Can anyone help again? Not losing any weight!

Lullaby2021

Set to lose 0.5lbs perweek(Sedentary)Not losing any weight. I've been at it for 27 days. With tomorrow being 28day/4weeks. After losing 1.8 pounds. In the first two weeks. I've not been able to lose anything. I know I'm already at a healthy weight 138.8Lbs.My height is 5'7. I just want to lose 5 pounds.
I eat calories in the 1,400s most days. Sometimes I eat my exercise calories. I Est my maintenance is 1,770 on average. So why am I not losing anything anymore? If I eat rather low. Exercise calories are very low and not overly exaterated. Activity: Workout 3X per week for 20 min. Walk 1-2 times per week now. For maybe an hr or a little over. I started exercising two weeks ago.
I suspect four things. I just one everyone else opnion. On where I went wrong. I weigh my foods too.. Below are four things I think
1.Eating too much (not likely)
2.Stress
3. Haven't been able to sleep well for over a week
4. Water
Anything else.. Can anyone help?
Diary Is open: I started dec 28th,2022 at 140Lbs. Till today January 24th,2023(27days)138.8Lbs

Btw weigh ins:
Dec28th:140.0
January3rd:139.4
January5th: 138.2
January12th:138.2
January19th:138.8
January24th:138.8

Lietchi

You have lost 1.2lbs overall and at that slow rate of loss weight fluctuations can easily mask fat loss on the scale for quite a while (longer than those two weeks you've not seen progression. Especially in case of stress (and lack of sleep is also stressful).
Furthermore, you're not weighing daily - you don't have to, but it would give you a bit more data regarding your weight fluctuations, and make it slightly easier to spot your weight trend.

Since you lost weight at first, I would tend to think it's just a matter of patience...

penguinmama87

With only five pounds to go it might take longer to show up on the scale. I would wait an additional two weeks before deciding to cut calories more, or at least one full menstrual cycle if that applies to you. That can play a big role with water retention and calories out. Another thing you might try is weighing daily if you don't already, to get a clearer picture of the trend. You could also just choose to lose weight at 0.25 lb/week instead of 0.5 (that's probably what I would do, to be honest, at only five pounds to go.)

The fact that the exercise started at the same time the loss stalled might explain things, too, as your body adjusts - especially if you experienced a lot of soreness.

SurphsUp

I'm a little bit taller than you and weigh a little bit more. My weight on Jan. 1 was 167 pounds. Until yesterday, that was my lowest weight this year. By weighing every day, I was able to see that each week my average weight was coming down even if the scale didn't appear to be going down at all. Losing slowly can be frustrating because the scale is affected by so many things: water weight, food and waste in your system, muscle, fat, etc. I expect that a little more patience, or more data points (ie. weighing more often) could benefit you.

Lullaby2021

Lietchi wrote: »

You have lost 1.2lbs overall and at that slow rate of loss weight fluctuations can easily mask fat loss on the scale for quite a while (longer than those two weeks you've not seen progression. Especially in case of stress (and lack of sleep is also stressful).
Furthermore, you're not weighing daily - you don't have to, but it would give you a bit more data regarding your weight fluctuations, and make it slightly easier to spot your weight trend.

Since you lost weight at first, I would tend to think it's just a matter of patience...

Okay thanks

Lullaby2021

SurphsUp wrote: »

I'm a little bit taller than you and weigh a little bit more. My weight on Jan. 1 was 167 pounds. Until yesterday, that was my lowest weight this year. By weighing every day, I was able to see that each week my average weight was coming down even if the scale didn't appear to be going down at all. Losing slowly can be frustrating because the scale is affected by so many things: water weight, food and waste in your system, muscle, fat, etc. I expect that a little more patience, or more data points (ie. weighing more often) could benefit you.

True, may have to weigh more. I usually weigh in only twice per week.

karahm78

There are really good apps for tracking the trend on daily weights… was a game changer for me! I use Happy Scale for iPhone, but Libra is similar for Android.

BumbleberryPie

If your maintenance calories are 1,770 a day and you want to lose .5 pounds a week, you need to create a deficit of 250 calories a day or 1,750 a week, through diet, exercise or a combination of both. That puts you at 1,570 calories and it sounds like you are eating less than that most days so you should be losing weight consistently. Maybe try: 1) Weighing yourself on the same day each week so you can get a consistent picture of ups and downs. For example, every Thursday or every Saturday or whatever. Make sure you are always weighing yourself in the morning before having ingested any food or water so that you are seeing the trend consistently (or you can also weigh yourself daily if you like, but I personally only "count" one day a week for the purposes of tracking and delete the rest 2) I would not count the calories you are burning through exercise; there is a way to turn that function of in MFP as it makes things needlessly confusing. Then I would recalculate your total calories taking into account the exercise you are doing since you are no longer sedentary and just concentrate on making sure your daily calories line up 3) Make sure you are drinking enough water for your height/weight; it makes a big difference. Use an online calculator if you are not sure how much to be drinking 4) Make sure you are getting in enough fiber - 25 to 30 grams a day. Oatmeal, beans, broccoli, berries, chia seeds... all great sources of fiber. 5) Don't fixate too much on scale weight. It is just a metric! If you are already a healthy weight consider why it is you really want to lose 5 pounds. Is it a number you just have in your head as an ideal? If you want your body to look better, consider you may be able to accomplish that by weight lifting and you weight may not change. ;-) Hope this helps, good luck!

Lullaby2021

BumbleberryPie wrote: »

If your maintenance calories are 1,770 a day and you want to lose .5 pounds a week, you need to create a deficit of 250 calories a day or 1,750 a week, through diet, exercise or a combination of both. That puts you at 1,570 calories and it sounds like you are eating less than that most days so you should be losing weight consistently. Maybe try: 1) Weighing yourself on the same day each week so you can get a consistent picture of ups and downs. For example, every Thursday or every Saturday or whatever. Make sure you are always weighing yourself in the morning before having ingested any food or water so that you are seeing the trend consistently (or you can also weigh yourself daily if you like, but I personally only "count" one day a week for the purposes of tracking and delete the rest 2) I would not count the calories you are burning through exercise; there is a way to turn that function of in MFP as it makes things needlessly confusing. Then I would recalculate your total calories taking into account the exercise you are doing since you are no longer sedentary and just concentrate on making sure your daily calories line up 3) Make sure you are drinking enough water for your height/weight; it makes a big difference. Use an online calculator if you are not sure how much to be drinking 4) Make sure you are getting in enough fiber - 25 to 30 grams a day. Oatmeal, beans, broccoli, berries, chia seeds... all great sources of fiber. 5) Don't fixate too much on scale weight. It is just a metric! If you are already a healthy weight consider why it is you really want to lose 5 pounds. Is it a number you just have in your head as an ideal? If you want your body to look better, consider you may be able to accomplish that by weight lifting and you weight may not change. ;-) Hope this helps, good luck!

Thank you for all the information.I've turned off my exercise calories now.I am lifting weights but only once per week for now. I not too long ago started exercise. I want to lose 5lbs. To get off a little fat. I gained around 12 pounds. over the past months when I became sedentary.

sbelletti

I want to lose 5lbs.

With that little to lose, it's going to take a LOT longer than you think. 1/2 a pound a week, if you're lucky. And daily fluctuations make weigh-ins really irritating and hard to judge your progress, so it may take longer than a week to see if your changes are having any effect.

My advice... Commit to the math, log VERY accurately, and try not to let the scale freak you out. Give it a full month and then see how you're doing.

AnnPT77

At a really slow loss rate, there have been times when even my weight trending app thought I was maintaining or even gaining for a month or more, when I was pretty sure I was actually losing slowly. (I'm quite confident about my calorie needs and logging practices: I've been calorie counting a long time now - the slow loss was to re-lose a very small number of pounds that I'd drifted up gradually over the first years in maintenance because my jeans were getting a little snug.)

Sure enough, the expected loss showed up on the scale eventually, right on track. There's no way I'd worry about it in one week. And if I was trying to see it just from weigh-ins, without even the weight trending app? Pffft, no way.

Think about it: It's normal for body weight to fluctuate up and down up to several pounds daily from perfectly normal, healthy changes in water retention and differences in food waste on its way to the exit.

If I lose half a pound of fat per week, but my water weight goes up and down randomly within a range of (say) +/- 3 pounds from one day to the next sometimes, it's going to take many weeks before those things to stop playing peek-a-boo on the scales.

Since you're maybe new to logging, and maybe still relying on a calculator (or MFP or fitness tracker) estimate of your calorie needs, you have even more potential for variation than if you had well-tested logging habits and an estimate of your calorie needs based on experience with your own data. It's pretty easy for any of those to have variances as big as the 250 calories in your estimated calorie deficit, until you have enough experience to pin some of them down.

Patience is your friend. Sad, but true. Hang in there, you'll make this work.

Lietchi

You have lost 1.2lbs, and at

Lullaby2021 wrote: »

BumbleberryPie wrote: »

If your maintenance calories are 1,770 a day and you want to lose .5 pounds a week, you need to create a deficit of 250 calories a day or 1,750 a week, through diet, exercise or a combination of both. That puts you at 1,570 calories and it sounds like you are eating less than that most days so you should be losing weight consistently. Maybe try: 1) Weighing yourself on the same day each week so you can get a consistent picture of ups and downs. For example, every Thursday or every Saturday or whatever. Make sure you are always weighing yourself in the morning before having ingested any food or water so that you are seeing the trend consistently (or you can also weigh yourself daily if you like, but I personally only "count" one day a week for the purposes of tracking and delete the rest 2) I would not count the calories you are burning through exercise; there is a way to turn that function of in MFP as it makes things needlessly confusing. Then I would recalculate your total calories taking into account the exercise you are doing since you are no longer sedentary and just concentrate on making sure your daily calories line up 3) Make sure you are drinking enough water for your height/weight; it makes a big difference. Use an online calculator if you are not sure how much to be drinking 4) Make sure you are getting in enough fiber - 25 to 30 grams a day. Oatmeal, beans, broccoli, berries, chia seeds... all great sources of fiber. 5) Don't fixate too much on scale weight. It is just a metric! If you are already a healthy weight consider why it is you really want to lose 5 pounds. Is it a number you just have in your head as an ideal? If you want your body to look better, consider you may be able to accomplish that by weight lifting and you weight may not change. ;-) Hope this helps, good luck!

Thank you for all the information.I've turned off my exercise calories now.I am lifting weights but only once per week for now. I not too long ago started exercise. I want to lose 5lbs. To get off a little fat. I gained around 12 pounds. over the past months when I became sedentary.

Exercise, and especially strength training, can cause water retention masking fat loss on the scale. Another reason why I vote for patience as an approach. You might try measuring yourself or using non stretchy clothes to judge your progress.

Lullaby2021

It's been 29 days everyone. Forgot to mention a lot of things to ya'll. At the time I was very stressed. Had a hard time giving more details to you all. Cause I believed truthfully I'm in defict. Energy got lower, Stress went up, irritated easily,More hungry, and hard to get a good sleep. For about two weeks. I've only been getting four hours all night. deficit remember being in one before. I lost weight with all the symptoms. Just this time it hasn't happened but I have all the symptoms. On another note Two pair of pants are loose now. I see it in the mirror. Where I look like size reduced. The scale just isn't moving. Which didn't make sense to me at first. I'm coming to understand it a bit more now. By reading into this post. Lastly could exercise calories be a problem? Should I just eat 1450 straight (No exercise)? For anyone else who do the 0.5Lbs perweek. How soon did you see results. How long did it take for things to level out? Will I not see any changes on the scale, until months have passed?

Lullaby2021

AnnPT77 wrote: »

At a really slow loss rate, there have been times when even my weight trending app thought I was maintaining or even gaining for a month or more, when I was pretty sure I was actually losing slowly. (I'm quite confident about my calorie needs and logging practices: I've been calorie counting a long time now - the slow loss was to re-lose a very small number of pounds that I'd drifted up gradually over the first years in maintenance because my jeans were getting a little snug.)

Sure enough, the expected loss showed up on the scale eventually, right on track. There's no way I'd worry about it in one week. And if I was trying to see it just from weigh-ins, without even the weight trending app? Pffft, no way.

Think about it: It's normal for body weight to fluctuate up and down up to several pounds daily from perfectly normal, healthy changes in water retention and differences in food waste on its way to the exit.

If I lose half a pound of fat per week, but my water weight goes up and down randomly within a range of (say) +/- 3 pounds from one day to the next sometimes, it's going to take many weeks before those things to stop playing peek-a-boo on the scales.

Since you're maybe new to logging, and maybe still relying on a calculator (or MFP or fitness tracker) estimate of your calorie needs, you have even more potential for variation than if you had well-tested logging habits and an estimate of your calorie needs based on experience with your own data. It's pretty easy for any of those to have variances as big as the 250 calories in your estimated calorie deficit, until you have enough experience to pin some of them down.

Patience is your friend. Sad, but true. Hang in there, you'll make this work.

Yes! I need to practice patience again. Not use to the stalls. When everytime I lost weight. The scale would go down everytime with it. I'm going to use my snug shorts as measurement. How long did it take you.. At 1/2lb per week. To see any noticable change. on the scale and your clothes?

AnnPT77

I usually saw results in my trending app's trend line in less than a month, even when losing slower than half a pound a week. Maybe a couple or three weeks or so? Once or twice in a year of ultra slow loss, it took longer, I'd say up to 6 weeks.

But I'm in menopause, don't have hormonal water weight fluctuations. With menstrual cycles, I'd guess at least one cycle, maybe two, with a trending app. But that's guessing.

It would've been slower to perceive without the trending app, from just watching the scale, without graphing or anything, I'm pretty sure. My brain isn't very good at seeing small statistical trends in a list of numbers. YMMV.

ETA: Clothes fit was slow, too - maybe slower than trending app. It will depend in part on patterns of where your individual body likes to store fat, where it loses it first vs. holds into it longer. Choose your clothing item accordingly.

kshama2001

Lullaby2021 wrote: »

It's been 29 days everyone. Forgot to mention a lot of things to ya'll. At the time I was very stressed. Had a hard time giving more details to you all. Cause I believed truthfully I'm in defict. Energy got lower, Stress went up, irritated easily,More hungry, and hard to get a good sleep. For about two weeks. I've only been getting four hours all night. deficit remember being in one before. I lost weight with all the symptoms. Just this time it hasn't happened but I have all the symptoms. On another note Two pair of pants are loose now. I see it in the mirror. Where I look like size reduced. The scale just isn't moving. Which didn't make sense to me at first. I'm coming to understand it a bit more now. By reading into this post.

While water retention, which can happen from both stress and new exercise, can both mask fat loss on the scale, if you are visibly smaller, maybe try changing the batteries on your scale and see if something like a dumbell or a 5 pound bag of flour weighs accurately on your scale.

Lastly could exercise calories be a problem? Should I just eat 1450 straight (No exercise)? For anyone else who do the 0.5Lbs perweek. How soon did you see results. How long did it take for things to level out? Will I not see any changes on the scale, until months have passed?

No, you've lost weight (it's just not showing up on the scale yet) so exercise calories are not the problem.

If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

kshama2001

karahm78 wrote: »

There are really good apps for tracking the trend on daily weights… was a game changer for me! I use Happy Scale for iPhone, but Libra is similar for Android.

Yes, with this little to lose definitely use a weight trending app. You will get better results from it if you weigh daily so it has more data points to work with. (But don't weigh more than once per day.)

Lullaby2021

kshama2001 wrote: »

karahm78 wrote: »

There are really good apps for tracking the trend on daily weights… was a game changer for me! I use Happy Scale for iPhone, but Libra is similar for Android.

Yes, with this little to lose definitely use a weight trending app. You will get better results from it if you weigh daily so it has more data points to work with. (But don't weigh more than once per day.)

kshama2001 wrote: »

Lullaby2021 wrote: »

It's been 29 days everyone. Forgot to mention a lot of things to ya'll. At the time I was very stressed. Had a hard time giving more details to you all. Cause I believed truthfully I'm in defict. Energy got lower, Stress went up, irritated easily,More hungry, and hard to get a good sleep. For about two weeks. I've only been getting four hours all night. deficit remember being in one before. I lost weight with all the symptoms. Just this time it hasn't happened but I have all the symptoms. On another note Two pair of pants are loose now. I see it in the mirror. Where I look like size reduced. The scale just isn't moving. Which didn't make sense to me at first. I'm coming to understand it a bit more now. By reading into this post.

While water retention, which can happen from both stress and new exercise, can both mask fat loss on the scale, if you are visibly smaller, maybe try changing the batteries on your scale and see if something like a dumbell or a 5 pound bag of flour weighs accurately on your scale.

Lastly could exercise calories be a problem? Should I just eat 1450 straight (No exercise)? For anyone else who do the 0.5Lbs perweek. How soon did you see results. How long did it take for things to level out? Will I not see any changes on the scale, until months have passed?

No, you've lost weight (it's just not showing up on the scale yet) so exercise calories are not the problem.

If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

Yes' I'm download weight trending app. Am putting info in there. With exercise calories, I use my own. I always set it at 4 calories burned per minute. In 30 min of working out. I burn very low (120 calories) just to be on the safe side. Other peoples are inflated much. Walking on a treadmill for one hr at my size(138 pounds) as an example. It will not burn 1000 calories. It's more like 240-340 calories. Speed does matter but typically I may not burn much more. Then maybe cardio for 30 min at very high intense. It may only bottom out to 150- 180 or less calories at most.. Not the high 500 from other inputs.

BartBVanBockstaele

Lullaby2021 wrote: »

Set to lose 0.5lbs perweek(Sedentary)Not losing any weight. I've been at it for 27 days. With tomorrow being 28day/4weeks. After losing 1.8 pounds. In the first two weeks. I've not been able to lose anything. I know I'm already at a healthy weight 138.8Lbs.My height is 5'7. I just want to lose 5 pounds.
I eat calories in the 1,400s most days. Sometimes I eat my exercise calories. I Est my maintenance is 1,770 on average. So why am I not losing anything anymore? If I eat rather low. Exercise calories are very low and not overly exaterated. Activity: Workout 3X per week for 20 min. Walk 1-2 times per week now. For maybe an hr or a little over. I started exercising two weeks ago.
I suspect four things. I just one everyone else opnion. On where I went wrong. I weigh my foods too.. Below are four things I think
1.Eating too much (not likely)
2.Stress
3. Haven't been able to sleep well for over a week
4. Water
Anything else.. Can anyone help?
Diary Is open: I started dec 28th,2022 at 140Lbs. Till today January 24th,2023(27days)138.8Lbs

Btw weigh ins:
Dec28th:140.0
January3rd:139.4
January5th: 138.2
January12th:138.2
January19th:138.8
January24th:138.8

I am about 1 cm taller and weigh 1 kg more than you do, and my intake is very low as well, so it doesn't strike me as particularly unusual to me.

You could start by trying the NIH body weight planner at: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/bwp
You could also read the great information from the CDC at: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/

AnnPT77

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I usually saw results in my trending app's trend line in less than a month, even when losing slower than half a pound a week. Maybe a couple or three weeks or so? Once or twice in a year of ultra slow loss, it took longer, I'd say up to 6 weeks.

But I'm in menopause, don't have hormonal water weight fluctuations. With menstrual cycles, I'd guess at least one cycle, maybe two, with a trending app. But that's guessing.

It would've been slower to perceive without the trending app, from just watching the scale, without graphing or anything, I'm pretty sure. My brain isn't very good at seeing small statistical trends in a list of numbers. YMMV.

ETA: Clothes fit was slow, too - maybe slower than trending app. It will depend in part on patterns of where your individual body likes to store fat, where it loses it first vs. holds into it longer. Choose your clothing item accordingly.

I'm going to expand on the post above (too late to edit) with an example. I'm currently on what I believe to be a very slow loss trend since a few days after the holidays (might be half a pound a week, might be a little slower).

Here are my daily, first thing in the morning (after bathroom, before eating/drinking) weigh ins from the day before a major over-maintenance day, so starting from January 3 (in pounds, if that matters).

134.2
137.0
135.2
135.0
132.8
134.2
133.2
135.2
133.8
132.8
133.6
134.0
133.4
134.8
134.0
133.2
132.8
133.4
132.8
133.8
132.4
132.8
132.0
133.2

OK, am I losing, gaining or maintaining? There's no way I'd have an intuition just from looking at that. (Maybe you're better at it than I am.) Obviously, you can't just compare the starting weight with the ending weight, because weight jumps all over the place in between. Worse yet, if I weighed myself just a few times in there (rather than daily), I could get an even more distorted idea. Based on experience, I think I'm losing very slowly (based on what I've eaten and how active I've been).

Here's what Libra thinks, for this short chunk (which I don't consider definitive, just illustrative):

I can look around for an example where I was IMO losing slowly for a month-ish, but even Libra got confused for a while. (Libra's been updated with a new formula approach so I can't just recreate it, but I've posted it someplace here before.)

Lietchi

From my own experience, set at a rate of 0.5lbs per week, I once had a full month

Lullaby2021 wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

karahm78 wrote: »

There are really good apps for tracking the trend on daily weights… was a game changer for me! I use Happy Scale for iPhone, but Libra is similar for Android.

Yes, with this little to lose definitely use a weight trending app. You will get better results from it if you weigh daily so it has more data points to work with. (But don't weigh more than once per day.)

kshama2001 wrote: »

Lullaby2021 wrote: »

It's been 29 days everyone. Forgot to mention a lot of things to ya'll. At the time I was very stressed. Had a hard time giving more details to you all. Cause I believed truthfully I'm in defict. Energy got lower, Stress went up, irritated easily,More hungry, and hard to get a good sleep. For about two weeks. I've only been getting four hours all night. deficit remember being in one before. I lost weight with all the symptoms. Just this time it hasn't happened but I have all the symptoms. On another note Two pair of pants are loose now. I see it in the mirror. Where I look like size reduced. The scale just isn't moving. Which didn't make sense to me at first. I'm coming to understand it a bit more now. By reading into this post.

While water retention, which can happen from both stress and new exercise, can both mask fat loss on the scale, if you are visibly smaller, maybe try changing the batteries on your scale and see if something like a dumbell or a 5 pound bag of flour weighs accurately on your scale.

Lastly could exercise calories be a problem? Should I just eat 1450 straight (No exercise)? For anyone else who do the 0.5Lbs perweek. How soon did you see results. How long did it take for things to level out? Will I not see any changes on the scale, until months have passed?

No, you've lost weight (it's just not showing up on the scale yet) so exercise calories are not the problem.

If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

Yes' I'm download weight trending app. Am putting info in there. With exercise calories, I use my own. I always set it at 4 calories burned per minute. In 30 min of working out. I burn very low (120 calories) just to be on the safe side. Other peoples are inflated much. Walking on a treadmill for one hr at my size(138 pounds) as an example. It will not burn 1000 calories. It's more like 240-340 calories. Speed does matter but typically I may not burn much more. Then maybe cardio for 30 min at very high intense. It may only bottom out to 150- 180 or less calories at most.. Not the high 500 from other inputs.

For walking, I recommend this calculator:
https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs
Select 'net' energy instead of gross (gross includes your BMR).

AnnPT77

OK, in addition to comments above, here's a long chunk from Libra when I was losing very slowly, often slower than half a pound a month, but it varied a little. Look at July. The trend line looks like gaining for a while, maybe maintaining overall. In the earlier part of August, there's a bloop downward that's sort of catch-up. (In July, I restarted regular progressive strength training after quite a long hiatus. I tend to gain a couple of pounds or so of water weight when I do that, then hang onto it until I stop that training again. In August, the slow fat loss is starting to pop out from behind the clouds of water retention, IMO.)



The solid downhill-ish line in these graphs is Libra's statistically estimated trend. The little vertical lines connect daily weights to the trend line, so the ends of those little lines is my daily weight bouncing around pretty wildly . . . and even the trend bounces up and down, just more slowly. I'll admit that I varied my eating some, eating more than maintenance some days, less on others, which adds noise to the signal. Generally, you can tell where those higher intake days were, because the daily weight jumps up quite a lot that next morning, but drops again over the next few day to a week or so.

HoneyBadger302

I'm the same height as you, and my goal weight is very similar (I'll have to see as I trim the fat though as I am more focused on building strength than losing weight).
I started a new workout program on Jan 2, so this is day 26 (year long program), but I went from very few and sporadic workouts to a pretty regimented routine plus adding back in activities I haven't done in over a year (meaning, the muscle memory is there, the muscle conditioning is NOT).
I lost ~2 pounds the very first week. Since then, the scale has been more stagnant than not....however, I can see a slight difference in progress photos, and my pants are fitting better. My strength and cardio has increased a lot compared to when I started. All good things.
Just based on photos and my pants, I know I'm losing (pants just loosened up this week, despite NO noticeable change on the scale).
Changing workouts, body cycles, stress of other varieties, etc all affect how our body holds on to water in various ways. Add in the fact that as your fat cells lose the fat, they at first replenish it with water, which they eventually expel (hence the "woosh effect" you sometimes read about).
With such a small amount to lose, and changing up your workouts, diet, etc, it may take a couple months to really get a good idea on if you are trending in the right direction or may need to adjust.
Good news is that small daily changes will trump dramatic ones, and it will eventually balance out!

Lullaby2021

HoneyBadger302 wrote: »

Add in the fact that as your fat cells lose the fat, they at first replenish it with water, which they eventually expel (hence the "woosh effect" you sometimes read about).

Wow! I totally forgot about that.That could be happening to me too

ratchet2

The scale can lie. step on the scale. drink a glass of water, step on the scale again and will probably see a gain of 1lb.

Unless you need to be a specific weight class for something, measurements are more accurate. Most of the time when deciding to lose weight it is due to what we see in the mirror or how our clothes are fitting. Muscle weighs more, but looks leaner.

BartBVanBockstaele

ratchet2 wrote: »

The scale can lie. step on the scale. drink a glass of water, step on the scale again and will probably see a gain of 1lb.

Unless you need to be a specific weight class for something, measurements are more accurate. Most of the time when deciding to lose weight it is due to what we see in the mirror or how our clothes are fitting. Muscle weighs more, but looks leaner.

I do not say that the scale lies in that case. It merely does what scales do: measuring weight. They are not fat-measuring devices, they are weight-measuring devices. That said, the issue is a real one. Depending on your situation, one can try measuring one's weight several times a day, I do that just before eating. The advantage of this is that is easier to establish a relatively accurate weight range and also that it increases the probability if finding one's true lowest weight, which is the closest to one's body weight without fluids. That may not be an issue for everybody, but when one has a really erratic schedule, it will yield significantly more accurate results.
This is what I currently have:

And this is the fluctuation itself:

So, in my case, my weight has actually fluctuated up to 3.5 kg in a single day.

I did not actually start this for determining "water weight". I started doing that because my previous scale, an electronic one, was highly unreliable. I could weigh myself, go for some waste expulsion, way myself again and see that I had gained a kg or so. Such weight gain is a factual impossibility, so I used this method to estimate what my true weight loss was. I now have a mechanical medical scale that does not have those issues but it remains fun to do and it may help people who panick every time they see their weight is up. In combination with good food intake tracking it can help determine whether the weight gained is fat weight or food/water weight.

mtaratoot

ratchet2 wrote: »

The scale can lie. step on the scale. drink a glass of water, step on the scale again and will probably see a gain of 1lb.

Unless you need to be a specific weight class for something, measurements are more accurate. Most of the time when deciding to lose weight it is due to what we see in the mirror or how our clothes are fitting. Muscle weighs more, but looks leaner.

You've heard the aphorism, "A Pint's a Pound the World Around?" So yes, if you weigh yourself and then add one pint (pound) to the passageway that is actually outside your body but runs through it from your mouth to the other end, the scale will record that pound. If you were holding the glass when you got on the scale the first time, then drank the water, then got back on the scale without putting the glass down, it would not change. Take off your shoes? The scale will show less.

That is why most people suggest weighing at the same time every day (or every time you weigh) and to make that time the part of the day when you are eliminating most of those intra-day fluctuations like hydration levels. Even if you drink three pints of water before bed, aside from maybe getting worse sleep because you have to get up more often overnight, you're more likely to weigh the same first thing in the morning after you pee as another night when you don't drink three pints of water.

The scale measures all of you - fat, muscle, bone, food-in-transit, and any clothes you are wearing. If you have a lot of hair, you'll probably weigh more after your shower than before. The scale isn't lying. It just needs to be operated in a consistent manner. Otherwise it's operator error.