I would love some solid encouragement

tryamiss0c7873

Hello!
I am 34, 5’4”, have a 3 year old, weigh 141lbs, have a 30.25” waist and 23.5”ish thighs.
My weight loss journey has been slowww. My main goal is really to be the strongest, healthiest version of myself, and lose some extra fat stores.
I am wanting to have long lasting and sustainable change, so I have been working more on nutrition with a slight calorie deficit and exercising through weight training and cardio 3-5 days a week.
I have had multiple setbacks, including Diastasis and muscle atrophy in the muscles around my hips and my glutes/hamstrings (and dealing with the subsequent pain), but I have continued to rehab them and push through, even scaling back my weight lifting to work on proper form.
Months in and I weigh more than I ever have, and the process is really grueling and slow. My weight fluctuates…my husband says he notices a difference in how toned I am in places, but I just need some solid encouragement to keep going.
I wouldn’t say progress pics show much right now because angles are deceiving. I do measure a bit smaller but I can’t tell if I’m just not reading accurately.

I am 2-3 months into this journey and am so discouraged by not seeing solid results after so much discipline. How do I survive this dark period?

AnnPT77

Unfortunately, I think the heart of the answer may be to trust the process, and apply patient persistence. I know that's not satisfying.

When I was still overweight/obese, I started being regularly active after full-bore cancer treatment in my mid-40s. Though I had to work up to a full schedule (6 days most weeks) because I started so physically depleted, that included routine progessive weight lifting plus one of the strength-y-er, leg-focused types of forms of cardio (on water and machine rowing, which is around 60% leg-powered).

I wasn't committed to losing weight then, but eventually my legs, especially thighs, became noticeably slimmer at constant weight. That was so long ago that I can't remember how long it took, but for significant slimming it was - I'm sorry to say - substantially longer than 2-3 months. I'm not saying there was zero improvement at 2-3 months, just saying it wasn't big improvement.

Genetics matter, and I'm obviously not you genetically (don't know if that's plus or minus between us). You're over a decade younger, which statistics suggest is likely to make you improve faster than I could.

Realistically, if you're currently losing weight, that will likely tend to slow muscle gain compared to weight gaining (best odds for muscle gain) or maintaining (medium odds). I saw that you said you're heavier than ever, but also trying to lose slowly, so I wasn't totally sure what timelines we were talking about.

If you think about it, fat loss and muscle gain are goals somewhat in tension with one another. When we pursue both at once, we're trying to lose one tissue type (fat) at the same time as gaining another (muscle).

That's not totally impossible, but it's a bit of a balancing act. Losing more slowly will tend to increase chances (or rate) of muscle gain. Besides, slow weight loss is probably a good plan for other reasons with as little excess weight as you likely have at BMI 24.2 (within the upper end of normal BMI).

I know BMI is controversial, and not definitive for individuals. But I'm just using it here to guess at probabilities, not to criticize you in any way. I can understand why you feel frustrated!

Both may be great, but you didn't say much about 2 other very important factors: Nutrition and nature of your strength program. Because of that, I'm going to say a couple of things that will be irrelevant if both are on point.

Overall well-rounded nutrition is vital for muscle gain, especially but not exclusively ample high-quality protein. Many omnivores get enough protein, but not all do; and IME women seem a little more likely to lowball it.

IMO, you would want to be getting at minimum 0.6-0.8g protein per day per pound of healthy goal weight, or 0.8-1g per pound of lean body mass (but most people don't have accurate estimates of LBM). A little more than that is OK, as long as a person doesn't have existing kidney disease or similar.

The other parts of nutrition matter, too.

On the program front, the ideal is a well- designed progressive lifting program with adequate recovery built in. That's a very generalized comment.

If you said some more specific things about your strength program and goals, and posted that in the Exercise and Fitness section of the MFP Community asking for suggestions, that might get you some useful ideas from some of the folks with more extensive strength training experience and education.

When I say "more specific things about your strength program", I'm talking about which lifts, for what reps/sets for each, on what schedule across a week. Knowledgeable folks might have additional follow-up questions.

Myself, I really only know generalities and personal specifics about strength training that focuses on my sport (rowing) plus some personal physical issues and limitations. Weight training is not really my wheelhouse . . . rowing is.

I'm sure this doesn't answer your need for encouragement. I don't really know how to do that. I feel like reaching any big goal is more about learning essential elements of the process, then doggedly working on that process consistently and persistently long enough to yield the desired result, learning more and fine-tuning practices all along the way.

Commitment is key. Instant gratification may happen when eating an especially yummy cupcake, but probably not when getting an education, building a career, reaching solid financial status, raising kids to successful adulthood, learning to play a musical instrument well, etc. . . . or becoming truly fit. Those things involve trusting a process, and chipping away in small steps over a looong time period. (Sorry!)

There can be some feel-good milestones along the way, though, sure: It's just hard to predict what and when.

The one thing I'd say, as a 69 y/o woman who got reasonably fit gradually after mid 40s, and finally committed to weight loss and succeeded at 59-60, is that achieving both those things individually made huge quality of life improvements for me, and the combination of both is absolutely gangbusters. I can do some things now easily that were hard, maybe even impossible, for me at 45. Big deal, right?

That you're on an improvement path at 34 is even better, as long as you stay the course. Fabulous example for your kids (if you have some) and others around you, too.

Best wishes: The effort is worth it.