why am i losing weight so slow??

megans4444

So last year when i started working out i lost 30 pounds in 3 months. Due to all the stress in school i gained back 15 pounds. I am currently 156 pounds. So far i began exercising and dieting since June 26. Its been around 3.5 weeks. i began at 158 pounds. i do cardio for about 1.5 to 2 hrs . I go to the gym about 5-6 days a week. i eat 1200 calories. my goal weight is 120 but I'm losing weight soooo slowly. Please help!! am i doing anything wrong??

spatty_harris

My guess would be either: 1. You aren't eating enough

OR

2. You're not logging your food accurately and over-estimating the amount of calories burned in your cardio sessions.

heybales

I'd go for 1.

You'd have to be so dishonest with yourself and logging food to overcome the deficit you must have in place.

You must think bigger deficit is better.

Why don't you stop eating, get it over with fast?

Whatever reasons you thought of that would indicate that's a bad idea, there are a bunch more.

You are just making your body one big ball of stress too, and since just doing cardio, burning off a fair amount of muscle mass, but your stress is screwing up your hormones and retaining massive water too.

But if you feel like you enjoy this so much you want to repeat it again, but easier to gain the fat back and harder to lose it next time, by all means do your own program rather than following MFP's method.

You can't have been blind to the fact your eating goal goes up after you log your exercise.

You are blindly following the 1200 goal without knowing why you got it - why aren't you following the increased eating goal without question too?

You can either wisely chose to lose weight at a reasonable slower rate, or your body ends up forcing it on you anyway.
Which would you rather have? Eating more and lose right, or eating very little and knocking yourself out at the gym with probably terrible workouts compared to what you could have and losing the same amount?

CMB1979

My guess would be either: 1. You aren't eating enough

OR

2. You're not logging your food accurately and over-estimating the amount of calories burned in your cardio sessions.

It certainly isn't #1. Your deficit is small so you're losing weight slowly. Most likely you're eating more than you think or burning less than you think or both. You may also be overeating on 1-2 days/week and regaining some of the weight you lost during the week.

megans4444

thanks for the response! what kind of changes should i make to my diet and exercises.

IllustratedxGirl

My guess would be either: 1. You aren't eating enough

OR

2. You're not logging your food accurately and over-estimating the amount of calories burned in your cardio sessions.

It certainly isn't #1. Your deficit is small so you're losing weight slowly. Most likely you're eating more than you think or burning less than you think or both. You may also be overeating on 1-2 days/week and regaining some of the weight you lost during the week.

This!

For changes.. Make sure you are extremely accurate with your logging from portion sizes to logging everything

heybales

thanks for the response! what kind of changes should i make to my diet and exercises.

Start weighing all food going in your mouth right now to see where you really stand.

Weigh packaged food too, because while a serving may indeed be say 100 g, but "about 2 servings per package" isn't true if the package states 250 g total weight, and you weigh it at 275 g actually. That's 2.75 servings to log if you eat the whole thing. Or 275 calories vs 200.
That can add up in a day.

Then again, you didn't say you were eating back exercise calories so that would matter if that was overestimated - so I find it very hard to believe that you could be overcoming that much of a deficit with bad food logging like others believe.

But weigh normally eaten foods for a week and inform us all.

Also, was your 30 lbs in 3 months accomplished with just cardio?
If so, you lost a lot of muscle mass and burn less daily, so it should be harder this time around. Next time could be even worse if you do that again.
You should really think about some strength training to retain muscle.