Feeling defeated..

meachemcrystal795 · February 24

I’ve been working out at home every other day 15-20 minutes resistance band strength training. I have a 4 & 5 yr old so I’m always on my toes, cleaning & playing with them. I’ve been within my calorie goal almost every day for 2 weeks. I’ve been in the fitness mindset since January 1st. I went to the doctor today & according to their scales I weighed more than I thought..2lbs less then when I was 9 months pregnant. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Lietchi · February 24

Your not giving us a huge amount of information.

Being in the fitness mindset means what precisely?
Within your calorie goal means what? How many calories? Are you weighing your food and choosing the food database entries carefully?
What are your personal stats?

As for the past 2 weeks: that's a very short time, too short to evaluate your progress. Weight fluctuates naturally from all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with fat loss (water weight, food waste in your digestive tract). Resistance training is notorious for causing water retention (for muscle repair) masking fat loss on the scale. And then there's stress, menstrual cycle, the weather... which can cause weight fluctuations.
So I would recommend sticking with it at least one full menstrual cycle.

I will also say: those resistance band workouts are great for health, but not burning a lot of calories, so beware if not overestimating the impact of that exercise on what you can eat.

Alatariel75 · February 24

In addition to the above, you haven't actually said whether you lost weight in the last few weeks, only that you weighed more than you thought at the doctor - presuming you were dressed, maybe with shoes (or not) having eaten, or drunk liquid that day... Do you have a comparison of weight from any time in the last few weeks from the same scale, at the same time of day, wearing the same clothes, so you know whether you have lost anything or not?

samgettingfit25 · February 24

Do you weigh yourself at home? Do you take measurements? Are your clothes feeling looser? I am not sure what your doctor's office weight means without more context. Our body weight is made up of more than fat and includes muscles, organs, fluids, digesting foods, etc. That's important to remember, especially in the beginning, since normal water weight fluctuations can mask weight lost from fat.

If you normally weigh yourself in the morning, nude, after using the bathroom you are going to weigh less than if you have an afternoon doctors appointment and are weighed clothed after eating lunch. It helps to compare weight taken on the same scale in the same circumstances. If you wore similar clothes to the doctor and had your appointment around the same time, then your weight is meaningful if compared to your weight under similar circumstances a year ago or three months ago, etc. In this case, was your previous weigh in before you started making all these healthy lifestyle changes?

Also, since weight includes fluid retention, muscle, etc.... If your deficit supports a one pound a week loss, two weeks in you may have lost around 2 pounds of fat, right? Well, water weight and digesting food can easily hide that. I had to take a break from some weight lifting because I was rehabbing an injury to a couple areas of my body. When I returned to weight lifting, I saw a 3 pound overnight gain. I had sore muscles and I observed this before so I wasn't worried, but if I were in your shoes I might have thought I gained a pound. Keep an eye on it, but realize the number on the scale isn't telling the whole story.

That's why it helps to keep measurements, keep your weigh ins consistent, and pay attention to other nonscale victories like how your clothes fit. If you really aren't losing, then focus on tightening up how you track foods i.e. weighing portions, etc. From there, you can tweak your "on paper" deficit but two weeks isn't long enough to know whether that is necessary.

meachemcrystal795 · February 24

I had lost 6 lbs..I thought. I’m a more muscular woman so I tend to prefer strength training over cardio. I do feel stronger, it was just very surprising to step on a scale & be even more than my starting weight. I had never seen that number on a scale except when I was 9 months pregnant( the biggest I’d ever been). I wrote this post in the heat of it all because I was excited to step on the scale & was deeply disappointed to see that I hadn’t actually lost anything. My calorie budget is 1760, I stay within 15% of that 5 days a week. I shouldn’t have posted this but as I said, in that moment I felt defeated. Like all the work I had put in was for nothing.

AnnPT77 · February 24

meachemcrystal795 wrote: »

I had lost 6 lbs..I thought. I’m a more muscular woman so I tend to prefer strength training over cardio. I do feel stronger, it was just very surprising to step on a scale & be even more than my starting weight. I had never seen that number on a scale except when I was 9 months pregnant( the biggest I’d ever been). I wrote this post in the heat of it all because I was excited to step on the scale & was deeply disappointed to see that I hadn’t actually lost anything. My calorie budget is 1760, I stay within 15% of that 5 days a week. I shouldn’t have posted this but as I said, in that moment I felt defeated. Like all the work I had put in was for nothing.

It's fine to post here when you're feeling discouraged . . . but I think it's also reasonable to expect that folks here will try to talk you out of that discouragement, or ask questions that might let them help you work through whatever is discouraging you. We're like that. Even though we're strangers, we want to see you happy and successful.

I understand where you're coming from. I weigh myself every morning, after the bathroom, before eating/drinking, in the same state of (un)dress every day, and put the daily weight in my weight trending app. I've done that every day since 2015 when not traveling - no lie.

I always weigh more at the doctor's office than I did in the AM. I was last at my PCP's office on January 17 this year. That morning at home at 6:38 AM, I weighed 133.6 pounds. At the doctor's office at 8:00 AM same day, they weighed me at 140.6 pounds, even though I tend to shed as many outer layers of clothing as decency allows before getting on their scale. Next mornings at home after that: 133.8, 133.2, 131.6, 133.8, 134.0, 133.8 . . . and so on (I'm in maintenance BTW).

How much do you think I weighed then? I think around 133 pounds someplace, but 140 with breakfast and a minimum-decency layer of Winter clothes on me at the doctor's office. 😉 Pretty sure I didn't gain 7 pounds of fat - which would be around 24,500 calories worth of body fat - between 6:38 AM and 8:00 AM that day. 🤣

The only time I weigh less later in the day is if I've had a long-ish sweaty workout without fully re-hydrating after, or . . . maybe after certain events in the bathroom occasionally, y'know? And I'm in menopause, so no hormone weirdness affecting the scale in my case. I don't usually weigh more than once daily, but do once in a while to check on exercise hydration or something.

Like others, I'd encourage you not to be discouraged by meaningless numbers. It's the 4-6 week weight trend - or the whole menstrual cycle trend - that tells us where our body fat is heading, not the meaningless ups and downs in a day or even over a few days.

If you haven't run across it, but are interested, this is a good read, especially the article linked in the first post:

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

Best wishes for continuing success!

tulips_and_tea · February 24

meachemcrystal795 wrote: »

I had lost 6 lbs..I thought. I’m a more muscular woman so I tend to prefer strength training over cardio. I do feel stronger, it was just very surprising to step on a scale & be even more than my starting weight. I had never seen that number on a scale except when I was 9 months pregnant( the biggest I’d ever been). I wrote this post in the heat of it all because I was excited to step on the scale & was deeply disappointed to see that I hadn’t actually lost anything. My calorie budget is 1760, I stay within 15% of that 5 days a week. I shouldn’t have posted this but as I said, in that moment I felt defeated. Like all the work I had put in was for nothing.

Per the bold, what about the other two days? Doesn't seem like it but overeating two days can wipe out the deficit we have on the other five days.

Sorry you're feeling defeated, but it would be better if you had a scale at home to weigh yourself regularly and in consistent circumstances.

Keeping up with two small children is a lot of work, so I'd focus more on accurately eating your daily (or weekly) calorie goal to begin with.

meachemcrystal795 · February 25

I do weigh myself daily in the morning. I was 3lbs heavier on my scale today, 5lbs heavier on doctors scale. I was not using logic when I made this post, I just seen a very high number & immediately needed to vent. I was wearing boots at the doctors, & a sweater..also I appreciate the help, I was unaware that when your muscles are recovering they hold water? I did do strength training yesterday & I now see a pattern of weighing 1-2 lbs heavier the day after I do a strength workout.

PAV8888 · February 25

Many people, myself included, have found it useful to use a weight trend app to average our weight. The same can be done by using a spreadsheet and creating a linear weighted moving average going back, say, 10 days or so. I've used trendweight.com, android users have used libra.com and iphone users happy scale. They all used to be free and I'm fairly sure that other than trendweight.com they no longer are

google sheets or excel online are free too ;-)

Alatariel75 · February 25

meachemcrystal795 wrote: »

I do weigh myself daily in the morning. I was 3lbs heavier on my scale today, 5lbs heavier on doctors scale. I was not using logic when I made this post, I just seen a very high number & immediately needed to vent. I was wearing boots at the doctors, & a sweater..also I appreciate the help, I was unaware that when your muscles are recovering they hold water? I did do strength training yesterday & I now see a pattern of weighing 1-2 lbs heavier the day after I do a strength workout.

Ohhhhh yeah haha. If I am at all sore, I know I'm going to hate the number on the scale! But yes, our muscles retain fluid for repair and it shows up on the scale.

AnnPT77 · February 25

meachemcrystal795 wrote: »

I do weigh myself daily in the morning. I was 3lbs heavier on my scale today, 5lbs heavier on doctors scale. I was not using logic when I made this post, I just seen a very high number & immediately needed to vent. I was wearing boots at the doctors, & a sweater..also I appreciate the help, I was unaware that when your muscles are recovering they hold water? I did do strength training yesterday & I now see a pattern of weighing 1-2 lbs heavier the day after I do a strength workout.

There ya go: Knowledge is power!

Understanding and even expecting fluctuations is a good thing. If we didn't eat enough calories cumulatively over maintenance to logically result in the increased (or decreased) pounds we may see on the scale, then there's an extremely high likelihood that what we're seeing is water retention or food waste distorting the fat-change trend line.

Even fast, steady fat loss is slow: Two pounds a week of fat loss is about 4.6 ounces per day. Since our bodies can be up to sixty percent plus water, as you've discovered water weight can shift by several pounds from one day to the next, and digestive waste tends to vary by more than those few ounces daily, too. Those three things things can play peek-a-boo on the scale, so fat loss can be masked for a surprisingly long time sometimes.

When in a semi-consistent routine, I figure any multi-pound shift over a day or few are mostly about water/waste, average weekly trends over a month or more about bodyfat changes, and muscle mass changes are even slower, like months . . . absent some truly dire health condition causing muscle wasting, but we'd know if that happened. I hate drama in my emotional life, so keeping this in mind helps me stay out of that territory.

Best wishes going forward!

AnnPT77 · February 25

PAV8888 wrote: »

Many people, myself included, have found it useful to use a weight trend app to average our weight. The same can be done by using a spreadsheet and creating a linear weighted moving average going back, say, 10 days or so. I've used trendweight.com, android users have used libra.com and iphone users happy scale. They all used to be free and I'm fairly sure that other than trendweight.com they no longer are google sheets or excel online are free too ;-)

Libra still has a free version, ad supported, and the ads aren't obnoxious - small band at the bottom of the page. There is an optional subscription version without ads and with unlimited chart sharing, and for sure the developer sometimes uses the ad space for "support your developer" messages, but the free version is very full-featured.

Lietchi · February 25

PAV8888 wrote: »

Many people, myself included, have found it useful to use a weight trend app to average our weight. The same can be done by using a spreadsheet and creating a linear weighted moving average going back, say, 10 days or so. I've used trendweight.com, android users have used libra.com and iphone users happy scale. They all used to be free and I'm fairly sure that other than trendweight.com they no longer are google sheets or excel online are free too ;-)

Libra is still free. Similar to MFP, you can pay to not get ads.

girlwithcurls2 · February 25

My doctor's appointments are all in the afternoon now, after work. They ask if I have done a weight check on myself or do I want to check at the office. Every now and then, I will do it at the doctor's, but honestly, at 4:30pm fully dressed?? I'm weighing much heavier than my actual weight. Keep learning about the process. It helps take some of the worry out of it. Another thing I do is to ignore the "goal" for a couple of months (or at least six weeks), to allow my body time to change. A pound off is often a pound "on" later. It's always in flux. In order for me to see progress, I need to know and feel with my clothes, more than a pound or two.

Feeling defeated..

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