I restarted MFP but gained 5.9 lbs

blk7363

Im frustrated since starting MFP again

I’ve gained almost 6 lbs which is more than when I started back

I walk everyday

Stay within the 1200 but it’s not working

AnnPT77

Gained 5.9 pounds over what period of time? If we're talking about a couple of weeks-ish, things like new exercise and a new eating routine can cause weird water-weight fluctuations at first. Sometimes that's water weight gain that masks actual fat loss progress going on in the background.

Is 1200 the right number? For some people who choose that number, it's too aggressive, i.e., unnecessarily difficult. It's way easier to get frustrated if results aren't quick, more likely to make a person give up, if the tactics are too darned difficult. Sometimes shooting for gradual loss will get a person to goal weight in less calendar time than something extreme that eventually causes deprivation-triggered bouts of over-eating, breaks in the action because of frustration with temporary but meaningless scale stalls, or even giving up altogether because it's just too hard to stay the course.

Maybe that's not happening or about to happen for you, I dunno. But it's common.

Repeating: How long have you been at this, during which time you gained 5.9 pounds? Gaining 5.9 pounds of fat implies eating roughly a cumulative 20,650 calories over and above current weight-maintenance calories (not just above weight loss calorie goal), or moving that much less, over roughly the period of time when that gain accumulated. When eating an accurately logged 1200 calories, that doesn't seem very likely to happen over a short number of days without noticing. If something close to that didn't happen, it isn't fat gain.

Probably the answer is to wait it out, eating at your calorie goal, for 4-6 weeks or one whole menstrual cycle if you have those, and see what your weight loss trend averages out to over that whole time period. Shorter time periods are easily distorted by water weight fluctuations or varying waste in the digestive tract on the way to the exit, either of which are meaningless when what we really care about is body fat loss.

Hang in there!