Can anyone help again? Not losing any weight!

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.