Not loosing! Help

handmaggie12

Hi everyone! I have been working out 5/week burning 400-500 calories per session and have been eating anywhere from 1,200-1,500 calories per day. My frustration is I’m not loosing. I’m 5’6” and 175# so I have some weight to loose. FYI I’ve been eating better and working out for 3 weeks. Any help will be appreciated

nutmegoreo

The exercise is new, so water retention is a likely culprit. I am assuming you are a woman of childbearing years, so TOM could also be a factor. If you open your diary, we could take a look for some of the common logging errors that people tend to make, leading to stalls in weight loss.

lgfrie

According to the trusty calculator over at TDEEcalculator.net, your break-even caloric intake is around 1850 if you're very sedentary, and 2,100 if you're lightly active (excluding your workouts). At 1,200-1,500 calories with 5 vigorous workouts per week, weight should be melting off you like an ice cream cone sitting on a metal picnic table under a hot August sun, next to a bonfire and adjacent to a flamethrower testing facility.

So ...

There are only two ways to not lose weight while dieting:

• thyroid problem or other rare medical condition
• not eating at a calorie deficit

The odds are always with the 2nd one - not eating at a deficit. Let's start there.

How sure are you that you're eating "anywhere from 1,200-1,500 calories per day"? Are you measuring all your food by weight, to the gram, or are you ballparking it and/or making assumptions? It's exceptionally easy to be 30-50 % over on the calories without even noticing it, in the absence of a food scale. Also, 400-500 calories per workout is a lot of workout calories, how sure are you about that number? It isn't an "impossible" number, but 500 calories is a heavy duty workout of 45-60 minutes of vigorous cardio + weights. Most people don't do that 5x per week.

There are a lot of mysteries about the human condition but one thing is pretty simple - the balance sheet of weight loss. If you take in less calories than needed to break even you will lose weight. So I would start with nailing down the numbers with precision, and then take it from there.

EDIT: I didn't see the 3 weeks part on the first read-through. 3 weeks is not enough time to draw any conclusions. As @nutmegoreo points out, water retention is the likeliest culprit, and then there's women-type things I'm unqualified to comment on. There's much fluctuation and seeming randomness in the first few weeks of a new diet, so a good rule of thumb is to wait a full 6 weeks before drawing any conclusions or getting concerned. But in the meantime, locking down the food weighing and logging to bring more exactitude to the project would be an excellent thing to do.

spiritlevel9

Having piled on 9lbs very quickly after a change in my HRT, I went back to logging. For 3 weeks, at around 1500, there was no change on the scales. In the last two weeks it has started to move slowly. I think, If I hadn't cut back, it would have continued to rise and I am pretty sure by how I feel, much of it is due to water retention. It is disheartening when the scales don't budge but keep at it for a while and try to be very accurate with your logging.

csplatt

How are you estimating 400-500 calories burned? Heart rate monitor? Also, what is your activity level like when you are at work? I, unfortunately, maintain my weight around 1500 calories because I sit all day long

BoundlessBow

Are you using a food scale to accurately measure your portions?

handmaggie12

Csplatt- I work sitting done all day at a desk job. I use my Apple Watch to calculate my hour long hot cardio Pilates classes or heated Bootcamp classes for my calorie burn.

handmaggie12

BoundlessBow wrote: »

Are you using a food scale to accurately measure your portions?

No I have been meaning with a cup/ Tbs but not a good scale.

janejellyroll

handmaggie12 wrote: »

BoundlessBow wrote: »

Are you using a food scale to accurately measure your portions?

No I have been meaning with a cup/ Tbs but not a good scale.

This is likely the issue. You're currently estimating that you're eating 1,200-1,500 calories a day, but your intake is probably higher due to the inaccuracy of the method you're choosing to measure your food. Not sure where you are, but I can get a food scale for under $15. It's one of the best weight management investments I ever made. I use it every day and once I began using it, my weight loss finally began operating as I expected.