Constructive criticism please

No critricism, just free advice. Take it for whatever you think it is worth.

First, yeah you for working hard at getting fit.

Don't sweat it if you don't see results on the scale right away. Weight loss is not linear. If you eat right and do the work, the weight will come off in time. In the grand scheme of things 2 weeks is nothing.

A couple of things to remember:

Your scale lies to you. People constantly say “I worked out every day this week and ate right, and I still gained 3 lbs! This fitness stuff doesn’t work, so why bother. I quit” Not true. You just haven’t given it enough time. The scale can lie to you because it doesn’t know what part of your weight is fat, what is muscle, and what is water. If you are working hard and keeping under your calories, the weight loss will come when it is ready (which sadly is probably not the same thing as when you are ready). Weight loss is a funny thing, and everybody's results are different. Women especially seem to have inconsistent results from everything I have seen and read. There can be many reasons for this - just to name a few possibilities:

a. You are new to exercise and your body is still trying to figure out what it needs to do to cope with the new demands you are putting on it. When you start working muscles that aren't used to getting worked, they pull water into themselves as they try to repair themselves from the micro tears created by exercise (that's how they grow), and that can add water weight until the body gets used to working hard day in and day out.

b. Women's monthly cycles (Disclaimer - I am a guy - I admit I only know what is in the published studies!) cause water weight loss and gain throughout the month, which really screws up the scale results. Don’t blame me, it wasn’t my idea.

c. There is also something I have read dieticians and trainers write about sometimes called the "whoosh effect" where weight stays stubbornly on for weeks in spite of lowered calories and regular exercise, and then suddenly, "whoosh" pounds come off 3 and 4 at a time for some reason. It’s crazy, but makes sense when you remember that your body wants to be fat once it has learned how to be fat, so it doesn’t give up those pounds easily. Keep at it and, sooner or later, it will have to surrender the pounds. Unfortunately we all want instant results, which doesn’t always happen. So, keep on keepin on.

d. Muscle gains also reduce the loss of pounds on the scale, but will reduce your body size in inches; muscle weighs more than fat. This takes time, but keep a lookout for this in action. Use your favorite pair of jeans as a measuring stick and ignore the scale for a couple of weeks. Or, measure yourself at the start and track how those inches disappear over time. They will.

e. When and where you weigh yourself matters. Keep it consistent in terms of time and place, and use the same scale. They don’t all read the same. Even moving the scale to another room or a different part of the room can give you a different result.

f. If you are like a lot of people, you can gain or lose as much as 5-6 pounds during the day depending on what you ate, when you last ate, when you last used the bathroom, and so on. If you remember that, it helps keep you sane when the scale number isn't moving.

Keep after it and you will get where you want to go. :drinker: