OKAY Now I am Pissed

I know that we are supposed to wait....and wait.....and wait for results. I even wrote a blog about the law of compensation (A lot of work.....little pay). but 3.5 weeks at the exact same weight is really pissing me off. How the HELL do you keep motivation if you see nothing. I didn't think dropping 5lbs in 3 weeks would be that difficult (especially since I have a lot more than that to lose.) I get on scale this morning and I am up 1.4lbs insteaad of down 5 (Its not like I dropped 3 then gained 1.5....I just gained). I have watched calories, exercised (4-6 times a week) watched fat. Sodium a little high but come on. Sorry about the rant I am just REALLY PISSED

Lets just be honest with yourself here. You are the reason you are not losing. I looked at the past 14 days and over half of the days you went over on calories and over half you did not do much of a workout. You should at least walk everday to keep your body active. Also, you have not learned what to eat. I am not sure how much you weigh but your calorie consumption setting seemed to be high. I would say you need to have a little bit more control and face the music. You have to face yourself and make a change in how often you work out or walk and the make up of food you are eating. 4k calories in a day is just pure giving up.

Just remember muscle weighs more than fat. Make sure you get your day to relax. Your muscles needs that day to repair itself. Try also switching it up. take up a spinning class or something. If it's repetitive every week your body will get adjusted and not loose that weight. Take something else up to shock your muscles and get them out of that routine. Good luck!:drinker:

One thing I noticed in perusing your food diary, admittedly only 5 or 6 days, was that your sodium levels were pretty high. You might want to try limiting the amount of sodium in your diet more in line with what MFP recommends.

I don't know what your percentages for carbs/protein/fats are set at, but I did see that your fat grams seemed kind of high as well. You might want to play around with the percentages and see if going lower fat and higher carbs works for you. Exercising a lot requires energy food, and carbs give you lots of energy. Some people swear by going lower carb, others eat 50-60% of their calories from carbs, it's a matter of finding a strategy that works for you.

Currently I'm at 50%carbs/30%protein/20%fat and it works well, as I exercise a lot.

You can adjust the percentages of your calories in the My Home section under goals,/change goals/ custom.

Hitting a plateau IS frustrating. But keep at it!

And also, just as an aside, muscle is more dense than fat so takes up less space. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but the pound of fat will be much much bigger.

First of all, thank you for sharing your diary with us... and for your honesty.

With this information, I summarized your last three weeks and did a little simple math. It goes like this:

One pound of fat = 3500 calories.
If you want to LOSE one pound in a week, you must REDUCE your calories by an average of 500 per day.
This can be done by adjusting the calories you eat (IN) or the calories you burn (OUT).
You can burn an extra 500 calories per day through exercise without adjusting your food intake (staying at 1860/day in your case).
Or if you're not exercising at all, you can eat 500 fewer calories a day.
Personally, I try to balance the two.
Some days I'll burn 500 through exercise and not adjust my food (after all, I need the food energy to keep me strong for my workout).
Other days I'll reduce my food calories by not more than 200 per day, and burn the rest through exercise.
I would never, EVER reduce my calories only (i.e. 500/day). That would be unhealthy, emotionally painful, and make me very sad!

So let's look at your last three weeks.

From August 11-17 your calories IN (food) was 17,702 and your calories OUT (exercise) was 1307. Your MFP recommended calories IN is 13,020 per week (1860 per day). So... that means you were OVER by 4682 calories (13,020 - 17,702). But you exercised, so that means you can "borrow" the calories you were over in your food from your exercise calories burned (4682 - 1307). Now that gives you a new total - 3375. But that's still over by 3375. Remember, one pound of fat equals 3500 calories. What does that mean? It means you gained one pound during the week of August 11th.

The week of August 4th was better for you. Total calories IN (food) was 16,634 and total calories OUT (exercise) was 4140. Using the same formula (13,020-16,634), you were still over at the end of the week by 3614 calories. But the better news is that you burned 4140 calories which means you can now make an adjustment (3614 - 4140). Now you're UNDER by 526 calories! Better news but still not great since you're aiming to reach 3500. During the week of August 4th, you broke even.

The week of July 28th was another break-even week for you:

Total calories IN (food) - 15,336
MFP recommended calories - 13,020
Total calories OUT (exercise) - 2202
13,020 - 15,336 = 2316 (over)
2202 - 2316 = 114 (the total number of calories you went OVER at the end of the week)

If the numbers are correct, you've lost one pound in the last three weeks.

But if you've shown a gain in the last three weeks, it could be for any number of reasons from water retention to stress (look up and read about the cortisol hormone).

This very simple mathematical formula is what I've been following and it is accurate every single week. Just remember...

If you want to LOSE one pound a week, reduce your weekly calories by 3500.

If you want to GAIN one pound a week, increase your weekly calories by 3500.

It's that simple.

Good luck to you! And don't stress over small indulgences from time to time. We're only human! :flowerforyou:

Shane - this is just MY journey and is not aimed at you or anyone else, but the psychology lesson might help you like it helped me. I like your tag "It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one" and so I feel that I can offer this to you and you won't take it the wrong way, but sometimes our psychology is more of a problem than *what* we are actually doing.

So here goes - and to help me remember it daily, I have a keyring with the Serenity Prayer on it (Grant me the SERENITY to ACCEPT the things I cannot change, the COURAGE to change the things I can, and the WISDOM to know the difference between the two).

Sometimes it's hard to hear what we don't want to hear, and even harder to handle what we don't want to have to face, but I was taught a long time ago about "up-front-honesty-with-yourself-above-all-others". It just meant that if I could HONESTLY look myself in the face but *couldn't* HONESTLY say that I was doing my best, then I had no-one else to blame but me.

But if I *could* HONESTLY say that I had done everything right to the best knowledge that *I* had at the time and it still wasn't working, then I had to do either one of two things:

1. I had to either go get help to find out what I didn't know to get me the results that I needed - AND THEN PROPERLY IMPLEMENT IT, or

2, if having done step 1 properly, I would just have to wait and KEEP DOING WHAT I KNOW TO BE RIGHT because eventually the right results would show up - if I stopped or gave up, then just as the right results would start to turn up, they would stop because I stopped.

So to help with this (and to give me patience) I would just settle back into doing my "RIGHT" thing, contenting myself that my old lifestyle would only bring old lifestyle results which had no place in my new lifestyle - I just needed to have patience to allow the situation do it's thing and properly process itself - some things just can't be rushed, and actually, are better off if they aren't. This was the "Courage to Change" part of the Serenity Prayer.

And If I've HONESTLY done these two things, and the results aren't what I expected them to be, then that's a sign to me that I have to have grace and just acknowledge and accept that sometimes this is how life goes, (This was the "ACCEPT" part of the Serenity Prayer) and be thankful that at least I have some better habits in my life. And that even though it may not be exactly what I want or expected it to be, at least it's a far cry from what I had and the road that that was leading me down - in other words, I just had to shift my priorities from the Goal to the Byproduct - sort of like aiming for the moon and landing in the stars.

I tell you this as I look at my now 40 yr old body that is just beginning a body sculpting career, and I tell you, sometimes I hold grave doubts about this body being able to look how I want it to look when I'm through (I don't know if skin has that much elasticity to get me elegantly into a bikini like a 20- or even 30-something!).

But what I *do* know is that the above formula has worked for me on many other aspects of my life and so I continue to put in my best effort knowing that even if I don't get there in looks, (wrinkly skinny older woman doesn't sound particularly attractive to me), at least I'll be fit and and healthy and way off death's door which is where my old lifestyle was leading me - a much better outcome to my way of thinking.

And with being able to come to terms with all this, and actually *LIVE* these principles rather than just talk about them, I can fully accept the accolade of being called "Wise", because I really *do* know the difference between being courageous enough to make the right changes, and knowing when to be gracious and just accept that what is, just is.

I've just recently applied this principle to my weight loss journey (knowing that most time I have done the right things, and that sometimes I haven't) and so being honest with myself, I have to own the fact that I have been responsible for this plateau that's been with me since 25th June. But holding to my process, and owning my responsibility and being courageous enough to do something about it (I hired a personal trainer for a few sessions) and just today after a week of "doing it right", I have moved through my plateau and am only a little way off my next mini-goal.

Shane, I hope you can take something from this that will help you move through this tough time, but let me tell you, this process never fails. It's not always easy to embrace the principles of being "up-front-honest-with-yourself", and sometimes even harder to do anything about it, but if you really set your ideas on what you'd like to see for yourself and then adopt this principle with a surety of heart, then you can be absolutely sure to reach your goals (even if they change a little along the way) - let me tell you from someone who knows, it is sooooo totally worth it.

All the best to you.

Kind Regards,

Joy.
:flowerforyou:

Oh my . . . that was a mouthful to Joy.