My biggest struggle with losing weight is not knowing how to do it.

CakesNGamesTK

I won’t lie. I have not been to the gym in a minute. But even when I did go, I never felt I got much accomplished. And I also fall off the wagon a lot because after weeks of tracking calories and exercising, I only seem to put weight on. And no, it isn’t muscle.

Did anyone else have this issue?

sollyn23l2

Increased intentional exercise causes increased appetite. Unchecked, yes, it makes sense this could cause weight gain. This is why they say weight loss happens in the kitchen, not the gym. There's no easy way around it. To lose weight, you have to eat less high calorie food and more low calorie foods.

cmriverside

Try keeping track of your food intake. It's all about levels of calories. Exercise is good for you, but you still have to figure out the level of food that allows you to exercise and lose weight.

Try this: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

Xellercin

I *personally* don't relate eating and exercise, I find it confuses things.

When I was obese and wanted to lose weight, I focused solely on getting my eating on point. I knew what eating pattern had made me obese and I knew my obese weight could not be sustained by a healthy diet.

So that's what I focused on: maximizing the health of my diet.

I did it one step at a time, I started with breakfast and then worked from there. I didn't have a calorie goal, just a food quality goal. I would make small diet change and then stick with it for at least 6 weeks and see how the scale reacted.

I kept making these minor changes systematically and monitoring the results. Over a year, I overhauled my entire diet to be extremely healthy and I lost down to a healthy weight.

Only then did I start introducing exercise, but not to lose weight, I never change my exercise based on my weight. I exercise, again, for my health. And again, I started by introducing very small, incremental exercise changes.

Now, I'm seriously disabled, so I can't do vigorous intense exercise, so my exercise has never contributed meaningfully to my weight loss.

Still, over time I lost even more weight down to a BMI of 20-21 with just a sustainable, healthy diet and moderate, gentle exercise.

From my *personal* experience, I believe that what's needed for substantial and sustainable weight loss is patience and data.

The scale will go up and down and often that has nothing to do with how much fat is on your body. That's why you need to do something *consistently* day in and day out for at least 6 weeks and record your weight daily and look at the trends if you *actually* want to see how a specific lifestyle change is affecting your body.

If you do something for a few weeks and then see a rise in the scale and then do something else and then get frustrated and binge, you have no idea what's actually happening, what's actually working and what isn't. It's just data chaos.

It would be nice if the scale showed in real time what is happening with body fat, but it doesn't. The scale measures water too, and that fluctuates like crazy.

The scale can go up for me for a month just because I've been eating too much broccoli and I can't digest it very well so I bloat. I guarantee you the broccoli isn't making me fatter.

Likewise, back when I used to drink, if I was drinking more than normal, the scale would drop, and again, I guarantee you that alcohol was not making me lose fat.

So again, try something CONSISTENTLY for 6 weeks, see what happens, and then adjust. If something doesn't result in weight loss after 6 weeks, that's AWESOME! That means whatever you are doing *isn't* causing you to gain. That means you're 99% of the way there to losing weight.

For the next 6 weeks, make a minor, sustainable adjustment to your intake and see what happens in another 6 weeks. It could be that all you need to do for consistent weight loss is to maybe cut out the sugar in your coffee, or your usual late night snack.

Once you systematically figure out the sustainable eating that produces weight loss, that's it. You're done. Just keep eating that way until you stop losing. If you stop losing and you are happy with that new weight, congrats, you are now in maintenance.

If you stop losing and want to lose more, then you make another small change, wait 6 weeks, and see if you start losing again.

And so on and so forth.

This is how you run an experiment on yourself to figure out what you need to do to achieve your goals.

Now, added bonus, for me, I wasn't just trying to figure out how to lose weight, I was trying to figure out what way of eating made my body feel it's best. So with each 6 week experiment, I not only logged my daily weight, but how I felt after each meal. This is how I know that broccoli (raw) isn't my friend.

So I not only figured out how to eat to maintain a lean, healthy weight indefinitely, I also figured out how to eat to feel my best.

I've been at this for 8 years, that's a lot of opportunities for 6 week tests.

I eat primarily delicious, ultra healthy foods that make me feel great and keep me lean. I didn't follow any diet in a book or website, I customized my diet according to how my own body responds.

Patience, consistency, and data.

vivmom2014

OP, you DO know how to do it [lose weight.] Set up your calorie goal in such a way that you aren't super restricted with your eating. Lose weight slowly. There's no finish line -- which is different from reaching a goal. When your goal is reached, you KEEP your new healthier eating habits and do not return to habits that landed you here in the first place.

Exercise is great as it allows us to eat additional calories, but learning to eat in a way that is satisfying and keeps you in a deficit is where it's at. Master that, and everything else is gravy (sorry for the food related pun.)

cwolfman13

CakesNGamesTK wrote: »

I won’t lie. I have not been to the gym in a minute. But even when I did go, I never felt I got much accomplished. And I also fall off the wagon a lot because after weeks of tracking calories and exercising, I only seem to put weight on. And no, it isn’t muscle.

Did anyone else have this issue?

Losing weight is primarily about what is going into your pie hole, not the gym or what exercise you're doing. If you're putting on weight consistently over time while going to the gym, it means you're eating too much. Some weight gain and stagnant loss is pretty normal with a new workout routine though as you retain water to aid in muscle repair. As a woman you also have to consider that your weight will likely fluctuate up and down more so than a man due to hormonal fluctuations. All of that is going to show up on the scale.

Losing weight is a long game thing and not a quick fix. Losing weight requires consistency and discipline over a long period of time, not a handful of weeks.

kshama2001

CakesNGamesTK wrote: »

I won’t lie. I have not been to the gym in a minute. But even when I did go, I never felt I got much accomplished. And I also fall off the wagon a lot because after weeks of tracking calories and exercising, I only seem to put weight on. And no, it isn’t muscle.

Did anyone else have this issue?

When you're ready to go back to the gym, I suggest a few sessions with a personal trainer. Every gym I've ever joined has offered 1-3 sessions for free upon joining, and many have free or very low cost small group classes. I've moved a lot and taken advantage of this every time.

Back when I first started with MFP and started lifting weights again, my weight went up 7 POUNDS. I'm sure it was new exercise water retention. It started coming back off within a week.

But if you're not exercising and not losing weight, then we can rule out the exercise water weight aspect.

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

whumphries204

Honestly use the scale as a data point to track progress. Weigh once a week same time,day,empty stomach. Make a note and adjust accordingly. You will gain weight while lifting weight due to water retention in the muscle tissue. At the end of the day it's going to be about how you feel and perceive yourself in the mirror. Keep hydrated and eat low calorie, high volume foods to keep yourself from getting hungry.

Dougf09

CakesNGamesTK wrote: »

I won’t lie. I have not been to the gym in a minute. But even when I did go, I never felt I got much accomplished. And I also fall off the wagon a lot because after weeks of tracking calories and exercising, I only seem to put weight on. And no, it isn’t muscle.

Did anyone else have this issue?

In the past I've lost 200 lbs, and am back after gaining just a bit of it back 😀. What worked for me was always creating a deficit through exercise. For instance if what my body needed to survive was 2,200 calories, I would eat that and aim for 1k calorie burn a day being active. If you're not losing weight despite tracking everything my first suggestion would be there is potentially a miss in calorie counting somewhere, do you have a food scale and weigh everything you log? A lot of the stuff in the food database isn't accurate and portions can change wildly when picking up food at restaurants etc

Also, persistence is key. Maybe you're losing fat but adding some water weight and it's masking the weight loss? There's a lot of factors at play. I would try 3 things; really hone in on accurately weighing/measuring/tracking the food you consume, eat more but also burn more, and just keep at it. At the end of the day this is a math game and we just have to find the numbers that work for us. Best of luck!