Not loosing weight but loosing motivation

denisemlatham

I'm sure you've all heard this before but I don't understand why I am being not loosing weight and its becoming disheartening. A few months ago I would easily be consuming 3,000 with half of those being from alcohol. I now don't drink alcohol, don't eat meat, no bread, rice or pasta and I'm loosing 4oz. I really have to push myself to eat 1000 calories and I feel I eat a lot trying to achieve that, for me! In my head, I have a substantial calorie deficit so why am I not loosing weight?? I told myself to be sensible and be happy with 1lb a week but to not even achieve that is really breaking my spirit 😞

sijomial

Three things would help enormously with unravelling your puzzle:

Give your stats for context, no-one knows how tall/short, heavy/light you are.

Provide a timeline of when you started losing weight and your weight loss over that time period including details of the last month. Sounds like "not losing weight" really means "losing weight slowly" but not entirely clear.

Making your food diary public, there's very common logging mistakes and also reveals how you are estimating your intake which is a huge factor in accuracy about your calorie intake.

callsitlikeiseeit

kshama2001

Are you using a trending app like Happy Scale?

I'm not happy with how my scale has been creeping up the last few days, but as a female with big water weight swings due to my menstrual cycle, I reminded myself to compare myself to last MONTH, not last WEEK, and sure enough, I'm about 3 pounds less than this point in my cycle last month.

As noted in the graphic above, other causes for water weight are new exercise programs, higher than normal sodium intake, etc.

I GAINED seven pounds of water weight when I started weight lifting again. Took a few weeks to come off and keep going down.

AnnPT77

Without disagreeing with any of the above (because I think it's useful/accurate), I'd point out that reducing calories too radically can have counter-productive effects.

Undereating calories usually also means sub-par nutrition. Either or both of those can sap energy, perhaps subtly, perhaps more obviously. Not only does that lowered energy level reduce daily life calorie burn (because we're dragging, basically), but it can also affect mood (. . . I think you mentioned discouragement?).

Beyond that, eating too little is a physical stressor, and higher cumulative stress (combination of the total physical and psychological stressors in our lives) can lead to creeping water retention. Water isn't fat, so it's not worth worrying about, but it can hide fat loss on the scale for a surprisingly long time.

A thousand calories a day is seriously inadequate for anyone not very-petite and very inactive (and would be so even for some of them!). I'm age 65, 5'5", retired, hypothyroid (treated) and 1000 calories would have me losing a couple pounds a week, and underweight/in the hospital in a few short months, if I were to stick with it (which of course I wouldn't). I'm not that big (in year 5 of maintenance at a healthy weight), but even when I was obese, I didn't have the fat reserves to healthfully eat at 1000 calories.

Please try to eat a sensible amount of nutritious food - the amount MFP's suggesting would be a good starting point - log accurately, and hang in there for at least a month's worth of experiential data. Losing any meaningful amount of weight is inherently a long term proposition (weeks to months, maybe even years if substantially obese). It needs to be sustainable, physically and psychologically. Extreme measures are counter-productive.

Best wishes!