Lowered calories and started to gain weight not lose

zfitgal

Hi everyone!

 I just wanted to share a quick update and see if anyone else has experienced something similar. For the past two months, I’ve been following a 1700-calorie diet while focusing on nervous system regulation. During that time, I wasn’t exercising much but maintained my weight around 147 lbs, even with occasional treat meals. Over the last two weeks, I’ve gotten back into a routine—doing cardio three times a week (45 minutes each) and strength training five days a week. I’m starting to feel stronger and more like myself again. Because I still have some weight to lose, I recently dropped my calories to 1600. Ever since then, though, my weight has gone up every single day—now hovering around 148.6 to 148.9. I’m more active than I’ve been in a while, hitting 10,000 steps daily, and sticking to my plan. I know I only dropped calories this past Saturday, but shouldn’t things be trending downward by now? Has this happened to anyone else after lowering calories? Would love to hear your thoughts

sdozier2217

Sounds like it could possibly be water weight due to increased inflammation (muscles when strength training). I'd make sure you are properly hydrating. It could be hormonal? Too much salt? I know it is frustrating not to see immediate results you are working so hard to achieve, but there's a lot of positives in what you're doing! It takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose one pound so give it time. You are making good decisions for yourself, keep going!

zfitgal

I wasn’t expecting to lose a pound, but I was expecting to see my trend data to decrease after I lowered calories by 100 to go down and it hasn’t. It’s weird. I was leaner when I did barely anything and ate more according to the scale.

sollyn23l2

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48708684#Comment_48708684

I'm going to second the idea that it's water weight from the increased exercise.

yirara

Yeah, likely water retention. It's normal. And it's masking fat loss. 1.9lbs more is nothing, really. You can easily get this by having a bit of constipation, just a hotter day, a random moment within the female menstrual cycle, or a lot more than that due to traveling by plane.

tulips_and_tea

Yeah, getting back into a regular workout schedule and only being less than a week when you lowered your calories, it is no doubt water retention. It takes much more than a week of lowering your calories consistently to see actual weight loss.

AnnPT77

How long ago is "recently", the time when you decreased calories - just the days since Saturday, so less than a week? How different is your last-two-weeks exercise routine from what you were doing while weight stable for 2 months?

If you were weight stable at 1700 calories, then 1600 calories should trigger weight loss . . . at around a pound of weight loss every 35 days. That's fine, but it will take some time to show up in a scale-weight trend line, in amongst routine daily water retention fluctuations that can be a couple of pounds or more from one day to the next. Maybe up to a couple of months, minimum?

That's not too slow, particularly if you have a history of disregulation from overdoing either exercise or calorie restriction or both.

Yes, adding exercise would be expected to speed that up a little, but that's complicated. A big jump in exercise will add water weight, as others have commented. That effect could mask fat loss on the scale for multiple weeks, all by itself. For sure, more than a few days.

In addition, for most of us, the extra exercise calories aren't huge. The average value of an average exercise schedule is around 5% of total calorie needs. It can range up to 15% in highly active people, but that's not common. If you were maintaining at 1700, you might be looking at an average calorie burn increase of 150 or so calories daily? (Noting that fitness trackers, exercise machines and MFP can overstate exercise calories.)

If that were so, maybe the average deficit is around 250 calories, 100 from eating less, 150 from added exercise. Maybe a little more, sure. Probably not lots more. 250 calories per day would be two pounds a month of fat loss, approximately. That's still going to take weeks to show up in the scale trend, and in a woman who has menstrual cycles, maybe it'd even take a couple of cycles.

That'd still be fine. It's not too slow. It's good, for someone already as light as you are at 148 pounds. Fast would be riskier.

On top of that, there's a complicating factor: Energy compensation. A significant jump in exercise load can tend to reduce calorie expenditure in daily life, because we rest more, possibly in subtle and unnoticeable ways. Compensation varies among people, but it's a real effect. So a theoretical 250 or so daily calorie deficit may be an actual deficit of less than that.

If that's happening the answer FOR SURE is not to increase exercise, because that would just increase the compensation.

My advice: The answer would be patience. Patience. More patience. And perseverance. Sticking with the new routine - especially since you say it's making you feel better and stronger - for at least a couple of months. More, maybe even, if it keeps feeling good . . . and even if weight stable for a few weeks.

I'm going to be brutally honest here. I've read a series of your posts over a period of time. I didn't go back and re-read, but my impression from memory is that you have some history of choosing aggressive plans, feeling anxious about results, over-reacting to short term effects, and that sort of thing. If I'm remembering correctly, I feel like part of the answer would be retraining those impulses, working at increasing calmness, patience; choosing sensibly moderate tactics; sticking with any new set of tactics for at least a few months before switching things up.

Also from memory, my understanding is that you're seeking health, fitness, and a balanced life. That's way worth seeking. Part of what it takes is that calm, patient, persevering approach, IME. Fact-based. Gradual.

Wishing you long term success, because long term is what counts, and success is worth the effort.

yakkystuff

Could it be that week in the normal hormone cycle when appetite and weight tend to increase?

samgettingfit25

Just here to echo what others have said. At a 100 calorie daily deficit it may take a few months to notice a scale weight loss consistently. Day to day fluctuations can mask up to a few pounds of fat loss for a while. There are so many things that can cause a tiny scale increase that have nothing to do with fat gain — water retention in the muscles recovering from a workout, water retention in the muscles from popular supplements like creatine, hormone-triggered fluctuations, especially if you have periods, digesting food, swelling, etc., etc. I think if you are aiming for a slow loss you just have to keep doing the work and have patience. My main concern would be that 100 calories really isn't giving you much margin of error. If you aren't already you may want to weigh your portions with a food scale to make your food logging as accurate as possible. I think you have an advantage if you know from experience that you maintain on 1700 calories, a lot of people start trying to lose fat without knowing exactly how much they were already eating.

PAV8888

Well, we all know that I walk to a different drum. So maybe I'm off here. If that's the case please ignore!

You were weight stable taking a break, eating more and doing less.

Now, after having butted your head against a wall a few weeks ago, and with weight loss being a bonus not a necessity for your health, you both increased your activity AND started eating less.

How about STOP making your life more difficult than it has to be?!🤷🏼‍♀️

If you just exercised more you would have no expectations for weight loss, you would be able to enjoy the exercise, you would run less risk of banging your head on a wall, and we would all believe that since you changed nothing with your eating other than adding the exercise we would believe that the weight change was because of that. Which it probably is anyway!

The goal is not to break you. The goal is to build you up, right?🤷🏼‍♀️

When I was losing one lb a month over a full year, there were more than 3 months when my final weight that month was more than the starting weigh that month. But at the end of the 12 months I was 11.5lbs down.