Carbs Slowing Down Weight Loss?

I have been almost perfect sticking to my 1200 calories, exercising vigorously at least 4 times per week, yadda yadda yadda, and although I'm losing, it's a lot slower than I feel it should be. Never more than one pound per week. Often less. It consistently goes down, so it's slowly adding up, but still. My goal is 1.5 pounds/week, for a total of 40 pounds, with about 32 more to go.

I'm getting ready to turn 35, so my metabolism isn't as fast as it used to be. But I was wondering if my reliance on carbs might be the problem. I have a family who I try to eat with as much as possible (rather than making two meals), and it's unrealistic for me to stop eating carbs. Plus, I would never stick to a plan like that.

I eat cereal every morning, and one of my lunch staples is rice. It's all on plan, but I max out my carbs pretty much every day.

Could this be the problem? And if so, what in the world do I eat instead?!?!?!?!

Carbs do slow down weight loss. It's quick energy for your body so any carbs you eat before you exercise, your body will use that for fuel rather than the stored fat. If you try a low carb diet with lean proteins, just as chicken, fish, edamame, and quina, also, stick with whole grains, sprouted is even better if you can, and try not to eat 25g of carbs in your snacks. you should see the lbs come off

You sound a lot like me the first couple months I started trying to lose weight.

Generally, this has been the trend, so that eventually (in the past), the loss was sooooo slow that I ended up giving up.

I have children and we eat most of our meals together, so cutting out carbs was totally not sustainable or practical. Besides, I had found out from previous experience that any weight loss due to a very low carb diet generally came right back once you started eating normally again.

This is what I did:

1.) I decreased carbs to 100 grams per day. This allows your body to get things back into balance. I had some pretty severe hormonal imbalances from 3 pregnancies and this was essential to me, although not everyone needs to do this. I gradually increased them and now on maintenance, I generally eat around 200 grams (45%).

2.) I ate MORE. MFP had me set at 1200 calories and I was working out faithfully and seeing almost no progress. A friend recommended increasing my intake. So, I started eating back most of my exercise calories to NET 1200, which gave me somewhere around 1400-1600 calories. This REALLY helped my weight loss!!! I've also gradually increased that and now eat 1560 plus exercise calories on maintenance.

3.) I made myself SWEAT (or for those "lucky" people who don't sweat, it's good to keep your heart rate near the top of your heartrate range) every workout for at least 20-30 minutes.

With those 3 things, the weight started peeling off and I usually lost 1 - 1.5 lbs. per week until I hit maintenance.

I'm not sure if that will help you since we're all very different, but maybe there's something you can glean from it! Good luck!

OP, your carbs could well be the problem. I ran into this recently, My car went into the workshop to get rid of some carpark dents and get a paint job. During the three and a half weeks I was carless, I walked or rode my bike to get to work - 3.8 miles each way. I lost nothing in that time, despite the increased exercise level and I was eating back a proportion of my calories burned (so I don't think the insufficient intake/starvation mode theory is in play here). When I analysed my food however, I realised that my carb intake was very high - I was easily maxing out my carbs each day. I have now modified my diet to reduce my carbs and will see what happens over the few weeks.

It is very disheartening though when you're exercising more, eating properly and the scales (and body measurements!) refuse to budge. :sad:

I have to tell you I was stuck for quite some time. I reduced by carbs and it has helped. This was something my doctor told me to do. I didn't completely cut them out, just restricted them. Hopefully this will help.

LOL, no one should completely "cut them out". Vegetables have carbs and fibre, I eat LOTS of them. There is almost no way to eat "no carb" (except the Inuit came close and they were healthy, pre-modern food era) and people like me get a bad rap because other people have the misunderstanding that I don't eat vegetables (I often eat more that SAD dieters). So, the fat and protein are most important, but keep the veggies!

I would like to point out reading something recently (article?) about how the Inuit are getting sicker and sicker the more they move away from their traditional diet and toward a Western one. I'm a firm believer that the quality of calories matter as much as quantity.

If you lower your grain intake, you'll eliminate a lot of crap food automatically. You can replace it with meat, legumes, eggs, veggies, nuts, and all sorts of other wholesome foods. Change your percentages and experiment.

Agreed (except for the part about eating legumes).

Inuit are getting extremely sick and it is definitely due to the sudden dietary change. They've been pushed by our health care "professionals" to reduce traditional food which is predominatly sea mammal fat and meat/fish and increase highly processed vegetable fats and grains/legumes. Diabetes isn't on the radar YET (it's coming!) because many people are still eating a lot of wild foods which help offset the new, unhealthy dietary additions. The research of Dr. Price is worth checking out. It's "old", but VALID.