I don’t know if I can lose the weight I want to! Nothing is working!!!
GiftedHealth
Posts: 253 Member
I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
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Replies
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I’m in the same boat. I’ve drastically cut carbs, I’ve stopped all alcohol. I exercise at a dance class 3x a week, I track all my food, and I keep gaining and losing the same 3 pounds. I’ve been at this for over a month. I’m just about ready to go crazy0
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What's a little bit of a deficit? Are you weighing and measuring your food? Checking your diary entries?
All calorie measurements, those in food, in exercise burns, that we use each day, are estimates, approximations. It doesn't take much of a variation to eat away a small deficit.2 -
You are not in a consistent weekly caloric deficit.
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GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
How long have you been maintaining your deficit without losing? If it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks, then you need to make sure you're tracking accurately and increase your deficit.2 -
I’ve been tracking my calories for 38 days. Even though I still go out for what I should be eating on the app it’s still under what I was binging on previously. So I still should be losing a little bit of weight. I haven’t actually weighed myself recently, but my pants or should I say my abdomen is just Not slimming down.sollyn23l2 wrote: »GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
How long have you been maintaining your deficit without losing? If it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks, then you need to make sure you're tracking accurately and increase your deficit.
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GiftedHealth wrote: »
I’ve been tracking my calories for 38 days. Even though I still go out for what I should be eating on the app it’s still under what I was binging on previously. So I still should be losing a little bit of weight. I haven’t actually weighed myself recently, but my pants or should I say my abdomen is just Not slimming down.sollyn23l2 wrote: »GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
How long have you been maintaining your deficit without losing? If it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks, then you need to make sure you're tracking accurately and increase your deficit.
Maintenance is a range, not a targeted number. It sounds like you're still eating in that range.
Are you accurately weighing and measuring your food? Tracking everything?
In 38 days, I'm not surprised that you're not seeing or feeling changes in clothes or by sight, it's only been 38 days, and from what you've said you only have a small deficit. Small deficit = slow results.
I'll be honest, the angst in your initial post is at odds with the time you've been at it, and the small deficit you're going for. It feels a little bit like you're throwing your hands up, when really you've been pursuing changes for all of a few weeks, and the changes you've made are not drastic. I'm not saying you need to make drastic changes, but you either get results slowly with smaller change, or fat with drastic change, and it sounds like you're getting frustrated having slow results from small change, and that's what you've got to expect.
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GiftedHealth wrote: »
I’ve been tracking my calories for 38 days. Even though I still go out for what I should be eating on the app it’s still under what I was binging on previously. So I still should be losing a little bit of weight. I haven’t actually weighed myself recently, but my pants or should I say my abdomen is just Not slimming down.sollyn23l2 wrote: »GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
How long have you been maintaining your deficit without losing? If it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks, then you need to make sure you're tracking accurately and increase your deficit.
Just because the app says X calorie goal is Y deficit doesn't make it true. The calorie goal is an estimate, basically the statistical average for superficially similar people. We're each individuals. Most of us are close to average, because that's how statistics work . . . but a smaller number of people can be noticeably off average, high or low; and a rare few may be surprisingly far off average, still in either direction.
I'm in my 60s, too - 69 in fact, female. MFP's starting guess for me is off by 25-30%, compared to 9+ years of pretty meticulous calorie logging data, and so is my good brand/model fitness tracker. They're not wrong, it's that I'm somehow not average. That's rare, but it can happen.
Sticking close to the MFP or other starting estimate for 4-6 weeks gives us a much better estimate of our actual calorie needs, and we may need to adjust our goal based on that better estimate, which is what I did. At 38 days in, if you've consistently stuck close to your starting goal, like +/- 50 calories on average, you have enough data to make that adjustment. If zero loss, that would be a downward adjustment by 250 calories per day for each half pound of loss per week.
I'm not sure I'm reading you accurately, though. You say "I go out for what I should be eating on the app" but "still under what I was binging on previously". Are you saying you're commonly exceeding the calorie goal the app gave you? If so, you're wiping out some or possibly all of your expected calorie deficit. Unfortunately, just eating less than before doesn't result in weight loss. Eating less than we burn results in weight loss.
I know it's not the best thought to hear, but I agree with others, whatever calorie level you've actually been eating on average for the past 38 days, high odds that it's your current maintenance calories, or close to it. If that's true, lowering your calorie intake is what it's going to take.
If you think otherwise, have you talked with your doctor lately? I hate to say it, but there are some health conditions - some of them serious - that can add water weight or other forms of weight gain, and if you've measured and your central body is truly getting bigger, that could also be the effect of a health condition. I don't want to worry you. I want you to thrive. That means both reaching your goal weight, and making sure that any relevant health conditions you might have get the necessary treatment.
Wishing you a path to success, sincerely!
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GiftedHealth wrote: »
I’ve been tracking my calories for 38 days. Even though I still go out for what I should be eating on the app it’s still under what I was binging on previously. So I still should be losing a little bit of weight. I haven’t actually weighed myself recently, but my pants or should I say my abdomen is just Not slimming down.sollyn23l2 wrote: »GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
How long have you been maintaining your deficit without losing? If it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks, then you need to make sure you're tracking accurately and increase your deficit.
I'm assuming "go out for what I should be eating" is a typo or autocorrect error for "go over what I should be eating." Just eating less than previous binge calories is no guarantee that you're in a deficit. You need to be under maintenance, and after 38 days (and not being of an age where you would have reproductive hormone cycles to worry about, if female), if you haven't seen any loss, it's very likely you're not under maintenance (there are other possibilities, like water retention due to increased exercise, injuries, illness, or surgical recovery, but at 38 days, that seems less likely than the fact that you're simply not in a deficit).
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Thanks for all the replies. I think I was either over consuming calories or in maintenance mode. Very rarely am I at a caloric deficit.1
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GiftedHealth wrote: »
I’ve been tracking my calories for 38 days. Even though I still go out for what I should be eating on the app it’s still under what I was binging on previously. So I still should be losing a little bit of weight. I haven’t actually weighed myself recently, but my pants or should I say my abdomen is just Not slimming down.sollyn23l2 wrote: »GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
How long have you been maintaining your deficit without losing? If it's been more than 2 or 3 weeks, then you need to make sure you're tracking accurately and increase your deficit.
Just because the app says X calorie goal is Y deficit doesn't make it true. The calorie goal is an estimate, basically the statistical average for superficially similar people. We're each individuals. Most of us are close to average, because that's how statistics work . . . but a smaller number of people can be noticeably off average, high or low; and a rare few may be surprisingly far off average, still in either direction.
I'm in my 60s, too - 69 in fact, female. MFP's starting guess for me is off by 25-30%, compared to 9+ years of pretty meticulous calorie logging data, and so is my good brand/model fitness tracker. They're not wrong, it's that I'm somehow not average. That's rare, but it can happen.
Sticking close to the MFP or other starting estimate for 4-6 weeks gives us a much better estimate of our actual calorie needs, and we may need to adjust our goal based on that better estimate, which is what I did. At 38 days in, if you've consistently stuck close to your starting goal, like +/- 50 calories on average, you have enough data to make that adjustment. If zero loss, that would be a downward adjustment by 250 calories per day for each half pound of loss per week.
I'm not sure I'm reading you accurately, though. You say "I go out for what I should be eating on the app" but "still under what I was binging on previously". Are you saying you're commonly exceeding the calorie goal the app gave you? If so, you're wiping out some or possibly all of your expected calorie deficit. Unfortunately, just eating less than before doesn't result in weight loss. Eating less than we burn results in weight loss.
I know it's not the best thought to hear, but I agree with others, whatever calorie level you've actually been eating on average for the past 38 days, high odds that it's your current maintenance calories, or close to it. If that's true, lowering your calorie intake is what it's going to take.
If you think otherwise, have you talked with your doctor lately? I hate to say it, but there are some health conditions - some of them serious - that can add water weight or other forms of weight gain, and if you've measured and your central body is truly getting bigger, that could also be the effect of a health condition. I don't want to worry you. I want you to thrive. That means both reaching your goal weight, and making sure that any relevant health conditions you might have get the necessary treatment.
Wishing you a path to success, sincerely!
This! It took me a long time to figure out that my true maintenance is about 1700 cals. MFP didn’t just spit the number out for me. I also had to get really good and consistent at using that food scale. For bananas, for cheese, for hummus. I add calories for olive oil, etc. Its a lot of work but when consistent becomes second nature.
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GiftedHealth wrote: »I’m so angry and disgusted. I really wanna lose 30 pounds. I’m in my 60s. Even though I’m eating at a little bit of a deficit, my fat’s not coming off. In fact, my guts is getting bigger. I am so disgusted with myself. I don’t know what it’s gonna take.
Give up two things to help yourself make a difference. 1. Stop eating all processed foods. 2. Don't eat any foods with high fructose corn syrup found in a lot of foods. Really want a lot of help buy the book slim for life by Jillian Michaels for a little more than 5 from thrift books1 -
No it is not heccesary to give up all processed foods nor all foods with any high fructose corn syrup.
It is neccesary to be in a calorie deficit and,, if using MFP, to account as accurately as possible for all foods you eat
( yes I know there are people, me included, who did not account very accurately- but if one is struggling to lose weight, logging accurately and then knowing where to tweak, is neccesary. )1 -
You should also look into building muscle. if you lose muscle weight you can still see the scale do down but the fat is still there.0
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