FRUSTRATED

isislc

I am so frustrated right now and have no idea what to do anymore. Some background, recently I've been working on doing a little more into the exercises that have always been more difficult for me. These include climbing stairs and walking around in general since I've recovered from a car accident and a knee surgery that really never healed. I do these at work and get in about 40 mins a night for 3-4 days. At home I do a little more walking around and occasionally go up and down 3 floors of stairs. I've also changed up my diet a bit to use Nutrisystem to help me jump start the calorie change.

Now I saw my doctor this week and found that I was actually doing much better and she was surprised that I had no knee pain. Now, here is the kicker, even with the exercise and the nutrisystem I still gained 6 pounds! This has me so mad I don't even want to think of it but I need to because I'm alreadt back to my original weight before I started trying to lose. My clothes still fit fine and some are actually loose, but can I really just be building muscle from walking and climbing stairs? In the last month I gained 6 lbs, I can't believe it was 6 lbs of muscle.

Any ideas for a metabolisme jump start? please HELP!

angel79202

Are u eating enough calories? Drinking ur water? I find that I have to have both "higher"calories days and "lower" in order to keep losing..u may have also lost some inches..but I know ur frustration..

sbbotto

isisic, don't give up.. track your food and you will be fine consistency is key.. and as for the muscle gain , thats not gonna happen.. A bodybuilder working out 4 -5 days a week can only pack on 5-10 lbs of muscle per year...

emmaleigh47

Aww huny, I feel for you! (long distancde hugs here)
My guess is ... you arent eating enough.
Most people when they "diet" they severely restrict calories and then exercise on top of that... although it works for the BL contestant because they exercise SO much, it doesnt work for the average person.

For example, my BMR (the calories that my body burns lying completely still in a coma) is about 1950. So any time that I drop my calories below that ... I wont lose. I have proven this by having times of a loss after having a horrible choice day where I went over my calorie goal... my body was waiting for food!

Now this doesnt mean eat 1900 calories of crap...we do want to try and make good choices, but you have to feed your body in order to lose weight.

Also, as someone mentioned, you could have also put on some muscle. You need to also check your measurement in addition to watching the scale. I have been stuck on a plateau at 248 for a month or so, but the inches continue to fall and despite not moving in scale, my size continued to decreased!

Much luv!

VialOfDreams

I agree 100% with tracking your food. Also, eat smaller meals throughout the day. Try to eat something within 1 hr of waking up, even if it's something small like a banana.

Watch your sodium intake. Most people consume at least twice as much sodium as they should. You should also drink plenty of water.

Invest in a heart rate monitor, one that tracks your calorie loss. 3500 calories lost equals to 1 lb. So if you want to lose 1 lb in a week, you need to have lost 3500 calories. In addition to keeping track of your weight, measure your arms, thighs, hips, bust and waist.

And most importantly, keep at it! We all go through frustrating periods during our weight loss, and it is very important not to give up.

ppiinnkkmmoonn

nutrisystem??? UM oh yeah a co worker was on this and gained weight. when i looked at it it was full of salt out the yin yang! so mayb that why?? just a thought (hugs)

isislc

Yeah I've been bad at logging my food lately but been pretty good at keeping track of what I have been eating. It was about 2 weeks that I really stuck to the Nutrisystem diet and found that I was starving and didn't know why. Like a dunce, I never kept track of the particular calories for Nutrisystem and found that I was only eating about 1200 calories a day! Here on the site it says that I should be eating about 2020 calories but when I recalculated, it should actually be more like 2800 so I try to stick to the lower calories. I was wondering if the 2 weeks of Nutrisystem beat the heck out of my system because I was losing steadily when I was eating Lean Cuisines.

I've also found that I've been a lot more thirsty so had been working on the cutting out of all diet sodas and doing just the water. I can tell when there is a change because I always get a change in pH and things start to taste funny and I'm more sensitive to certain foods. Goofy but it's a good tracking marker when there might be a problem.

Thinking of dumping the Nutrisystem and just started getting on my bike and doing some more cycling again. There is a cycling training program out there that is for targetting weight loss. Anyone have any other ideas?

By the way, pinkmoon, great job on the weight loss! Want to trade places? *wink, wink*

NoAdditives

Definitely make sure you're eating the right number of calories, get some exercise and try to make your own food from fresh, healthy ingredients instead of relying on prepackaged meals. Almost all prepackaged or processed foods have way more sodium than is necessary. Oh, and drink lots of water!

seabuckaroo

I agree with above ^ ^ ^ ......Try andd eat as fresh food as you can. It is simple to calculate calories if you add up all the ingredients on MFP. You will enjoy food even more and more than likely your diet will contain less sodium.