 -
Usually when people say that they are implying they think they lost a (hypothetical) 2 pounds of fat and magically replaced it with 2 or more pounds of muscle, right?
This is often accompanied by no supporting evidence of sufficient time or even of an exercise program which could have caused that muscle to grow, but that is another problem.
That is my point - they are implying they replaced two disparate body tissues of differing chemical composition and volume (we agree on this, I think) with the exact same (or even "appropriate") weight of muscle to make this possible.
They are saying their "weight" and/or size (mass) is not changing in a given number of days or weeks, so maybe they already lost X amount of fat and replaced it with X (or even Y) amount of muscle.
Supporting this way of thinking leads to even more skewed expectations than they may already have, IMO.
They are thinking, from my point of view, in terms of their weight, not the volume or composition.
Causing cognitive dissonance at least gives them reasons to ask more questions instead of saying "Yeah, that is right. Sort of..."
I understand why it is an easy "shorthand" way of saying what most people think they mean.
I even accept that there may not be a clear way to get the point across to people without actually making it sound more complicated.
But it is exactly this sort of miscommunication and intermingling of terms and measurements that caused the Mars Climate Orbiter to crash into the planet it was supposed to be checking out.
Anyway, I cannot change the world. But in my corner of it I hope to educate people at least.
Live like you wanna live.
...but you haven’t corrected anything. Yes, it is highly unlikely that someone has replaced a mass/weight of fat with the same mass/weight of muscle. But making a blanket statement that ‘muscle doesn’t weigh more than fat’ because you are assuming that they don’t understand how density works is just... really weird, probably wrong, and unhelpful because it doesn’t address any of their underlying assumptions.4 -
kymmaidoua wrote: »Sure, I admit that from time to time I will have a decent beer or a decent carb packed meal. What changes do I need to do?
Log those beers and carb-packed meals. Compensate your calories the rest of the day/week to make up for those. You may be doing everything right 5 days a week, but if you throw it all out the window (and don't log) on the other two days then it would not be hard to undo all your hard work.
Eat foods that make you feel full and happy. Work in those foods that you really want. And calculate/log your calorie intake correctly.1 -
longkathleenann9291 wrote: »jenniferanderson3888 wrote: »Please don’t misunderstand muscle does NOT way more than fat. Muscle takes up less space than a pound. A pound is a pound
Be careful with this statement. I said the exact same thing on a different tread and got woo’ed and trashed several times.
Probably because it's needlessly pedantic. I believe people understand that there is a "by volume" implied in the statement.
It's like someone saying semi-trailers weigh more than cars and you going "nuh-uh a pund of trailer weighs the same as a pound of car".3 -
I've found creating habits through discipline more useful than motivation: http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-is-discipline/4
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All arguments on phrasing can be avoided just by using proper terminology. Muscle doesn't weigh more or take up less space than fat. It is more dense than fat.
The only way you can compare their weights (masses) is to state you have the same volume of each.
The only way you can compare their volumes is to state you have the same weight (mass) of each.2 -
I don't think it's fair to derail OP's thread into yet another semantic argument about weight/volume. We all know what was meant, don't we?
OP, if you are willing to post your height, weight, and goal weight and/or make your diary public temporarily, we might be able to help you troubleshoot. Though I understand that some people just aren't comfortable doing that!
While it is possible to build some muscle in a deficit, it is highly unlikely a woman would be building enough muscle to offset fat loss, unless she were training and eating perfectly designed to do such a thing and genetically blessed.
Regardless, check out these really helpful posts, they may be on target for you. Hang in there!
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818701/the-myth-of-motivation-and-what-you-need-instead/p1
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p14 -
All arguments on phrasing can be avoided just by using proper terminology. Muscle doesn't weigh more or take up less space than fat. It is more dense than fat.
The only way you can compare their weights (masses) is to state you have the same volume of each.
The only way you can compare their volumes is to state you have the same weight (mass) of each.
Wait a minute. What weighs more? A mass of bricks on the earth, or a mass of bricks on the moon?
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Ooh, ooh, I know this one, I know this one!
*Happily relives her days of studying astronomy and biomechanics*0
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