Stuck and frustrated

jcattz

Back on MFP and love it. Committed to tracking, being accountable and learning what's best for my health and weight. Long post to follow....

An accident in 6/22 laid me up the better part of a year, took another year to get over some humps, and then had a major move. 30 lbs later, I was finally able to get active again.

Lost 15 lbs with noom last spring but the program eventually no longer benefited me, so came back here. MUCH better in many ways.

I have some structural and gastro things to manage l, and have been doing very well with "all that."

Now focused again on tracking, exercising within my means and getting back to a healthy weight. At 168, and want to get to 145. While I'm not in a hurry for the ultimate loss #, I am frustrated at not consistently losing weekly, even if it's a little. I'm within the calories required and exercising. But I am not losing. I don't want to beat myself up, or put on unreasonable pressure. The accident changed me fundamentally and I accept that. And if I have to accept being "heavy" I guess I have to learn that as well.

My gastro issues aren't "bad" but things have been sluggish (yes I've seen all the doctors, nothing they can find wrong) so things are "moving out well currently" iykwim.

The ONLY changes are we had a visit where we indulged more than normal for a few days, and it threw my insides off . Took two weeks to "reset and purge." That was a month ago.

Other thing is I've been using a new almond creamer from silk, and JUST saw its 2nd ingredient is cane sugar. Yikes! I am pre diabetic so that is going in the trash. I use it mostly sparingly, but clearly it can't be part of my day to day for obvious reason.

Could those things be what's thwarting my weight loss and messing my insides up? Because otherwise I'm following the same diet as I did when I was losing weight before our move last year.

Super frustrating. Hate this extra weight, it hurts my back to carry and disgusts me as a reminder of an awful time and I am ashamed of having let myself get her..please be kind with any support or insight you can share. Thanks

AnnPT77

A couple of specific responses to your post, which I think might affect what you're seeing, though I can't be sure.

Before I get to that, though: I'm sorry, but I can't help with the digestive issues - no medical background. Mine got better as my overall nutrition improved, including routinely adequate hydration, but that's specific to me. Obviously, for digestive issues it matters what the problem is, and I'm not a medical professional, just a regular human probably similar to you in relevant credentials, but maybe a bit further down the weight loss path.

These are the "couple of specific responses" I mentioned.

• What do you mean, very specifically (numerically), when you say "not losing" or "not consistently losing"? What body weight pattern, over what time period?

I don't intend to be harsh in asking this, but a common thing we see here is someone losing at a moderate/slow rate, but wanting a fast rate, and feeling like they're "not losing". Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I'm wondering if you've lost literally no weight, seen ups and downs on the scale but no general loss trend, and over what time period you've seen that.

• You wrote "I am frustrated at not consistently losing weekly, even if it's a little. I'm within the calories required and exercising. But I am not losing."

If you got your calorie goal from MFP, another so-called "calorie calculator", or even a fitness tracker you wear close to 24x7, a thing to know about that is that it's an estimate. It's based on the average calorie needs for demographically similar people, using the demographic details you supplied to the app, calculator, or device. Those estimates will be close for most people, but noticeably far off for a few, and surprisingly far off for a very rare few. If your loss rate "should be" much higher than what you're seeing as a 4-6 week average (or whole menstrual cycle if you're a woman of relevant age/stage), then that's a hint that your calorie needs may vary from those averages. You may need to lower your calorie goal.

There are other potential reasons: One example would be if there are cheat meals/days in the equation, or other kinds of oopsie/unlogged days. Another possibility would be logging issues. That's not a diss, it's a surprisingly subtle skill, and most of us doing it for a while have had face-palm moments of realizing some significant systematic error we were making. Be sure to log every bite, lick, taste, condiment, beverage, cooking oil, etc., just for starters. There are possibly other ways to tighten down logging, too.

• You wrote: "The ONLY changes are we had a visit where we indulged more than normal for a few days, and it threw my insides off . Took two weeks to "reset and purge." "

This makes me wonder if you're clearly understanding how a change in eating style, plus literally travel (long car rides, air travel, etc.) affect body weight on top of the effect of any over-maintenance calories that have been consumed.

For most of us, if we eat wildly differently - especially if more carbs or sodium than normal for us, even if still a reasonable amount - we'll add pounds of water weight. Travel can also add pounds of water weight. There's also the potential to have extra waste in the digestive tract for a while, and that adds pounds until it exits, too. That water and waste show up on the scale, exaggerating any actual fat loss, possibly dramatically.

One to two weeks is a perfectly normal amount of time for that water/waste weight to distort what we see on the scale. Fat gain/loss is about the calories. Until the water/waste sorts out - until that one to two weeks passes - we may not know the true body fat impact of body fat changes from eating differently for a while.

That isn't necessarily about your digestive issues, in other words. Maybe they're a factor, but the above-described stuff can happen to most anyone in the relevant circumstances. At at current weight in the lower 130s pounds, I "gained" nearly 6 pounds after a weekend of unusual eating. A week later, I'm finally getting back within a pound of my pre-trip weight.

• You write "I'm following the same diet as I did when I was losing weight before our move last year."

For one, our calorie needs change over time, tending to very slowly decline for a huge variety of reasons unless we take steps to counter that decline. What worked before may not work now. What matters is what's working now, or not.

For two, the "before our move" makes me wonder. Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I thing we've seen here before is someone who (for example) moves from a big place with lots of house/garden/lawn chores to a condo, or from a place with lots of stairs to a place with none, or who changes from a home (or job, or combination) that involved a lot of walking as part of the commute to a more door-to-door drive kind of situation, or something similar. Those changes can reduce calorie expenditure to a surprising extent, potentially low hundreds of calories daily, maybe even more. I also wonder if your accident might still have some impact on your daily life mobility, not just on your exercise abilities. Could any of that be a factor for you? (I'm not saying you should answer here - certainly not if you don't want to! - but it's maybe a thing to think about.)

I've had some accident/injury/major illness recovery issues myself. When I'm unable to exercise, I lose fitness, and that in itself can subtly decrease my calorie burn in daily life, simply because reduced fitness means moving is harder and less enjoyable, so I do it less without realizing . . . unless I focus and take counter-measures. Again, maybe that doesn't apply to you. It has to me, at times.

• As far as "could those things be twarting weight loss", I'm not sure what all you're including in the scope of "those things".

I talked about the potential for travel and unusual eating to distort the scale for a while, but that's not necessarily the same as fat gain. I hinted that if constipation is part of the situation, that can also make scale results more misleading over short time periods. If you were including whether the sugared creamer was a factor, then likely no, as long as you were counting those calories. There'd be a little water weight with extra sugar, but most of us use fairly small amounts of creamer, so a small effect that way, probably.

If you're wondering if your digestive issues more generically are having an impact . . . maybe? Depends on what they are. If there's a food sensitivity in the picture, that can involve digestive distress, bloating, constipation or its opposite, plus water retention, and things like that affect scale results even if they don't affect body fat directly. Fatigue from any sensitivity or just from feeling low because of the digestive distress could affect how much a person moves, so how many calories they burn. That can be subtle, but surprisingly meaningful, even though hard to quantify.

I think you can work your way through this, and reach your weight goal. It could take some experimenting and patience, unfortunately.

Wishing you success, sincerely!

PAV8888

 I am frustrated at not consistently losing weekly, even if it's a little.

As a person with no digestive issues and a fast track…. I DID, in fact, lose slowly and consistently for a period of ONE YEAR and yet there was more than one month where my weight at the END of the month was HIGHER than at the beginning of the month.

Even if you were to lose as slowly as I did that year…. you would still be within 5lbs of your goal at the end of the year. And before you object and scream "a full year"… I remind that weight management is weight management. It doesn't stop on the day you reach "goal"!

Forgetting slow goals—let's concentrate on the universal truth: If you only sample your weight level once a week… you may mentally prefer to do so and that's OK… but you are not necessarily seeing the whole picture of how your weight is fluctuating and you need significantly more observations before you can see your trend. Plus you have extra tummy complications that likely increase the 'cloud' of your individual measurements.

Beyond that when you're managing your intake, what used to happen in the past on whatever type of intake is not necessarily any indication of what will continue to happen with changes and age.

BUT, I would take a much different view than you, if I am correctly reading between the lines, about your whole situation.

You survived a life altering experience that temporarily derailed you. And yet. And yet. And yet, here you are taking charge of the situation and progressively making improvements! In my books this is kicking *kitten* and taking charge!

So. The level of self recrimination I hear as a subtext may be good in terms of venting; but, it is probably not assisting you with moving forward. And having such a subtext running through one's mind can certainly influence one's perception of what is good enough. And thus end up derailing instead of assisting.

And all the other stuff that Ann mentioned in addition!

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48627388#Comment_48627388

Quoting myself to make a correction, since I typed something that was the opposite of what I intended.

I'm talking about this paragraph in the quoted post:

For most of us, if we eat wildly differently - especially if more carbs or sodium than normal for us, even if still a reasonable amount - we'll add pounds of water weight. Travel can also add pounds of water weight. There's also the potential to have extra waste in the digestive tract for a while, and that adds pounds until it exits, too. That water and waste show up on the scale, exaggerating any actual fat loss, possibly dramatically.

That bolded word, "loss" . . . that should've been "gain". If we eat extra calories above maintenance calories, there will be fat gain, usually not as much as we imagine. If that extra eating also increases water retention and/or amount of digestive waste on its way to the exit, those factors are what exaggerate fat gain, i.e., make fat gain seem substantially larger than it really is. It can even make it appear that we have some fat gain when we actually have none.

Apologies for the unclarity.

csplatt

Some people really like to weigh regularly to understand fluctuations. I do not. In a situation like this, I would wait a month or two to weigh myself while remaining thoroughly committed to my food scale! I can be proud of myself for my hard work without constantly checking for numerical proof that I’m doing well!