Not losing weight?!

bethyruthrz

So back in January I lost a stone calorie counting (1600 a day), I managed to keep 10lbs off and have started again but can't seem to lose anything and only lost in the first week!? I'm week 3 now... I'm really having to keep positive and keep going but it's so hard. I've now lowered my calories to 1400 in the hope I see a difference. I'm currently 12 stone 13lbs, 5ft 4.

AnnPT77

If you lost at a good pace on 1600 calories before, I'd expect the same to happen now.

A common pattern is to lose in the first week, maybe part of that loss being reduced water retention, then the body rebalances water retention and the scale appears to stall. That pattern can be even more likely if you're a woman who has menstrual cycles, and the first week happened to hit one of the monthly low stages for hormonal water retention, then the water weight creeps up.

Any increase in water retention will mask fat loss on the scale temporarily. Even fast fat loss is only a few ounces a day, small fraction of a pound. Water weight fluctuations are often multiple pounds of change from one day to the next, and differences in food waste still in the digestive tract (on their way to the exit) also can be more than that few ounes of "fast" daily fat loss.

That means that over a few days, up to a month, occasionally even more, the body weight scale can be a lying liar that lies.

Personally, I don't suggest adjusting calorie goal until a person has at least 4-6 weeks of experience data, to average and see average loss rate. (If the person has monthly cycles, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles.)

If a person cuts calories every time there's a short stall, they can paint themselves into a bad corner. Too low calories can increase health risks, make us fatigued/weak, maybe have thinning hair/brittle nails a few weeks down the road when that too-low calories comes home to roost, not to mention making the whole process too hard to stick with.

There are lots of reasons water retention may increase, and distort scale results. In case you haven't already seen it, this thread here (especially the article linked in the first post) explain a lot of this stuff, in a way I found reassuring when I was starting out:

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

Water weight shifts are part of how a healthy body stays healthy. They know what they're doing. It's not a good plan to meddle with that. What is a good plan? Try to understand, expect, accept it.

I'd say hang in there for a bit at 1600, if 1600 gave you a good pace of loss for that first 10 pounds. Give it some time before cutting more.

At the right calorie level, weight will drop on average over 4-6 weeks or so, even though it can seem to stall or even increase for shorter time periods along the way.

Best wishes!

tuckahoe88

Wise words from Ann, as always 🙂
And if you're not already doing so, maybe consider using a weight trending app (Libra for Android or Happy Scale for iOS) because body weight changes can be very subtle. Best of luck!