Why am I not losing weight

Hi! Over the past month I’ve made a serious commitment to lose weight and be more active and healthy. I have been going to the gym Monday-Friday doing both strength training and cardio, and I challenged myself to 10k steps a day which I’ve been doing. I also now count my calories and macros and have shifted my diet drastically, focusing on proteins, veggies, fruit, salad, and very little carbs or sugar. My first weigh in was 191, I got down to 188, and today it’s back to 190. I’m really frustrated and could use some support on how and why this is so that I don’t give up due to lack of results :( it’s going to make me lose my motivation to do this if I don’t see it doing anything on my scale. thanks!
Replies
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It's only been a month and that's including some very drastic changes along the way. The most notable change being a significant increase in exercise, which is notorious for causing water retention (especially strength training) masking fat loss on the scale.
Some advice:
- Use other ways to judge progress: progress pictures, measuring yourself, looser clothes
- More patience. You need 4 to 6 weeks to judge progress, but considering all that new exercise, I'd give it another month
- Be careful not to burn yourself out. It's your current exercise level sustainable long-term, not just during weight-loss but afterwards to maintain your losses? The fact that after only one month you're saying that you need results to stay motivated, makes me think you don't (fully) enjoy your exercise routine? And/or what you're eating? Try to make it as pleasant as possible, so you don't need as much motivation and you can build durable habits.
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day-to-day weight will fluctuate are due to water retention. You want to use an app that you can input your daily weight and you do this every day consistently and it will show you the average so as long as that average weight every week is going down you're making progress.
If in fact your average isn't going down after 4-6 weeks then you aren't in a weekly calorie deficit3 -
Lietchi made some very good points.
I'd add this: I see that your profile says you're female. You don't say how old you are, but if you still have menstrual cycles, that can be a major factor in water weight fluctuations. It isn't the most common pattern, but some women here have reported only seeing a new low weight once a month at a particular point in your cycle. Some have reported normal fluctuations of up to 7 pounds from hormonal shifts at some point(s) during their cycle.
I agree with Lietchi about the potential unpredictable water retention from new exercise. If the hormonal fluctuations are occurring alongside that, you could see a scale-weight roller-coaster for at least one, maybe 2 cycles.
I also agree overwhelmingly with her advice not to make your weight-loss plan any more difficult than it minimally needs to be to gradually reach your goals. The real prize here isn't just losing the weight, it's keeping it off long term. That depends on finding new, reasonably happy permanent habits that will keep us at goal weight - at least tolerable and practical ones. During weight loss is a good time to start figuring out what those habits will be, and practicing them until they can happen almost on autopilot. Doing that makes maintaining the loss much, much easier.
Best wishes!
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For how long have you been counting calories? Also for a month, or is it shorter? How do you measure your calorie intake? Do you use a food scale, cups and spoons or information on the packaging? And do you check whether the database entries you use match the product you use? What about meals you prepare? Do you log all ingredients separately or do you chose something random from the database?
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Hey, do not despair. I started in February at 250 and had been averaging 10 lbs a month doing keto/low carb. I average about 25 to 30 grams of carb a day. Its great that you are doing the exercise. My suggestion is to not count the exercise calories. Make sure that you are eating enough so that your body does not go into starvation shut down mode. Never eat below 1200 calories. Since you are working out you might need to adjust your calories a bit. I know that contradicts my earlier statement, but you need to start with a health calorie base. It sounds weird, but sometimes when i do not move on the scale, i eat just a little more and the next day the body lets go of the weight. Just like the poster above says measure everything and i would say pre-prep your meals for the day and eat whole foods.
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