Is this normal?

Cats_fitness_journey
Cats_fitness_journey Posts: 49 Member
edited November 2023 in Health and Weight Loss
I’ve been noticing some weird patterns in my weight loss and I don’t know if it’s normal. I’m currently on day 56 of my weight loss journey, I’m 8 pounds down. My goal is to lose 20-25 ish lbs. For reference, I’m 20 year old female, start weight was about 145 lbs and my goal weight is 120-125 lbs. I’m eating around 1700 calories a day and I do weight training 4-6 times a week. I weigh myself every morning after I use the bathroom, it’s part of my routine. so this last month I haven’t made much progress on the scale, I keep losing weight in the beginning of the week (around 3 pounds) and then end up gaining it back by Sunday. This has happened for 3 weeks now. It’s like a cycle, 🔁. I don’t know if this is normal or not but I think it has to do with my bowel movement or simply body recomposition. I hope I’m gaining muscle, I’m still relatively new to the gym I’ve been going consistently for a little over a year now. So maybe it’s still newbie gains! I can see a clear difference in the mirror in terms of body fat and muscle definition. In this second month I only lost 1 pound!! It’s really frustrating, I don’t know if I’m actually making progress. The only thing I’m noticing is more vascularity on my hands and arms.

For reference, below is a before and after of my 1st month of losing weight.

dptzvbwjd6ci.jpeg

Replies

  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,957 Member
    Wow! You do have amazing arms!

    With regards to funky weightloss patterns: Before I mostly worked in home office I'd gain weight across the week, reaching my highest point on Saturday morning. Then weight would go down again on Sunday and Monday. Rinse and repeat. I guess my body just stored a bit more water due to desk work. My sitting position at home is a lot more active and creative.

    With regards to weightloss: Have you rerun the guided setup? Maybe your calorie goal has gone down a bit due to being lighter overall. Sometimes it doesn't update automatically. Could also just be water retention or poop weight. Do you use a foodscale? Maybe there's still room to tighten up your logging.
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,767 Member
    It sounds like you're just gaining and dropping water weight over the week. Honestly, losing 20 pounds could be a real struggle, because it doesn't look like you have much fat on you... mostly muscle.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    How tall are you?

    Your cycling over the week may be related to your workout schedule.

    With your lack of fat, weight loss is going to be really slow, especially since you seem to be the rare woman who is actually gaining muscle. You may actually want to considering just recomping, and have your goal be an aesthetic, rather than a number on a scale. For what it's worth, I think you look great now :smiley:

    Either way, use a weight trending app such as Happy Scale (iphone) or Libra (Android) and focus on the trend, not the individual weigh-ins. I have Happy Scale and use the “Moving Average” as my official weight.

    @ninerbuff, thoughts?

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