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

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Angie52732
Angie52732 Posts: 66 Member
in Motivation and Support
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 :smile:

Just needed to vent! thanks for listening
Angie

Replies

  • SairahRose
    SairahRose Posts: 412 Member
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    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
    jittythekitty Posts: 62 Member
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    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
    rharredo Posts: 22
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    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
    needsalife3 Posts: 56 Member
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    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
    rharredo Posts: 22
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    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

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