very, very discouraged

nnylee

You have to eat more. Your body is storing the food for later, which is why you're not losing. You need to raise your intake. I plateaued for 4 months and I couldn't figure out way. Turns out I wasn't eating any exercise calories back and not eating enough. So I upped my intake and I've started to lose again, which is super awesome.

chevy88grl

You've been severely restricting your calories for awhile. Your body has adjusted to the lower amount of calories and your metabolism has slowed down to accommodate it. In order to lose weight, you're going to have to eat more. Your body is trying to function on as little as 450-500 calories a day. That isn't enough for anyone to live on for the long term. I'm surprised you aren't experiencing some of the not so favorable side effects of so little calorie intake - such as hair loss, always wanting to sleep, etc.

The first thing you need to do is find out your BMR and your TDEE. These will give you an idea of where you should start as far as calorie intake goes. You should also attempt to eat back at least 1/2 of the calories you are burning through exercise. As you can see, a huge calorie deficit is not beneficial to weight loss. Yes, we need to create a deficit to lose - but one as large as you've created is actually counter productive.

I will tell you this - you WILL likely see a gain on the scale when you start eating more. Your body will start hoarding what you're giving it for fear you'll stop feeding it again. DO NOT LOWER YOUR CALORIES - continue eating at the new level and eventually your body will adjust and realize you are going to continue feeding it. Once this happens (and it can take a month to 6 weeks for it to realize it), you'll begin losing weight again.

Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Our bodies are all a little bit different, so comparing yourself is setting yourself up for failure. Don't worry about what she's doing - do what works for YOU (and severely restricting yourself isn't working).

Looby47

Hi, I think there's already been plenty of replies already but my first thoughts as soon as i saw your posting was too few calories being eaten with the exercise as well, its DEFNIITELY too few. In effect you're burning off nearly half of what you've eaten so if you're eating 900 and burning off 420, you're only giving your body 480 cals a day!!! You wont lose weight. You need to eat the cals you burn off, or at least make it that when you deduct what you burn off, you've still taken in 1200 cals. Eg if you burn off 500 cals in exercise, you need to eat 1700 cals that day. Trust me it works, maybe not immediately as your body will still be panicking about the lack of food but it will work.

Let us know how you go on in a few weeks.

Pandoragirl

I am taking your advice to eat more calories, but how many?

I went to fitness frog yesterday and figured out these numbers:
RMR- 1240 ( because of my age 67 and height 5'3")
BMR- 1256
Kilocalories burned per day -1,724 when I exercise 60' six times week.

How many calories a day should I eat if I am burning about 430 cal per day via exercise?

BTW, in the past week I gained 1.5 pounds. In the 60 days I've been dieting, I have lost only six pounds. It's hard to stay motivated when there is no progress and there is weight gain.

jreed1920

Thanks to everyone for your input. I really appreciate it. It's difficult to not compare myself to my weight-loss partner because we are a team in our employer's "Biggest Loser" contest and she really wants to win this thing. So I feel like I'm not helping her much with my very slow, one pound a week, loss, but I agree, we each lose at our own pace. I really don't know how she can be losing so fast but good for her. We are at the half-way point and she's lost about 24 and I've lost six. She wants to lose 60 total and I'd be happy losing 20 total.

So right now I am six pounds lighter than I was six weeks ago and that's a good thing!

You are comparing apples to oranges. You feel like she is losing so much faster than you when in reality you have both lost about 1/3 of the total that you would like to lose.