inches but not pounds :( whats up with this?

cppeace

so here is the story. Before joining mfp and starting exercise I was on a temp veg diet and losing about 2 lbs a week. Perfectly healthy for my weight. Decided to throw in exercise to seeif I could get it up to 2 & a half and cause I wanted to be in better shape in general. So I slowly began a fitness routine every day. Started at 20 minutes and is up to an hour now. Has been 34 days I have lost 3 inches on my waist over this period but the scale has barely budged at all. Lost one pound could weeks ago and half a pound last week. Flks told me eat back more of my exercise calories so I have started doing that. Still scale is not budging. Feel free to look at my diary to offer advice. Ive increased protien added back in meat. Been watching my sodium intake and drinking plenty of water... Why are inches leaving and pounds hanging on. I still have 69 lbs to go isnt like Im at the last the last 10 or something.... Advice is needed. Do I need just be patient for the diets and exercise to balance or what?
Thanks all

abellante_0205

How is your sodium levels??? Are you drinking any soda? Sometimes if you consume too much sodium it causes your body to retain water. I didn't look at your diary yet, but I will.

abellante_0205

I looked at your diary... You might need to cut out some of the carbs you are consuming. Carbs are my weakness and how I got to the weight I was (143.3 lbs). If you are still not losing weight, I would suggest seeing a doctor and see if maybe there's something wrong with your thyroid because that can prevent you from losing a lot of weight too. Good Luck I hope you figure it out!!!

AReisenfeld

if you hadn't been working out before, there's a good possibility you've traded fat weight for muscle weight. as a general rule, "muscle weighs more than fat". working out builds muscle and burns fat, so that would indicate a reason for losing inches and not pounds. if not that, make sure you're staying in within your range. too low and you're body holds on to every ounce of fat. too high and it'll start storing again. balance is key!

Larius

Pounds are something you check for progress when you aren't losing inches. Inches are the point, right?

AdAstra47

If you are losing inches but not weight, then you are probably just replacing fat with muscle. Fat contains a lot of water, and fat itself is not very dense. So a pound of fat will take up a lot more room on your body than a pound of firm, compact muscle. This is exactly what you *want* to be doing, because muscles use more calories than other tissues. They are the fat-burning engines. The more muscle you have, the more efficiently you can burn fat, and the more likely you are to keep it off. The combination of added protein and added workouts is probably enabling your body to create more muscle mass even while it burns the fat.

I agree with the poster who said that if you want to increase your pounds lost & see a bigger change on the scale, you should limit your carbs. That's what I've been doing, on my doctor's orders, and getting 60-65% of my calories from protein. And according to his tests, in the last 8 months I've lost about 61 lb of fat & water, and gained about 7.5 lb of muscle. This may or may not be right for you, but it's what worked for me.

Good luck to you!

taso42

So you are looking for advice on how to stay big but make the number on the scale go down? I'm confused.

cppeace

everyone sets their goals differently my goal is to be 165 not a certain size. Im not eating bad carbs it fruit veggie and occassionally healthy bread or home made heathy muffins ect. I have my carbs set at 55%

ryanperna

In my opinion, that's one of the biggest downfalls of this site, it focuses nearly 100% of your progress on your body weight. Yes, you have the options of adding other measurements in, which is good. And to their credit, you can't practically complete a body fat percentage test at home. But body fat percentage is where it's at. I have a muscular build and a healthy weight for me is around 210... I focus on waist size myself. I'm losing weight now but I know it will inevitably slow down as muscle mass increases.

Bottom line: Try another measurement technique. I'm sure you have noticed that your clothes are fitting more loosely, and to me, that's the most important thing!