Frustrated. Gained weight this week instead of losing weight.

helaurin

Just frustrated. I feel like I'm trying, but what I'm doing apparently isn't enough.

I'm trying to lose weight. Over the last 2 weeks, my weight appears to have gone up, instead of down. This past week, it went up 1.2 pounds.

Some basics: I'm 58 (turning 59 in 2 weeks), 5'0, stuck at about 155-157 pounds now. Oh, and I think that I might finally be starting the pre-menopause phase of my life, in case that matters. My primary form of exercise - if you want to call it that, because I know some people don't - is walking/hiking and tracking my step count. So I'm considered sedentary. I have psoriatic arthritis and damage to joints as well as herniated spinal discs, so heavy weight lifting, any super-fast activity, and even bike riding are all none-starters.

Looking at the past six days, providing average daily counts:

Calories: 1,361
Net Calories: 745.5
Step Count: 11,806

Online calculators claim that my TDEE would is 1,495 with no activity.

So with a TDEE of 1,495, and an average Net calories of 745.5, that's a difference of 749.5 calories a day, or a calorie deficit over the past week of 4,497 calories. If 3,500 calories equals a pound, then in theory I should have lost about 1.25 pounds.

Instead, my weight went up.

Thoughts? I'm not sure how much more walking I can logistically get in during the course of a day if I need to further increase my steps/activity level.

Arralethe

A few things here, I think. Firstly, you're a menstruating female, which means your hormone fluctuations can cause a lot of water retention depending on your cycle.
2nd - how long have you been at a calorie deficit? If it's only a couple of weeks, it's probably too soon to judge whether what you're doing is effective.
3rd - What rate of loss have you chosen, and what calorie limit has MFP given you?
4th - When you say net calories, I assume you have taken off your exercise calories - is that right?

I would suggest re-setting your goal to lose no more than 1lb a week - anything more is probable too aggressive. How are you logging your steps? A synched wearable device or some other method?
Also, check your food logging - are you weighing everything to ensure your logging is accurate?

pessxx

i looked also, on Tuesday there was too much sodium, are u sure you did not retain water that day and then till Friday just get rid of it but not all of it has gone?
sure that with menopause, although i do not have , it will come water retention in tissues
Also much time you walk talking in minutes ? an efficient walk should be more that 15 minutes at a brisk pace
also check this with the doctors too, the meds you are taking do not favorise water retention ?because i am in this case with my treatment and I need to double the work

Lietchi

Your food intake is quite low combined with your step count. And your net calories, if they're accurate, are very low, too low imho.
I feel a less aggressive approach might yield better results: stressing your body by eating that little can cause water retention, on top of potential water weight fluctuations from your cycle (which might be exacerbated in this premenopausal stage).

Weight loss requires a longer term perspective, two weeks isn't really enough.

Aside from that, how accurate is your food logging? Are you logging and weighing everything, checking that the database entries you're using are accurate?

helaurin

Good questions.

1 - I have a nutritional scale, and measuring cups, so I either way or measure pretty much everything I eat. So the food intake is pretty accurate.

2 - I have a Fitbit, so I'm using that to track steps. It's usually pretty accurate for me. Exceptions where I find it inaccurate:
(a) When pushing a cart while shopping, it usually doesn't record any of those steps at all.
(b) When I ride a horse (infrequent, but I rode last Monday), it tends to count steps while I'm trotting. So that's an over-counting. At the same time, I don't feel too bad about it, because it actually is a good bit of work (particularly in the legs) to do a posting trot.

3 - I had lost weight last year, and my weight loss has slowed to a crawl over the past few months.

4 - Yep, there's a chance that hormonal fluctuations may be playing a part in the retained weight. Hard to tell. I'm turning 59 next month and only now am I starting to look at possible pre-menopause kicking in, when most women have already finished menopause.

5 - Sodium - it's possible that the sodium pushed my weight up a little, but honestly, my weight has been either stuck/stagnant for the last month or more, which is why I started ramping my activity levels even more.

6 - Activity levels - I'm increasing my activity level primarily by walking/hiking, or adding stints on an elliptical when I can. An "efficient walk" is generally going to be pretty tough on me due to joint damage and arthritis. So for example, looking at my Saturday hike:
length, 3.1 miles,
moving time 1 hour, 39 minutes;
average pace 31:53 mile is about 1.9 mph
Elevation gain/variation: 194 feet (not level, but not climbing a mountain either)
I don't know how AllTrails app calculates calories, but I'm sure it's wildly incorrect, as it has me having burned 863 calories - probably they are estimating it for a 180 - 200 lb man, so I won't use their calorie calculation.

Using FitBit, I see it tracked the activity level in 15-minute increments for calories used during that hike:
12:30 - 60 (moderate)
12:45 - 82 (very intense)
1:00 - 92 (very intense)
1:15 - 110 (very intense)
1:30 - 88 (very intense)
1:45 - 115 (very intense)
2:00 - 94 (very intense)
2:15 - 97 (very intense)

Total per Fitbit = 738 (about 15% less than AllTrails estimate) and about 369 calories avg/hour

7 - Calorie deficit - I've been generally operating at some level of calorie deficit since about May of last year. I think I started with a 1,600 calorie level, and last year, as I lost weight, I dropped the level down a bit. There are days that I have gone over along the way, but overall, it's been a deficit.

The TDEE is supposed to be for a female of my age, height, and weight, with a sedentary life style (which is me, since I sit and work on a laptop, often for 8 - 14 hours a day).

So with a current TDEE of 1,495 - let's say I want to lose1.5 pounds per week for now, that means creating a deficit of 5,250 calories a week or 750 calories a day.

Obviously, I can't eat just 495 calories a day. But I can try to reduce my calorie level to 1,200. If I can consistently keep my intake at 1,200 - which is supposed to be safe - that accounts for 295 calories towards that 750 calorie deficit. Then the rest needs to be made up through activity, if I can. 750 - 295 = 455 calories. At the rate that I typically can walk on an elliptical, I burn about 300~ calories per active hour. So I'd need about 90 moving minutes, which for me is pretty tough - I'd probably need to have at least two breaks in there. So figure 2 hours on the elliptical every day, if I could, which probably isn't realistic given my other responsibilities. I might be able to push more on weekends to help create more of a deficit on those days to make up for work days.

callsitlikeiseeit

AnnPT77

Two weeks is not very long. I can understand being frustrated, but think your best bet would be to carry on at current practice (with whatever level of activity/exercise that doesn't create risk of harm/serious pain), and see what longer-term results are. (As context, I lost weight at your age, though without your full set of current challenges. I'm just hypothyroid, with some arthritis and other manageable nonsense. I'm 65 now, mostly maintaining.)

It's kind of normal for bodyweight to fluctuate from day to day by a couple of pounds or more for no particular reasons, without fat gain/loss being in the picture at all. It can be up for multiple days in a row for little or no perceptible reason, some combination of water retention and variation in digestive contents on their way to being waste.

This is a good article on the subject of random variation, worth a read as background IMO:

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

In recent months, I've been very slowly (slow by intention) losing a few vanity pounds in maintenance. There was a whole month where even my weight trending app (let alone what was happening day to day on the scale) said I was gaining. Because I've been counting for well over 5 years now, I trust my personal process, know my personal calorie needs under varied circumstances, so I knew that slow fat loss was actually happening behind the clouds of water retention, and just kept going. (In my case, I also knew that resuming a strength training practice was accounting for some extra water retention, but that's also experience-based knowledge).

You're kind of just getting started, at least for this round, it sounds like. A common mistake - at least I think it's a mistake - is for people new to counting to over-react to what will turn out to be misleading short-run scale results, and frantically change what they're doing. Obviously, I can't so won't say that's what's happening with you . . . but it's possible.

The problem that results, for people who do that, is that they drive themselves into a state of high stress (tends to increase water retention), maybe over-exercise (tends to increase water retention, increases injury risk), maybe cut calories even lower (a stressor, so tends to increase water retention, but also trigger fatigue - possibly subtle - that increases risk of binges, and/or bleeds activity (so calorie expenditure) out of daily life in forms like less fidgeting, putting off energy-draining chores, feeling cold, slowing hair growth, and who knows what all). So, the scale keeps looking like it's stalling, even longer.

On top of that, changing routine based on too-short-term results doesn't provide actually useful data to act upon. It provides confused data. If you stick with one set of practices for 4-6 weeks or so, on activity/exercise and eating fronts both, you have better odds of getting decent data, which is a better grown-up science fair experiment.

So, my advice would be to hang in there on a consistent, non-punitive, sustainable routine for a while, and get some clean many-multi-week data. Even if you *do* gain, your logging data plus average weekly *gain* (in that scenario) will give you a more accurate picture of your personal calorie needs, and you can adjust from there. (More likely, you'll have some degree of loss on your current routine; you can also use that to adjust.)

Best wishes!

helaurin

Adding on - just was reading that the calorie burn estimate from FitBits are generally about 25% high, so if it's reading that I burned 400 calories in an activity, that it's more likely that I burned 320 calories, not 400.

Ugh.

AnnPT77

helaurin wrote: »

Adding on - just was reading that the calorie burn estimate from FitBits are generally about 25% high, so if it's reading that I burned 400 calories in an activity, that it's more likely that I burned 320 calories, not 400.

Ugh.

Devices can estimate high, for exercise or all-day. They can also estimate low.

One factor with the exercise estimates, specifically, is whether it's a gross estimate (includes calories you would've spent sitting on the couch instead) or net (just the ones above and beyond the couch-sitting).

For devices that properly synch with MFP, synching the device should sort that out without much fuss.

That does leave the problem that the devices are still just producing a calorie *estimate*, and relying on what are basically statistical estimates, though quite-personalized ones, to get that estimate. That all-day estimate can be high or low, depending on the average-ness of the individual.

It's fascinating to me that there's so much worry that devices may over-estimate, and so little recognition that they can also under-estimate. (As an aside, running a careful 4-6 week trial will let most any individual figure out how accurate the devices are, for them, with all-day estimates. Many people here do this.)

I have a good brand/model tracker, one that produces all-day calorie estimates that many other people here have said they find to be usefully close, for them. It's 25-30% off - around 500 daily calories off, more or less - for me. It UNDER-estimates. It thinks (similar to MFP, by the way) that I'd maintain on about 1500 calories (before exercise) +/-, when the actual number (from almost 6 years of careful logging) is 2000+. It can happen. Is it the device? No. I'm just statistically unusual. It happens - high or low - but it's rare to be far off (small standard deviation).

Trackers are not *measuring* calorie expenditure, though some people seem to believe they are. 🤷‍♀️ They can be high or low.