Stalled weight loss

claireeeyc

Hi everyone just looking for some advice, i am on week 5 of my diet, the past couple of days i have weighed myself and the scale hasn’t moved at all. I am calorie counting and in a deficit, i usually exercise for 1 hour a day but took a 3 day break from exercise. I am feeling quite bloated at the minute also, so i’m not sure if this is contributing. Any advice is appreciated

sollyn23l2

Congratulations on making it for 5 weeks! The first month, weight usually comes off easily. After that, you will now find that weight loss is not an every day thing, and you may only see your weight go down on the scale once a week, or even once over other week. And yes, bloating can certainly factor into it.

Lietchi

Bloated certainly can be a reason for a stall on the scale.
But the most important thing: weight loss isn't linear, it's perfectly normal to have stalls, certainly of 'a few days'. Our weight fluctuates daily for reasons other than changes in fat mass: water weight fluctuations (from stress, hormonal cycle, salt, exercise,...), fluctuations in food waste in our digestive tract.
The best advice I can give is:
- take a longer term view of your weight loss, at least 4 weeks/one menstrual cycle
- use a weight trending app like Libra or Happyscale, which will help you see past the daily fluctuations

springlering62

As @Lietchi says, all kinds of stuff can affect your weight, and you yourself are wise enough to recognize that you feel bloated, and that that’s not normal.

You’d think weight would plummet like an eight grade graph problem. Nope. Weight is truly the roller coaster you here about, so what you’ve got to look for is the downward trend.

For your amusement, here’s my measurements immediately before during and the week after an international flight. What affected me? Cabin pressure, airline food, pre-flight stress.



That’s an eight and a half pound difference in three days I think.

ninerbuff

weight loss isn't linear. Just keep doing what you're doing.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

penguinmama87

Water weight fluctuations (all that other stuff in your body besides fat) are normal. Give yourself time before you decide to make a change. I know I am eating at a deficit and my weight has been the exact same for the past three days. Is it annoying? Yes. But I know it will suddenly drop because that's just what I do, apparently. I still weigh myself every day because I like to observe the trend and that way I'm not disappointed if, say, at a weekly weigh-in there's (apparently) no progress.

Sometimes if the loss is small some scales will "helpfully" not change. You can reset it by placing a small weight on it (sometimes my 2yo likes to stand on the scale if she's awake with me and thinks I need company in the bathroom! ) then stand on it again.

If you're feeling bloated then you *know* it's just water. When the bloat goes away, the scale will drop. Just be patient.

cwolfman13

claireeeyc wrote: »

Hi everyone just looking for some advice, i am on week 5 of my diet, the past couple of days i have weighed myself and the scale hasn’t moved at all. I am calorie counting and in a deficit, i usually exercise for 1 hour a day but took a 3 day break from exercise. I am feeling quite bloated at the minute also, so i’m not sure if this is contributing. Any advice is appreciated

It's unrealistic to think you're going to lose weight daily or even weekly on the scale. Your body is comprised of roughly 55-65% water and that fluctuates all on it's own naturally and/or can be exacerbated by hormonal changes, increased amount of exercise or increased intensity, more sodium than normal in your diet, higher carb intake than normal, etc. You also always will have variable degrees of waste in your system.

For your first couple of weeks to a month of weight loss, you lose a lot of water weight so the process is more linear...it doesn't stay that way. This is what losing weight looks like plotted on a graph.

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Losing weight is about the overall trend (red line) over time.

AnnPT77

Three days? Mmm, not really a stall in fat loss, probably, if you've been relatively consistent in eating and activity. Random variation in water retention/digestive waste in transit, more likely, as others have said. Fat loss creeps along in the background, plays peek-a-boo on the scale with those other (more wildly fluctuating) factors.**

Three days is a snapshot of randomness. Several weeks, like 4-6 (whole menstrual periods if that applies to you) will tell a truer story.

Here's another case study. Here's a graph from my weight trending app of a big chunk of my weight loss, zoomed out to the big picture. That steep downhill red line is the trend. Kinda smooth, huh?



Here's a zoomed-in close-up of a pretty representative chunk from the last stage, leading into maintenance. The heavy downhill-ish line is still the trend. The dots at the end of the vertical lines are daily weigh-ins, first thing in the morning after bathroom, before eating/drinking. See how those jump all over the place? The whole course of loss, examined up close, was all jumpy like that, up and down over short periods, but overall down over multiple week periods. You might not even know loss was happening, looking at short periods of a few days to a week. But clearly, it was, from the long term line.



Maintenance is even jumpier. Be prepared for that - could happen to you!

BTW: I lost too fast for my own good for a while during the major loss phase. Don't do that. In my case, it was an accident (MFP underestimates my calorie needs by quite a lot, which is rare), but it had negative consequences. Because I've zoomed way out, it looks even faster than it was: That first pic is nearly a year.

** This is a good read, informative and (IMO) calming. Be sure to read the article linked in the OP of the thread.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

For now, hang in there. See what happens over 4-6 weeks. Good odds you're doing fine, perfectly normal weight fluctuations during continuing fat loss.