Can someone explain this...

kegan5

Pre lockdown my weight really kept the following pattern - if I worked out regularly I would weigh around 149-150lbs and during periods I didn’t exercise/ normal weight would be 165lbs and I would drop to the 140-150 pretty quickly or would at least see steady drop in weight as I worked out.

During covid I ate atrociously, cookies by the tray, drive they burgers etc and gained a whole bunch of weight = 180lbs.

I became aware of this gain and so changed my eating habits, reducing sugar almost entirely, calorie intake to 1450-1600 per day, adding in some exercise like spin cycling, hit etc which I’ve done 3-4 days a week.

Working from home I’m pretty sedentary but I cannot work this out.

The burgers and sugar got me to 180, surely by not eating those and reducing calorie intake I should lose weight by calorie deficit rules?

I track calories with galaxy fit and get an average total burn of 2000 per day.

Intake calories range between 1400 and 1700.

Can someone explain why my weight just won’t go down, I see movement it will drop 4pbs some days and then goes straight back up.

I weight my food, pre make meals each week and they don’t vary much... the size extra cals sometimes comes from drinks/milk granola bars.

Ddsb11

This is really helpful!

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10012907/logging-accuracy-consistency-and-youre-probably-eating-more-than-you-think/p1

AnnPT77

How long have you been at the new eating and exercise routine?

gionrogado

what do you do to burn 2000 calories per day exactly? sounds like an overestimation

kegan5

Thanks Ddsb11, I feel like I’m tracking everything but i agree it’s likely a drink gets missed here and there.

AnnPT77 I lowered calories about 6 weeks ago, along with fitness but I’ve changed my fitness routine starting with a beach body 21 day fix, but found it boring after 2 weeks so stopped and started doing peloton classes first week I did 30 min classes 4 days a week then moved to 45 min classes, now I just found an instructor called Courtney Black I started her phased workouts 4 days a week and got to week 2, she started a challenge four days ago so I’ve stepped into that for now...

I know the inconsistency and difficultly keeping interest stems from me not seeing results.

Redordeadhead

gionrogado wrote: »

what do you do to burn 2000 calories per day exactly? sounds like an overestimation

I think this is totally calorie burn for the day, not an exercise calorie burn, in which case it's not unreasonable.

PAV8888

Too soon to tell. Increased and inconsistent exercise masking weight loss. Small deficit slow loss all good. Relax, enjoy exercise. Not continuing to go up so all good... (And with a small deficit making an extra effort to log accurately may be beneficial)

gionrogado

Redordeadhead wrote: »

gionrogado wrote: »

what do you do to burn 2000 calories per day exactly? sounds like an overestimation

I think this is totally calorie burn for the day, not an exercise calorie burn, in which case it's not unreasonable.

at any rate, OP can only do 2 things:

1) increase calorie burn by moving more, and/or
2) decrease calorie intake by eating less

it's like getting beyond a plateau

AnnPT77

kegan5 wrote: »

Thanks Ddsb11, I feel like I’m tracking everything but i agree it’s likely a drink gets missed here and there.

AnnPT77 I lowered calories about 6 weeks ago, along with fitness but I’ve changed my fitness routine starting with a beach body 21 day fix, but found it boring after 2 weeks so stopped and started doing peloton classes first week I did 30 min classes 4 days a week then moved to 45 min classes, now I just found an instructor called Courtney Black I started her phased workouts 4 days a week and got to week 2, she started a challenge four days ago so I’ve stepped into that for now...

I know the inconsistency and difficultly keeping interest stems from me not seeing results.

I think you've hit on it: You've changed up your routine a lot. New forms of exercise lead to extra water retention (for muscle repair), and you've swapped enough times to maybe keep some continuing extra water retention in the picture, particularly if you're a premenopausal woman who already has potentially multi-pound hormone-related water weight fluctuations in a typical monthly cycle. Water fluctuations mask fat loss on the scale, potentially.

If you truly burn around 2000 calories daily on average (which I think is plausible), then 1400 calories intake would be a 600 calorie deficit (i.e., would amount to an estimated weight loss just over a pound a week if done every day), while 1700 calories is a 300 calorie deficit (just a tiny bit over a half a pound a week, if consistent). Recognizing that the fitness trackers are close for a lot of people (but not gospel), and that our food logging can have some inaccuracies despite best efforts, then the deficit could even be a bit smaller than those bounds. I don't know whether you ever have treat days or "oopsie" eating days or anything like that in there at all, as many of us do along the way, but that's another wild card if you do.

I'm rambling, but the point is this: Against a backdrop of water weight fluctuations that may be up to several pounds, if you're down around half a pound a week in average weight loss, it can easily take a couple of months to see a clear trend on the scale, and even then that may only show up well if you're using a weight trending app. (Are you?)

If you had a consistent routine, any fat loss results you're achieving might become visible on the scale *a bit* more quickly. If you enjoy frequent changes in routine - which is fine, not a problem in itself - that will tend to come with a downside of making it take somewhat longer for trends to be obvious. In order to make any sensible adjustment, you need some kind of baseline trend, to give you some rational basis for deciding what to change, and by how much.

Does that make sense? What it amounts to is that I think you may need to find a way to feel more patient, and stick with the process. Is it possible for you to focus on the process as your goal for a couple of months, rather than focusing entirely on the outcome? For example, to set up a routine of doing and logging workouts (even if they change), maybe tracking some fitness markers alongside calories and weight, rewarding yourself for setting and establishing new eating habits like food logging or getting more veggie servings or more protein, etc.?

This may sound weird as a focus, but if you think about it, I'll bet that what you'd really like is to stay at a healthy weight long term, after you reach a goal. Doing that is going to rely on experimenting to find habits that are sustainable, even enjoyable, to keep you at your desired weight. Once fine-tuned, those habits will also bring you to a healthy weight and fitness level, but it's going to take some time.

Treating weight loss as an urgent project with an end date, after which things "go back to normal", may not be the most productive path to a permanent healthy life, y'know? Sometimes trying to lose weight fast is a slower route (because of missteps and corrections and maybe even some temporary fails) compared to trying for slower but more sustainable loss, and the establishment of happy new long-term habits.

Best wishes!

kegan5

Redordeadhead Correct that’s a full 24 hour burn not from exercise solely

And thank you AnnPT77, I guess I need to exercise more patience, it’s just a little frustrating since I’ve not had to so much in the past and as for tracking when I spend a week tracking calories I weigh but let’s say it’s a granola bar I do trust what the bar says vs weighing that single bar, and like you say for consistency I don’t track every week so there’s likely changes that happen.

For weight I use a scale that sends data to an app called fit days, when weight moves up or down slightly the fat and muscle seem to move together equally I.e 0.1% increase or decrease

I had a single day where I dropped 4lb and looking at that time fat, muscle etc dropped on chart but protein goes up.

Could protein affect this? I’m vegetarian but do eat eggs in morning despite despising them and including plant based meats during meals which contain 12-19g of protein, protein waffles.

AnnPT77

kegan5 wrote: »

Redordeadhead Correct that’s a full 24 hour burn not from exercise solely

And thank you AnnPT77, I guess I need to exercise more patience, it’s just a little frustrating since I’ve not had to so much in the past and as for tracking when I spend a week tracking calories I weigh but let’s say it’s a granola bar I do trust what the bar says vs weighing that single bar, and like you say for consistency I don’t track every week so there’s likely changes that happen.

For weight I use a scale that sends data to an app called fit days, when weight moves up or down slightly the fat and muscle seem to move together equally I.e 0.1% increase or decrease

I had a single day where I dropped 4lb and looking at that time fat, muscle etc dropped on chart but protein goes up.

Could protein affect this? I’m vegetarian but do eat eggs in morning despite despising them and including plant based meats during meals which contain 12-19g of protein, protein waffles.

A big overnight gain or drop is pretty much guaranteed to be water weight. For a 4 pound change to be fat, you'd need to have shifted around 14000 calories of intake/activity vs. normal, within the previous day or few, and I'm pretty sure you'd have noticed. 😉

The BIA scale estimates of body composition are fairly inaccurate (they send a small electrical current through part of your body, measure what returns, and estimate your whole body composition from that). Don't worry about minor shifts in body composition, according to the scale. Long term, it might produce a valid trend, but the precise values are always iffy, and there can be outliers (because things like hydration can affect the results).

I would suggest getting 0.6-0.8g of protein daily per pound of goal weight. I'm also vegetarian (ovo lacto), have been for almost 47 years, and now (in maintenance at 5'5", 125 pounds) target 100g protein daily as a minimum, usually exceed it. Long term, protein can affect body composition - you can't repair or build muscle without eating some - but it won't affect weight loss in the short run, except maybe via how full you feel, so how easy it is to stick with your calorie goal. (Many people find protein filling.)

Shoot for consistency, and patience.

Also, in the mean time, I'd suggest you read this. It's quite informative and pertinent to what you're seeing:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

callsitlikeiseeit

ahoy_m8

OP, you are doing great. Don't beat yourself up about changing up workouts. There is nothing wrong with variety if that is what you enjoy. The important thing is you are doing it, and enjoying it, so kudos. Keep challenging yourself and do not worry about what impact this will have on water fluctuation. Water fluctuation is a fact of life. Don't stress over it or, worse, try to avoid it. Do the exercise you like! Change it up when you like!

Good insights above. An additional suggestion: a weight trending app like "happy scale" (or applying a smoothing curve to your own spreadsheet data). One should never react to isolated data points, concerning weight or concerning life in general. Context matters. Hence, don't even bother with individual weight data points. Look at the weight trend.

I have been doing this long enough to know better, but there have been so many times I have been in a deficit 3 weeks with good compliance and I step on the scale and it's more than my starting weight. I wonder what I'm doing wrong. Then I look at my trend. Yep, trend is down the exact predicted amount. It's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees.