I was super positive and now defeated one month in - need some encouragement
magil_lil_nancy
Posts: 5 Member
Hi there - I'm new here. Just began my weight loss journey about a month ago. I was doing really well and had lost almost 4 pounds so far. I started doing 20 mins on the treadmill and was working my way up. My goal for the beginning of this week was to bump it from 45 mins to an hour and I was so proud of myself for accomplishing that goal easily the last 4 days. I was deflated, however, when I got on the scale today to realize that I gained 2 lbs, and it really hit me hard. I know it's only 2 lbs but I felt like I was on a really good roll with my diet and exercise and to see those 2 lbs added back on the scale feels like it was all for nothing. Is this something that happens in the beginning? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm constantly mindful of high protein/low carbs & fat when I eat now (which is completely different from my previous eating habits). I do find it hard to meet my calorie goal a lot of days (not on purpose) and I've read that that can actually slow my metabolism down - is this true? I was so motivated and positive till today, and I need some positive words if anyone else experienced this in the beginning. Thank you.
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Replies
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Did you eat 7,000 or so calories above your maintenance? That’s what it would take to gain 2 pounds of fat. And that wouldn’t happen overnight. It’s likely just water weight fluctuations from increased exercise. If you’re concerned with losing fat (which I’m assuming you’re here to do), water fluctuations are just a blip on the radar.5
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Under-eating can lower your metabolism a bit (slower hair and nail growth, less movement/fidgeting,...) but not to the point of gaining fat instead of losing fat.
The more likely culprits here is water retention.
Water retention from stress (by the way: under-eating=stress!), hormones, increased exercise, salt, air travel...
One very important thing to know is that fat loss is evaluated over a longer period of time, because it can easily be masked by short term water weight fluctuations and fluctuations in food waste in your digestive tract.
Weight loss is not linear, it's a constant up and down roller-coaster, with more downs than ups overall
Patience is a virtue!3 -
Yeah, just keep doing the next right thing - but don't eat UNDER your calorie goals. That leads to a binge/restrict cycle. Just eat up to your Goal, add a little extra for that exercise, (good job) and keep tracking.
Here is how myfitnesspal is set up, so eat more on Exercise days: https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-
Here's the ever-so-helpful article about water weight fluctuations (due to exercise, time of the month, salt, travel, changes in season/temperatures, etc.) https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/
...and here's the thread on myfitnesspal discussing it: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p12 -
Definitely not 7k calories over! I didn't think about water weight specifically, but that makes sense. I was definitely down this morning, but I'm not giving up. If anything, the more I think about it, the more determined it makes me (this is where my stubbornness can be beneficial lol). Thank you for the reminder.1
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@cmriverside So when my app adds a bunch more calories to my goal for the day after I exercise, that's actually the amount I should be trying to hit? That probably seems like a stupid question to the fitness buffs on here, but like I said, I'm completely new to this whole thing. I really want this so I want to do everything as right as possible. I just assumed that not eating over the initial calorie goal even after work out calories were added was the way you lost weight (I'm feeling more dumb as I type this out now haha).0
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magil_lil_nancy wrote: »@cmriverside So when my app adds a bunch more calories to my goal for the day after I exercise, that's actually the amount I should be trying to hit? That probably seems like a stupid question to the fitness buffs on here, but like I said, I'm completely new to this whole thing. I really want this so I want to do everything as right as possible. I just assumed that not eating over the initial calorie goal even after work out calories were added was the way you lost weight (I'm feeling more dumb as I type this out now haha).
Yes, that is how this site is set up. Read that link "How does myfitnesspal calculate...." that I linked above.
Your calorie Goal set by myfitnesspal includes a deficit equal to the weight loss rate you chose. BUT it does not account for purposeful exercise. Exercise must be added separately. Read that link, and the explanations in it.
You wouldn't put two gallons of gas in your car to drive 600 miles, right? Two gallons is fine for puttering up to the school...0 -
magil_lil_nancy wrote: »@cmriverside So when my app adds a bunch more calories to my goal for the day after I exercise, that's actually the amount I should be trying to hit? That probably seems like a stupid question to the fitness buffs on here, but like I said, I'm completely new to this whole thing. I really want this so I want to do everything as right as possible. I just assumed that not eating over the initial calorie goal even after work out calories were added was the way you lost weight (I'm feeling more dumb as I type this out now haha).
Nope, not eating your exercise calories means creating a steeper calorie deficit than intended
One caveat though: depending on how you log your exercise/where you are getting the calorie burns from, the number could be inflated. If you tell us what workouts you're doing and how many extra calories you're getting (and your personal stats), we might be able to tell you if it seems sensible.1 -
Do you have menstrual cycles? Many women gain water weight at ovulation as well as premenstrually, and have a subsequent loss afterwards. Because of this, compare yourself to the same point in your cycle as last month, rather than last week.
Use a weight trending app such as Happy Scale (iphone) or Libra (Android) and focus on the trend, not the individual weigh-ins.0 -
The only thing I'll add to the excellent posters above is to keep a weekly journal of your measurements. When you hit a plateau or a water weight jump it's always demoralizing. When you can pull out that tape measure and actually see the inches or centimeters lost it helps pull you up. Another thing to do is follow the Success threads. They give a boost when you need it. Good luck, just keep going and change things up as you need to.1
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As you will see from reading the numerous threads on the subject, MFP intends you to eat back your exercise calories. Since the numbers can be inflated (especially if taken from machines at the gym) many eat only a portion of those calories, half or 3/4. Try that for a month or 6 weeks and see if your rate of loss is as expected. If you are losing faster than intended, then eat more. If losing more slowly, then eat less. Determining exercise calories burned is an approximation and some of us burn more and some burn less than the average. It is a good idea to eat back at least some of the calories burned so you have energy for your workouts and to prevent excessive hunger that leads to binging.0
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Ok based on the values I input when I signed up, my initial calorie intake is 1804 calories. I usually burn about 330 calories in my hour long treadmill "hike". I synced my Samsung Health tracker to my fitnesspal app, so it logs the workout and daily steps and adjusts those calories afterwards. Right now, my only workout is power walking (4 mph) for an hour on my treadmill. Works up a sweat for sure, but I understand if some say this isn't enough. I probably need to do more. This, according to the fitnesspal app, was giving me around 350 calories extra when I was doing 45 mins on the treadmill and now it's giving me an extra 500 or so calories at an hour on the treadmill.
I also hadn't thought of my menstrual cycle affecting this as well (duh!). That makes sense.
I've read some about what diets are best to lose weight and it seemed to me that high protein was efficient. Is this correct or should I be doing something different?
Sorry for so many questions, everyone, but I truly appreciate all the feedback and kind words!0 -
Losing weight isn't linear...the human body is comprised of anywhere between 50-60% water and that composition is going to fluctuate all on its on and due to other things you may or may not be doing (changes in diet composition, salt, increase or reduced exercise, etc). You also have variable degrees of human waste in your system at any one time. The human body is a complex biological organism, not a machine.
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Welcome to your wellness journey! I've been on this road a little longer, so happy to answer questions.
Something I'm reading in your posts that I'd like to address right up front is the idea of "maybe I should be doing more". In my experience, the sooner you can shed the weight of expectations, yours and those of others, the easier it will be to shed your physical weight. If 20 minutes a day is what you can give to exercise THAT'S ENOUGH! Could you spend more time and possibly lose weight faster? Yep. But if it's time you don't feel you can afford, you won't stick to it, or the stress of it may make it harder to resist food temptations and then you'll probably lose less weight than you would if you just accepted what is reasonable for you.
I definitely agree with all that has been stated here on where those 2 lbs could have come from. My primary culprits are menstral cycle, sodium, and carb related. All of those can show up on the scale for a day or two (or 4 or 6 for menstral related) then magically disappear. The way I deal with the variability is to weigh daily so I start to get used to those fluctuations, having a long list of "why I'm doing this", and celebrate my non-scale victories (NSV) with more enthusiasm than the scale victories. Here are some of the things I track in addition to weight:- Measurements - Neck, chest, upper arm, waist, hips, thigh, calf
- V02 Max - measured by my Apple Watch health app as an indicator of cardio fitness
- Average resting heart rate and average steps per day - also measured on my Apple Watch fitness app
- Blood work - I highly recommend getting A1C and cholesterol levels checked, if you haven't already. It was depressing, but kept me motivated the first few months because I was determined (like you). My repeat bloodwork 2 months in had drastic improvements, but A1C was still in the pre-diabetic range. I saw my doctor about a month after those results and she ran my A1C while I was there and it had dropped another 0.5, putting me in the normal range. I actually reminded my scale of that on a couple days when my weight wasn't reflecting all the progress I had made.
- "I couldn't have done this before"s. Whether it be finishing a mile in under 11 minutes, or getting into a yoga pose that was impossible a month ago, or still having energy to run around the house with my dogs after a long day, I try to pause in those moments and recognize the beauty that all my hard work has opened up to me.
So please know that trusting the process is part of what you learn along this path. I'm getting close to 50lbs down since April of this year. I've learned a lot about what keeps me mentally, emotionally, and physically satisfied along the way. My advice is to only make drastic changes that you feel are sustainable long term (giving up sugary sodas was one of mine) and ease into the other changes, kind of like what you're doing with adding minutes of exercise gradually. Recognize the things that probably shouldn't change (at least for now) and know that's okay. For me, dinner with family has changed the least. I may make myself brown rice while the rest of the family eats white rice, but mostly it's the portion sizes I serve myself that have shifted there.
Another thing that has been helpful for me is looking at my nutrition as "a change in diet" rather than "a diet". I am looking to find a way of eating that I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. That means trying some things (Egg-life wraps) that I don't repeat, no matter how much protein they could contribute because I don't like them. It also means giving some things time to "grow on me" or for my body to adjust to - I've gotten used to tea and coffee without sugar and the gassiness I had the first week or so after consistently hitting my fiber goal eventually subsided.
Keep up the great work and keep the questions coming. We've all been where you are at some point in time and consider it an honor to help someone the way others helped us.2 -
magil_lil_nancy wrote: »Ok based on the values I input when I signed up, my initial calorie intake is 1804 calories. I usually burn about 330 calories in my hour long treadmill "hike". I synced my Samsung Health tracker to my fitnesspal app, so it logs the workout and daily steps and adjusts those calories afterwards. Right now, my only workout is power walking (4 mph) for an hour on my treadmill. Works up a sweat for sure, but I understand if some say this isn't enough. I probably need to do more. This, according to the fitnesspal app, was giving me around 350 calories extra when I was doing 45 mins on the treadmill and now it's giving me an extra 500 or so calories at an hour on the treadmill.
I also hadn't thought of my menstrual cycle affecting this as well (duh!). That makes sense.
I've read some about what diets are best to lose weight and it seemed to me that high protein was efficient. Is this correct or should I be doing something different?
Sorry for so many questions, everyone, but I truly appreciate all the feedback and kind words!
When you sync a tracker, what that sync is trying to do is reconcile the amount MFP thinks you'd burn (based on your demographics and activity level setting) with the amount that the tracker estimates you burn, but keep your calorie deficit the same so you get the weight loss rate you asked for in your MFP profile. (It's all statistical estimates, so it can vary somewhat in reality.)
Therefore, if you wear your device all day, and get a 500 calorie adjustment, that can be some combination of exercise calories and daily life movement (that may in itself be more than MFP's estimates, even before exercise).
It's potentially a little bit hard to explain a specific case, because each tracker gives different info on the tracker side. Sometimes the tracker displays exercise calories as gross calories (includes the calories you'd burn in that time period even if not exercising). The adjustment, if it works properly for your tracker, will net that out so it's regular life calories are not double counted.
On a quick re-read, I didn't see where you told us your current weight, and that matters for estimating something like treadmill walking (because you're moving your body through space). Just for comparison purpose, for me at 130 pounds (in maintenance), a relatively conservative net calorie estimate for walking for an hour at 4mph would be 141 calories. (Comes from https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs with the "energy" box set to "net".)
To the thing I bolded: Please don't feel that way. Exercise is for health, primarily (and for fun, too, in my world). It's completely optional for weight loss, mostly just lets us eat some more calories while getting the same loss rate, which is a nice thing. (I'd always encourage exercise, and it sounds like you're doing great!)
For fitness progress, what we want is just a manageable challenge to current capabilities. As we get fitter, we can tweak something to keep just that bit of challenge going (could be more duration, frequency; faster pace or higher intensity; different exercise type). The challenge drives fitness progress.
For weight loss, over-exercising (too much for current fitness level) can actually be counter-productive. The exercise should leave us energized for the rest of our day (after maybe a few minutes of "whew" right after the workout). If we're exhausted instead, that can bleed calorie burn out of the rest of our day (because we rest more, move less), effectively cancelling out some of the exercise calories.
As far as high protein, yes, generally that's good. That doesn't necessarily mean "eat the maximum amount of protein you can", because other nutrition is important, too, right? We need some fats. Like protein, they're an "essential nutrient" in the sense that our bodies can't manufacture some of their subcomponents out of any other nutrient, so we need to eat some. Some people also find that they need a certain level of carb intake to have their best energy level (though some others find carbs to be appetite-increasing, so carb level can be flexible). Finding the best balance is individual.
Protein does require slightly higher calories to be metabolized (higher thermic effect of food or TEF), but that's not really a reason to over-emphasize protein at the expense of well-rounded nutrition.
There's an evidence based protein "calculator", and its explanatory guide with research links, here:
https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/
Note that the guide says that someone who's substantially overweight can use something more like goal weight as an input, rather than current weight.
Best wishes!2 -
Hiiii
Don’t be disappointed
First week I lost 3lb
Second week I lost 2lb
3rd week I lost nothing…my weight oen day was 11 6 and then it went up to 11 8
2 days later I weighed again and it was back down to 11 6
Keep one day a week, mine is a Sunday to do an official weigh in day…
It’s most likely water weight or if you ate something salty the day before say like gammon, it can have that affect
DO NOT over eat… keep to the calories they give you just keep going…
I felt like sod this I’m gunna have some chocolate, cheesecake, crisps etc etc
Don’t do it!! Don’t let your mind play tricks on you
Just keep swimming as dory would say xx 2 -
THANK YOU EVERYONE!! Gosh, I'm glad I came to this forum because you've definitely all helped me and taught me new things already.
For reference since someone asked, I am currently at 168 lbs. I've mostly kept a pretty positive attitude about the food I eat now as being a good change in my diet rather than a diet in itself. I've done well with finding a lot of healthy meals that actually taste really good, and I've even noticed on my cheat day that when I eat something not so healthy (say a corn dog at our local festival recently), it's clear I've been on this healthy journey long enough already that my body isn't very fond of those foods anymore. I'd say that's a good thing!
On another positive note, I have noticed a significant change in my energy level. I no longer get winded and I feel so much better when I get off the treadmill. Sweaty to say the least, but energized and feeling really good mentally about myself. I can honestly say, regardless of what the scale says, I am on my way to the best shape of my life and am treating my body the way I always should've been.
My doctor recently started doing annual diabetes/cholesterol/etc bloodwork since I'm nearing 40 yrs old. Last year this time, my cholesterol was slightly high, so I'm curious to see if my recent work has helped that at all.
I truly appreciate how kind you've all been and how eager you've been to answering my amateur questions. Happy to be a part of this community and I'm not giving up! If anything, yesterday's deflated feelings only make me more determined to see different and better results. Now I understand what it means when they say that exercise releases endorphins. I feel better about myself than I ever have in the past and motivated. Love to you all!2 -
I know the feeling been there myself and this is one of the reasons I go back and forth with how often to weigh myself; seeing pros and cons to weekly weigh ins.
Don't give up on yourself and find some other positive things to rewire your thinking when this happens. You said you're making progress on the treadmill and that's something to focus on rather than the scale. How are your clothes fitting? Is it just water weight? Could it be muscle gains? So many possibilities.
Hang in there and don't give up!!!!1 -
magil_lil_nancy wrote: »THANK YOU EVERYONE!! Gosh, I'm glad I came to this forum because you've definitely all helped me and taught me new things already.
For reference since someone asked, I am currently at 168 lbs. I've mostly kept a pretty positive attitude about the food I eat now as being a good change in my diet rather than a diet in itself. I've done well with finding a lot of healthy meals that actually taste really good, and I've even noticed on my cheat day that when I eat something not so healthy (say a corn dog at our local festival recently), it's clear I've been on this healthy journey long enough already that my body isn't very fond of those foods anymore. I'd say that's a good thing!
On another positive note, I have noticed a significant change in my energy level. I no longer get winded and I feel so much better when I get off the treadmill. Sweaty to say the least, but energized and feeling really good mentally about myself. I can honestly say, regardless of what the scale says, I am on my way to the best shape of my life and am treating my body the way I always should've been.
My doctor recently started doing annual diabetes/cholesterol/etc bloodwork since I'm nearing 40 yrs old. Last year this time, my cholesterol was slightly high, so I'm curious to see if my recent work has helped that at all.
I truly appreciate how kind you've all been and how eager you've been to answering my amateur questions. Happy to be a part of this community and I'm not giving up! If anything, yesterday's deflated feelings only make me more determined to see different and better results. Now I understand what it means when they say that exercise releases endorphins. I feel better about myself than I ever have in the past and motivated. Love to you all!
@magil_lil_nancy, it sincerely makes me very happy (even as a total stranger) to read a post like this one!
I found the Community here a huge help when I was losing weight (and since, in maintenance), too.
Best wishes for continuing excellent progress!1
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