Desperately want to give up

GMotY

Hey guys,
About 6 months ago, I decided I was going to start lifting weights. Everything was going fine and dandy, and I was loving it. So, I decided I was going to kick it up a notch and lose weight as well. In December, I cut my calories from around 3500-4000 to 1700-2000. This too was going well until about a week ago. All of a sudden, it's like my strength was cut in 2/3, that extra oomph was gone, and my body would not respond in the weight room. I'm not going to lie, it's depressing. A string of bad workouts not only makes you feel bad in the weight room, but, at least for me, it makes me want to give up on everything else. I feel like a failure. 99% of me wants to quit. I'm hanging on here by a thread right now.

Has anyone else been here? What did you do to dig yourself out of the rut?

scarlettesong

I'm definitely not an expert, so hopefully others have more solid advice, but it sounds like you cut too many calories too quickly. You don't have to make drastic cuts to still see weight loss!

cafeaulait7

Do give up the 50% deficit, yeah. Otherwise, don't give up You'll feel better when you eat more, and that can still be under your maintenance, easily, so you'll still lose weight just fine.

Dnarules

So you cut your calories in half. Hmmm, I wonder what the problem is?

Dnarules

So you cut your calories in half. Hmmm, I wonder what the problem is?

I am a 49 year old female, and I lose weight on 1700. Make sure you are logging correctly, but eat more.

Sakar50

What you are trying to do is one of the hardest things I have come across trying to increase muscle mass (weight lifting) and at the same time loss weight. Not that it can not be done but you really have to understand how your body works and what it needs to fuel these two goals because what is needed for one goal may set you back for the other. I think we often set tough goals and work hard at the gym without spending more time researching and educating ourselves through books and on line information-- sometimes what we think we need to do is not really in line with what our bodies need to reach our goals . Case in point is many people go on crash diets drastically reducing their calorie in take and then go to the gym and do cardio for hours; when the truth is that the benefit from the cardio is so small since the lack of calories should already be driving significant weight loss potential -- really by adding the cardio on so low calories they are driving their bodies past what should be expected and many times results in some sort of break down or failure. I think if you make a weight loss goal and a good plan around that -- you can achieve it and then take that confidence and build a different strategy to reach you next goal of weight lifting--- then if you start gaining weight it should be lean muscle weight from your new weight lifting regiment.