Cannot lose weight

iamprincesscc

I am 139lbs and 5"2 and would really like to slim down and lose weight. However, I only eat 1,400 calories a day and am slaving away in the gym everyday for 3 hours (mostly cardio) for no results. My muscles only tighten and grow making me look even larger. Does anyone have any advice? I feel like having to burn 1,400 a day to lose weight is unrealistic and basically starving myself?

princesapoppy

Hi- I am the same, am now sitting in massive grump as despite all that ive been doing weight just sticking- not if I break diet though, then it piles on!! Had some wine and pizza last night and I seem to have popped on 3lbs over night! !

DemoraFairy

I don't think doing mostly cardio is going to be making your muscles bigger, even if you're doing lots of strength training they're not going to get all that much bigger if you're in a deficit.

How long have you been dieting for? Do you eat back your exercise calories? If so, how do you calculate your exercise calories and how much do you think you're burning off? Can you open your diary so we can see what you're eating?

DemoraFairy

Had some wine and pizza last night and I seem to have popped on 3lbs over night! !

That's what happens when you eat things like that. It's just water weight, it'll be gone in the next couple of days.

iamprincesscc

Hi, I've been dieting since early December and don't really eat that much anyway since I'm quite small. So cutting to 1,400 wasn't difficult, it's just my weight constantly maintains, never increases of decreases. Should I lower my intake further? I've been burning about 400/500 calories a day on the treadmill, elliptical, bike etc which takes a good 3 hours out of the day (sometimes a bit more or a bit less) . I workout at the end of the day so I usually don't eat again until the next morning . Typical meals are fruit/bran:yoghurt/ORange juice for breakfast - salad and chicken for lunch/ soup and then for dinner it would be quorn chicken and some sort of salad or hot veg or buck wheat. Snacks would just be fruit or nuts or cereal bars. Thank u for ur advice!

writergeek313

Consider raising the intensity of your cardio and adding in some strength training to boost your metabolism. If it takes you three hours to burn 400-500 calories, you're probably not doing a very intense workout. That means you might not be getting your heart rate up enough to make the most of your workout.

A lot of times women think strength training will make them bulk up, but it won't. If you're looking to tone your muscles, you can do more reps with a lower weight.

SugaryLynx

Wait. Burn 1400 calories? 1400 calories alone, without exercise should be a deficit. You net 1400, if that's the case. Also, I'm 5'3.5 " and lose weight eating a net of 1700. If you've recently started a new activity, or bumped up intensity, you could be getting water retention for muscle repair (hence why you feel your muscles are inflated). That will go away in time. I do not think you should cut calories further. You only have 6 lbs to lose. Slow down, it isn't a race. Make sure you're logging everything, feeding your body properly, and have patience.

Supertact

Hi- I am the same, am now sitting in massive grump as despite all that ive been doing weight just sticking- not if I break diet though, then it piles on!! Had some wine and pizza last night and I seem to have popped on 3lbs over night! !

So you ate 11,500 calories over maintenace? Ya right, also stop hi jacking threads.

To the OP, are you weighing and measuring your food?

It's a simple equation if you're eating more or the same amount of calories that you burn throughout the day you will gain or maintain weight, if you eat less calories than you burn in the day you will lose weight.

You're eating too much and over estimating your burns. Also spending 3 hours in the gym (20% of your day if you sleep 8 hours) and burning 500 calories is a huge waste of time.

baileyang33

Wait. Burn 1400 calories? 1400 calories alone, without exercise should be a deficit. You net 1400, if that's the case. Also, I'm 5'3.5 " and lose weight eating a net of 1700. If you've recently started a new activity, or bumped up intensity, you could be getting water retention for muscle repair (hence why you feel your muscles are inflated). That will go away in time. I do not think you should cut calories further. You only have 6 lbs to lose. Slow down, it isn't a race. Make sure you're logging everything, feeding your body properly, and have patience.

^^^^^^ this

bradXdale

1) Make sure you NET 1,400 calories a day (meaning eat back the calories you workout).

2) Spending 3 hours at the gym is literally a waste unless you're a fitness competitor or if you work there. Go into the gym and workout at an intense pace for 30-45 minutes. Do not be afraid of weights. Try finding a plan BodyBuilding.com and following it. You can attack the gym within an hour and get a more effective workout done in 1/3 of the time (1 hour includes a 15 minute warm-up with 30 minutes of hard work and a 15 minute cool down).

3) Do not be afraid to eat MORE calories. The more you BURN the more you NEED to eat. Especially if you had MFP figure in your calories.

4) When starting something new & strenuous your body will retain water. Focus on healthy choices and results will follow.

Jenni129

Hi- I am the same, am now sitting in massive grump as despite all that ive been doing weight just sticking- not if I break diet though, then it piles on!! Had some wine and pizza last night and I seem to have popped on 3lbs over night! !

So you ate 11,500 calories over maintenace? Ya right, also stop hi jacking threads.

Dude, it's really easy to gain 3 pounds from a night of drinking and pizza. I'm living proof.

bwogilvie

So you ate 11,500 calories over maintenace? Ya right, also stop hi jacking threads.

Dude, it's really easy to gain 3 pounds from a night of drinking and pizza. I'm living proof.

I think the dude's point is that you don't gain 3 lb. of fat from beer and pizza (unless you really did eat 11,500 calories' worth of it, on top of your maintenance calories). Most of that weight is water and food solids, and your body will eliminate it in a couple of days at most.

OkamiLavande

I don't think doing mostly cardio is going to be making your muscles bigger, even if you're doing lots of strength training they're not going to get all that much bigger if you're in a deficit.

How long have you been dieting for? Do you eat back your exercise calories? If so, how do you calculate your exercise calories and how much do you think you're burning off? Can you open your diary so we can see what you're eating?

I'm just quoting you so I can say I LOVE your profile pic. Jinx.

OkamiLavande

To the OP:
Weigh your food, try adding HIIT to your cardio routine. Start with intervals of 1-2 minutes of as hard as you can then ease back down to your normal pace for 10 minutes. Interval training allows for greater spurts of energy usage so you make the most of your workouts. Do you have any resistance settings on the elliptical? Sometimes if resistance is too high it bulks out thigh muscles but that's about it. Lower the resistance and up the intensity is all I can advise. It makes a big difference.

I hit a slump after being sick and adding intervals to my elliptical routine made a huge difference in just a week.

jamesnewberrysr

You need to get in the right frame of mind and let it happen. You are taking in the right amount of calories and are exercising. Even without exercise, you are going to lose. My only way to success is not to obsess about my weight. I pick the right amount of calories and journal my food and exercise daily and let it take care of itself. I try to not worry about it and just let it happen.

bajoyba

We may be able to offer more specific advice if you open your diary.

How long has it been since you started exercising and tracking your calories? As others have mentioned, if you're truly eating 1400 calories, you should already be at a deficit, even before exercise. Sometimes when people first start calorie counting, they need a little help learning how to track portions accurately.

And just to agree with some of the others, 3 hours at the gym really is overkill. The intensity of your workout is more important than the length of your workout. You should be able to get a great workout in under an hour.

eric_sg61

3 hours of cardio and your muscles are growing........what kind of witchcraft is this

Blue801

Wait. Burn 1400 calories? 1400 calories alone, without exercise should be a deficit. You net 1400, if that's the case. Also, I'm 5'3.5 " and lose weight eating a net of 1700. If you've recently started a new activity, or bumped up intensity, you could be getting water retention for muscle repair (hence why you feel your muscles are inflated). That will go away in time. I do not think you should cut calories further. You only have 6 lbs to lose. Slow down, it isn't a race. Make sure you're logging everything, feeding your body properly, and have patience.

^^^^ this.... And doesn't she have a nice back?! Yeah... Nice back SugaryLynx

Fishshtick

There are several common reasons for not losing weight on MFP.

1) You naturally have a low BMR. Despite the silly rumor that floats around here that everyone has the same basal metabolic rate and people are only fat because of poor eating and exercise habits, the reality from actual scientific study is that we actually do differ considerably in BMR even for the same lean mass. One study even identified an extreme case where two people with the same lean mass differed as much in BMR as having the person with the slower BMR run a 5K every day. Obviously, in most cases the difference is less but even a modest difference can make the difference between weight loss or maintenance over the course of weeks. The funny thing is that the same people who argue that such differences among individuals do not exist are often the first to jump on people eating 1200 calls per day to say they are killing their metabolism. Metabolisms can indeed slow with too low of a calorie intake, but that effect is pretty subtle when compared to among person variation. This is all a long way of saying that it is ok for you to try reducing your calorie goal a bit to see if that makes the difference for your metabolism. Just don't reduce too extreme.

2) You eat back too many exercise calories. Most estimates of exercise calories are hugely over-estimates and if your BMR is already a bit below the average, eating back that overestimate can erase much of your actual deficit. Try eating back only 50% of your exercise calories if you are in the range of say 500 estimated exercise calories in a given day.

3) You are not eating the calories you think you are eating. This is a big one. Buy a quality food scale and measuring cups and measure everything that does not come in a pre-determined single serving size. Also, fight the urge when looking up foods in the MFP database to pick the tantalizing low calorie entries. Always try to pick the most accurate option. A real common 'cheat' that people do is they use an existing entry for recipe food. Two recipes for the same food can differ by a 100% in calories. Use the MFP recipe and 'my foods' option to mor accurately construct nutritional info for foods you commonly prepare.

4) Don't freak out or fear experimentation. You have given your current approach a few weeks and haven't obtained the results you wanted. So go ahead and change things up a bit for the next few weeks and see if you get a better result, Almost everyone who is successful at this has tweaked things from the baselines or changed things up when they stopped getting the results they were after. It's part of the process. Just don't change things up too quickly or extreme. Weight loss is a slow process that often hinges on modest changes in calories in versus out, so you need at least a couple weeks to evaluate any change you make to your diet/exercise plan.

iamprincesscc

Thank you all so much for the advice, I shall increase the intensity and decrease the length of my workout. Hopefully my legs won't bulk out. Just one clarification, how many calories should I be burning? And is eating 1,400 calories ok?