Not losing and even gaining!

rpmtnbkr

It's frustrating for sure but give it time.. or at least that's whaty I've had to do. I hit it hard and logged religiously for1.5 months down 1 up 1 down .5 even up .75 etc... then all of a sudden it started dropping consisently. This has happened to me a couple of different itmes. It jsut seems like it take a while for my body & metabolism to catch up with each other.

whitebalance

OP, you did not gain four pounds overnight. Scale measurements fluctuate. Don't sweat the individual measurements; instead, watch the trends over time. Log your food and your exercise as accurately as you can. And stay the course. It works. :flowerforyou:

mdhummel

After reviewing your diary I noticed you are not eating a lot fruits and vegetables for breakfast or lunch. Maybe instead of eating a breakfast bar you could try fruit and yogurt or a vegetable omelet? For lunch swap the burger for a garden salad with chicken or some fish and steamed vegetables. Aim to eat a serving of fruit or vegetables with every meal and see if you notice a difference on the scale. (I think you will!)

brad2021hk

Looking at the food diary, you are less than 2 weeks in. People have varying experiences with the first two weeks. Changes in water retention and glycogen storage. Changes in metabolism. There is an adaptation period. Some people lose like 8 pounds in the first week. Some people gain a couple pounds.

I've also found massive variation in weight throughout the day. In the range of 4 pounds sometimes. Just the other day, I weighed myself at night before bed. I had probably had too much water that evening. I got up in the middle of the night and had another good trip to the restroom in the morning. I was down 3.5 pounds in just that 9 hours.

Also, the day you weighed in may be an issue. I noticed that you had a big sodium spike in your diet on Saturday and possibly Sunday. I'm not believing that a beef slider had 0 sodium. That could also peak your water retention for a bit.

Maybe you have a combination of adaptation to a new program, inconsistency in weigh in, and a spike in sodium a couple days ago. Throw in a bowel movement difference and boom...you got a weird result.

ruffnstuff

I am sticking to my calorie intake...MFP says to eat 1330 cals to lose 2lbs a week (goal is 70lbs this year) or 1570 cals to lose 1.5lbs/.

Those numbers sound to high. Assuming a "typical" female height, having that much excess fat is going to put in the 45%-50% body fat neighbourhood. That will give you a "lightly active" TDEE of around 1900-2000 calories/day. To get to 2 lbs/week loss, you would have to drop your eating to 1000 calories/day.

Ignore this, please. Do not drop down to 1000 calories.

Aye, yikes, yes, PLEASE ignore the first post. IF TDEE is 1900-2000 cals, then "aggressive" weight loss would be -20% of that number (around 1600), NOT -50%. Sheesh..doling out advice to eat 1000 cals a day. Stop it!!

tesha_chandler

Don't get discouraged! Weight can be a strange thing. Look for changes in your body, clothing and measurements. I got on the scale after a hard, intense work out a few days ago and I weighed the exact same thing I had weighed a week before and I was so upset. I done research and I found out that after working out, your muscles can retain up to 4 pounds of water to repair muscles. I waited two days and got back on the scale, I was down 3 pounds. Not to mention, and I know you've heard this a million times, "muscle weighs more than fat" but that's a good thing because when you have muscles, they burn fat for you.

bac219

I am truly thankful for all the advice and opinions. It can be confusing as there are many and not all agree. I actually do know the basics. Eat less, exercise more....and I know all bodies vary as to what works better...some can eat more carbs, some need more protein, some need to spread it out...I do know all of this...and I have tried all different variations. I just can't seem to find what works for me which is very discourgaging since I used to be able to lose EASILY up to a few years ago and I never had to watch carbs, protein, sugar....anything...as long as I watched my portions...the weight came off.

I know I need to give it time as I've only been at this (AGAIN) for two weeks but not seeing much of a difference does make me cringe. I also know sodium factors in. Time of month (which I am close to). etc....but to see a 3lb loss and then a 4lb gain. Ugh!

dbritt07

Looking at your food diary my biggest suggestion would be to cut the carbs. My husband was 305 and is now 220. He removed sugar and grains from his diet. It was hard at first but now we are very use to eating this way. We do not have to count calories. We eat as much eggs meat and cheese as we like. We eat healthy fats (avocados, coconut oil etc) We do not eat bread, pasta, or sugar. We will have occasional fruit but only berries or citrus. Low carb works. Hubby lost 85 lbs and has kept it off for years.

I was going to suggest the same thing. Wheat allergy here so I cut it out - that and sugar and I dropped 21 pounds in 20 days. I was so sensitive to wheat I was told that it was making my blood sugar spike constantly. I ended up cutting carbs down to below 30 as well.

meganjcallaghan

Meal timing is irrelevant. I eat a majority of my calories in the evening and have been fine.

Ditto. I usually eat the bulk of my calories at night and I'd say its working for me just fine.

lovebig30

try upping your calories to the 1500. I seem to lose better when I eat at the 1 to 1.5 lb loss a week than 2 lb. are you drink water try aiming for min 64 oz but goal should be half your body weigh in oz. the scale will fluctuate up even when your calories are in check. that time of the month mine will go up 5 to 7 lb with water retention overnight but its gone by end of week. add in more fruits and veggies. the thing that helps me is never going more than 3 or 4 hours without eating its usually just a piece of fruit or a granola bar.

brad2021hk

So you lost 3 pounds super fast. Way faster than expected for your diet. Obviously, you did not lose 3 pounds of fat or combination of fat and lean body mass in 1 week. An unrealistic and inaccurate assessment of your progress. You gained 4 pounds in a week. Again, you didn't put on a real 4 pounds of fat or fat and lean body mass in a week. You would have needed to eat at a ~2000 calorie per day overage to get that. You report eating 1400 calories per day. No one thinks you mis-measured your food that badly. You didn't accidentally eat 3400 calories when you thought you were at 1400. Obviously, this is an unrealistic and inaccurate assessment of your progress.

You expect to have lost about 2 pounds of weight. How can you measure between -2 and +2 pounds of weight change when your measurement variation is off by probably a couple pounds. Your measurement tool is too inaccurate to tell you about such a small change over such a short period of time. Quite frankly, changing your program from such suspect data is probably going to hurt you more than help you. This is how people come to such bad conclusions and get de-motivated.

You can do a few things to fix your measurements. You have to weigh yourself at the same time in the same state each day. If you weigh yourself with your underwear only after peeing, right after waking up one day and then after eating breakfast with 16oz of coffee wearing a sweater the next day, you're going to see a massive error. An error bigger than the 1 or 2 pounds your trying to detect. If you do something based on this flawed measurement, you're going to make a bad choice. Even if you get the methodology right, your going to have natural variation. Salt or bowel movement or metabolic things like your cycle. I might do something like weigh 3 days and take the lowest or take the middle or the average. Or use a 3 day running average. Something to reduce the impact of measurement error when your tool is less accurate than what you're measuring.

meganjcallaghan

tons and tons and tons of cardio. The kind of cardio where if you can carry on a conversation you're not doing it right.

^^ errrrr....careful with that. If you cannot carry at least a short conversation while doing cardio you may be working too hard and it may actually be dangerous for you depending on your level of fitness (if i had gone for that level of intensity when i first started running i would have been cruising for a heart attack). i wouldn't attempt anything so intense you can't spit out more than a word or two right off the bat.

gigglesinthesun

Meal times only matter if by not eating much throughout the day it would cause you to binge eat at night. Carbs only matter if you have insulin issues or whatever, protein high diets are not the cure-all for weight problems.

Now whilst I think that the OP has only caught herself on a high day, I thought this blog post is still a bit informative.

http://www.acaloriecounter.com/blog/why-am-i-not-losing-weight/

opticoax

Hmm...it could be a few things....retaining water, underestimating calories, or your BMR has dropped to where you need to cut calories more.

If you are pretty lean now, you might want to start montoring your BMI a bit more with taping or calipers or spring for the water tank test.

If you have been low carb for a while, try eating more carbs for a week to get your insulin responsiveness back on track.

I'm a fan of tracking weight several times a week, because the fluctuations will give you an idea of water weight...I moved 7 pounds in 4 days