I don't know what I am doing wrong

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annieburgamy
annieburgamy Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I started my weight loss journey October 5. I am following what my dietician and weight loss doctor's "orders". I have dropped my calories down to 1200 and log everything. I exercise every day. At first, I was losing 1 or 2 pounds a week. I had actually dropped 20 pounds then about a week or week and a half ago I get on the scale and had gained 11 pounds, checked today and lost 4 pounds. I do take measurements not just weigh myself. I decided to only weigh and do measurements once a month, but I am so down on myself and don't understand why I gained so much when I am NOT overeating, counting my calories, but I am sometimes after exercising seeing I still have a lot of calories left to use. Am I just at a stall or am I doing something wrong?
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  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 2,923 Member
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    If you gained 11 pounds overnight, I would first suspect your scales. Did you move them? Use different scales?
    I once had a 5 lb change overnight, kept moving my scale, trying to figure it out. I found a cherry pit lodged under my scales, removed it, and all was well.
    My second thought is clothing, time of day, length of time since eating, drinking. It's more accurate to weigh at the same time under the same conditions. Many of us weigh first thing in the morning, after bathroom, before eating and drinking.
    How long since you started? How long since you visited your Doctor and dietician?
    If you log in MFP, you'll learn how to manage your food yourself and will be less dependent on your Doctor and dietician in the future. You can work WITH them better.
  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,116 Member
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    If you have a digital scale, replacing the batteries might be a good idea. Many of them with replaceable batteries will give inconsistent readings when the batteries get low.
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 13,231 Member
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    If you are only getting on the scale from time to time, you miss all the subtleties of fluctuations. Weight loss isn't linear. In the last couple weeks, I've had days where I "gain" five pounds in one day and days when I "lose" three pounds another day. Crazy, right?

    Check out these charts for a graphical explanation.

    fluctuations.jpg

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    What I like to do is weigh every day and log the number in a spreadsheet. Actually I have two. One of them provides a ten-day moving average, and the other uses a slightly more sophisticated model that gives more importance to today's weight than the weight ten days ago. It can help smooth out the fluctuations, and I think it gives a better picture of what's really going on. There are online tools that can do this for you, and somewhere I have a Google Sheet I can share that you can use for your own data. I think it even has graphing features built in. For a deeper explanation of how it works, check out The Hackers Diet - especially the pages on Signal & Noise.

    Of course it is also very possible your scale is not working properly. Animal hair under the rubber feet can create errors. Not having it on a hard flat surface can for sure. If it's an old analog scale with a spring, there's a number of things that can affect its accuracy including rust and spring age. As mentioned above, old batteries in digital scales can cause funny numbers too.

    I should also ask about your food logging. How do you measure your food to make sure you're sticking to your budget? Are you using a scale and checking to make sure the entries in MFP are correct? Using measuring cups and spoons are notoriously inaccurate for a number of reasons. Sometimes they aren't a lot better than guessing.

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    As a mostly unrelated side note, I'm curious why your doctor and nutritionist put you on that specific calorie budget.

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