weight hasnt changed after 3 weeks of hard work.

marysmyfitnesspal

I have been working out, walking 10,000 to 20,000 steps each day mon-fri and 8,000 on weekends. Walking up 3-4 hills 1 quite strenuous, my samsung shows burning total 1550 calories, equivlant to 12 floors to 24 floors raised heart rate over 130 mins. Gym workout, stopped drinking alcohol 5 days and drink 1-2 drinks weekends. Eat sesnsibly 3 meals no snacking only fruit..

I am shocked that i am exactly the same weight as when i started. body measurments exactly same??? go figure, i find this a bit bizzaar and extremely dissappointing.

Has anyone had this very same experience.

nossmf

Many people have, and most people would if they suddenly went from not working out to punching it as hard as you're listing here. The body will hold onto water in the cells to assist with post-exercise recovery, which appears on the scale as bodyweight. The scale has zero way to tell how much of you is muscle, or bone, or fat, or internal organs, or water, or food you've eaten making its way through your stomach and intestines, or anything else. Even so-called bodyfat scales which use small electrical signals to estimate fat have very marginal value and accuracy.

In addition, if you're new to logging food, there's a learning curve to becoming more accurate over time. Proper measurements of food can have drastically different calorie content; eye-balling is typically NOT accurate enough, especially for somebody new to the discipline. Measuring cups and scales go a long way. But even if you measure correctly, the food entry you select within MFP can be radically off, as many of the entries are user-entered and have not been fact-checked for accuracy. Compare the entries you use in MFP against an independent source, such as the USDA website, measure carefully, be honest with yourself (it's very easy to eat an extra dinner roll and either forget or tell yourself it didn't matter).

Finally, three weeks is not enough time for accurate results, especially when first starting out. The general rule of thumb among MFP veterans is to give yourself 4-6 weeks before making a judgment call on whether your current plan is working or not (or at the same point in a female's menstrual cycle, for those whom that applies). Patience, my friend. Accuracy, my friend.

csplatt

Are you counting calories? When you say you burned 1500, do you mean total for the day?

AnnPT77

Agreed with advice above, that 3 weeks isn't enough time to estimate an average rate of fat loss, especially in a case where someone's dramatically increased exercise. It's even more true if that person has changed their eating style, and/or is a woman who has menstrual cycles.

It generally takes 4-6 weeks to see a reasonble average weekly impact. For a woman who has cycles, it'd take one to even two monthly cycles, because she should compare body weight at the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles. It's not the most common pattern, but some women here have reported seeing a new low weight only once per month, at a particular point in their cycle. Hormonal water retention shifts can be that weird.

I'm going to add some advice you didn't ask for: Adopting a difficult and relatively extreme plan is a very common way to fail. The harder our plan is:

• the harder it is to stick with it long enough to lose a meaningful total amount of weight,
• the less it helps us learn and practice new long-term habits that can make it easier to stay at a healthy weight permanently,
• the bigger the rewards we expect, and the faster we expect them, so disappointment/discouragement become more likely,

. . . and more.

Unless you were doing a lot of that walking and exercise previously, and had been for quite a while, that's relatively extreme. You say nothing about your calorie intake, and that's the big deal when it comes to fat loss.

The average person doing average exercise only generates about 5% of their total calorie burn via that exercise. With a heavy exercise load, it might be up to 15%, but that's pretty unusual, and can be hard to fit into an overall happy, balanced life (i.e., it may cut into the time and energy many people need for job, home chores, relationships, social life, non-exercise hobbies, etc.).

There's also an effect called "calorie compensation" or "energy compensation". Put over-simplistically, when we over-exercise, it makes us fatigued (possibly in subtle, unnoticed ways), so we do less in other parts of life, thus burn fewer calories in that realm. That daily life non-exercise stuff is called NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. For most of us, NEAT is a larger percent of our routine daily calorie expenditure than exercise. When we do less of that stuff, we burn fewer calories that way, so essentially cancel out some of the exercise calories.

Some people compensate less than others, i.e., get more of their exercise calories as a net increase in daily burn. Others compensate more, so get less and maybe even minimal extra calorie expenditure from exercise. It varies individually. But if heavy exercise doesn't seem to be delivering the expected impact on calorie expenditure, it's something to consider, especially if the increase in exercise is recent and could be a bit too much for current fitness level.

The easier the plan is to do, while still resulting in sensibly moderate weight loss, the more likely complete success becomes, especially long-term success. Now in year 9+ maintaining a healthy weight, I haven't been sorry for one minute that when losing 50ish pounds, I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose that weight that I wasn't willing to continue long-term to stay at a healthy weight, except for a sensibly moderate calorie deficit until I reached a good weight.

This all may not apply to you. If so, I apologize for interfering. For me, successful weight management has been such a huge quality of life improvement that I want that for everyone. Think of me as a concerned old internet auntie who worries when she sees people doing what seem like really difficult things, and getting discouraged. I think misery is optional, and more moderate plans can succeed.

Best wishes!