Not Losing-- Please Help!

ajadorsey

Hi Everyone,

I hope you can give me some insight. Although I’ve always exercised on and off, a little over a month ago I decided to commit to trying to lose the 15 pounds that I’ve been trying to lose for the last three years. I am doing Fitness Blender’s exercise program which consists of 5 days of cardio and strength training, usually between 45 min to an hour workouts, and 1-2 days of optional low impact exercise or stretching. I stay within my allotted calories most days. I mostly try to eat clean and have cut out a lot of unnecessary sugar.

Every day I track and have gotten the “if every day were like this you would weigh __” lbs and felt like I was on the right track. I deliberately stayed away from the scale for the last 4 weeks so that I wouldn’t torment myself with fluctuations. Today I weighed myself and my weight was exactly the same that it was a month ago.

I do see some very, very slight changes in my body in comparison to what it was a month ago and I do feel a little stronger. But I’m feeling discouraged that my body is not at all reflecting the work I’m putting in.

What am I doing wrong? Is it possible that I just “can’t” lose weight? My food diary is public, please take a look if you can and give me some feedback. I was sick over the weekend and didn’t track, but I have tracked most other days.

ajadorsey

Bump

jdm1954

I think your body is reflecting your work. I think you are probably replacing fat with muscle.

CristinaL1983

Starting a more intensive workout can cause you to retain water. Conventional wisdom is that it will take 4-6 weeks for the scale to start showing weight loss (because everytime you workout you retain water to repair muscle)

Also, it looks like you log for 3 or 4 days then don't log for just as many. I went about a month back in your food log. If you are only logging half of what you eat (half the days) there is really no way to know what your actual calorie level is. You may also want to start eating back most of your exercise calories. Again, without accurate logging, it is going to be very difficult for people to actually help you.

lobo_a_gogo

Also, make sure you're logging accurately. I see you have selected some items like "peanut butter sandwich". Instead make sure you're measuring everything and logging everything as accurately as possible (i.e. brand name of bread, measure 1 or 2 tbsp of peanut butter), things like chips, crackers, etc all need to be weighed for how many ounces. Good work, make sure you're being diligent!

ajadorsey

Thanks for the feedback. I have not been as good about entering on the weekends or putting in exact measurements, so I will start trying to do that more often and see what happens. I started trying not to eat back on the exercise calories. Since I don't have an HRM I am nervous about them being inaccurate so I don't eat them at all sometimes-- maybe not the best idea.

I have been trying this new thing of focusing on doing the exercises and eating right and not so much on weight loss so I haven't been weighing, but it makes it even more frustrating somehow to see no change after a whole month than when I was weighing myself weekly.

TinaLogan20

You want to keep track of everything you eat, along with eating smaller portions through out the day (5meals & 8+glasses of water). You want to intake 1300-1600 calories a day. Make sure your eating "healthy" foods every 3hours, and don't eat anything 3hours prior to bedtime. Usually after the first month that water you've been consuming is absorbing your muscles, so the reason why you haven't lost any weight is because of the water weight. But once your in your 2nd month, you'd be shredding the lbs. Don't get discouraged it happens to most people. Just keep on with what your doing and try not to think about it.