Bit the bullet....changed the weight on my tracker...up

Angie52732 · April 2013

I had been slowly losing over the last several weeks (about 1 lb a week). The weekend before last we went out of town for the week. I know I didn't get all my water in and I didn't eat every 3 hours. What I did eat while we were gone was decent and I didn't go over my calories by that much. I did manage to get some exercise in but not what I normally do. When I got back I weighed myself Monday morning (April 1st) and was up 5-6 lbs :huh: . this meant I had to have eaten over 17,000 calories over that weekend or was retaining water because of the eating out.

All last week I stayed within my calories, increased my water, continued my exercise and this week I am still the same, 5-6 lbs heavier. I consistently work out; Boot camp 3 times a week and cardio for 30-40 minutes each night 5-6 times a week. My net calories are at 1200 and I eat back some of my exercise calories. Some days I do fall short but I have been trying to make sure to get to the 1200. My diet is not 100% clean - there is some processed food but no where near what I used to eat. I try to keep my sugar below 40g and have my protein set higher than my carbs. I am going to try keeping the majority of my carbs before early afternoon. I don't eat much of the greens right now because I am burnt out on salads :sick:

When the weight stayed the same for another week I decided to make it "real" by changing my tracker weight. Now, on the other side - my clothes are fitting looser - pants are saggier in the butt and thighs, waist and ribs are more noticeable - tummy has gotten flatter. I guess I could understand a 1-2 lb difference and thinking it was a change in fat to muscle...but not a 5-6 lb difference at this stage of the game. I still have about 70 lbs to lose.

I try not to let the number on the scale get to me but we have 3 week progress pics coming up Saturday - and we weigh in weekly and it just makes me feel like I am failing when I am showing a + number while others are showing a -. Just frustrated to see the numbers moving the opposite way --- but still plugging away

Just needed to vent! thanks for listening
Angie

SairahRose · April 2013

Wishing you loads of luck with it!

Try eating more of those exercise cals, and making sure that there's a lot of strength training.
I've always said I don't care if I weigh 5lb or 500lb (clearly an exaggeration :P), as long as I fit into a certain dress size and look and feel a certain way.
The spreadsheet that comes with the roadmap post is a brilliant one for times when parties and RL lead to overeating, and helps you get back on track

jittythekitty · April 2013

Sounds like you might need to shock your system. This is going to sound counter productive but you need to cheat on your calories and exercise for a day or so, and come back to it. What has happened is your body is used to the lower calories. I have the problem of not eating enough and putting my body in starvation mode which is hard to get out of. Either way, congrats on the 59lb lost so far

Looking great!

rharredo · April 2013

It takes time to break the habit of thinking in terms of weight---what the scale says, instead of how you look and how clothes fit. But eventually you get out of that thinking. My wife and I have been doing boot camp, cario, spinning, etc for about 9 months now and our weight has gone down a little but I definitely notice a huge difference in how I look. She especially has dropped in size significantly and is much leaner---even though she basically weighs about 5 pounds less than last July. So keep up the good work.

needsalife3 · April 2013

I went skiing and the EXACT same thing happened to me. I didn't track. I did eat more. I ate more bad stuff. But I was skiing 1500-2000 calories a day. And I certainly didn't over eat enough to gain 5 lbs. I put in my Monday weight - up 5 lbs. The next week I only lost 1 lb. Huh? The next week I lost almost 2 lbs - better, but that's a normal weekly loss for me and I want the 5 lbs back. The NEXT week I lost 5 lbs. So it basically took me a month to get back on track and other than the skiing week I didn't do anything different. If you look at the bar graph of my 3 month weight loss and draw a line right from the old losses through these huge jumps you end up on my current weight. So it really is as if it never happened but it took a month to get there. I now realize that there are many reasons for my body freaking out: 1. I don't excercise as a general rule (shhhhh, don't tell anyone on mfp that, they'll freak) so my body freaked when I did and in a big way 2. my muscles were sore, and I mean SORE, the whole week and most of the next week of skiing - sore muscles need to repair. To repair they have to retain water. Water weight is heavy. 3. I ate more and differently than I have in several months. So it was a total body freak out. I've had a month to come to terms with all this and have made two conclusions: 1. It's all part of learning what our bodies need. Now I know about the muscle repair water weight gain and would be mentally prepared for it. 2. I would eat differently. I would still have to eat more because I needed more fuel for that kind of excercise but I would have tackled the whole thing a bit differently. If I had, would the numbers have been different? Maybe not. But I wouldn't have spent 3 weeks beating myself up.

Sorry for the long reply. Hang in there. Don't beat yourself up. Learn from it.

ps. I'm sick of salads too.

rharredo · April 2013

I agree with occassionally giving your body a "calorie overload" as I call it. Sometimes I eat too little over tpp much of a time and my body stores calories/fat for later. when i do that here and there, it seems to re-start my metabolism

Bit the bullet....changed the weight on my tracker...up

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