Exercising, counting calories NOT loosing weight

Not sure if this will help but my friend has just advised me to get my thyroid checked when at the doctors next, for either an over active or under active thyroid, as sometimes this can play havoc with our bodies. I tend to have the same problem as you.

Your calorie estimates and/or your calories burned estimates may be wrong in each direction. A lot of people find out that they are estimating their intake too low or their exercise calories too high. Or perhaps their base setup on the site is incorrect.

At any rate you'll get better results lifting weights than you will walking the earth. Perhaps you can try that?

Yes, I agree with the last comment. Lift weights. Get a strength training program going and continually build on it. You will begin to increase your lean body mass which will actually require more calories to operate. That should move you in the right direction.

Deb

First, get a check-up with your doctor.

Then get a Heart Rate Monitor.

Try to keep your heart rate above 80% of your target heart rate during exercise. Anything below and you are barely burning any calories at all. Try joining a class. Exercise should have a combination of strength training and cardio. Walking is fine at the beginning of a lifestyle change, but now its time to add more physical activity.

Your body has managed to be able to sustain itself with 1200 per day. Time to change it up a little. A certified trainer can tell you what you should eat to sustain your physical activity.

For three months now I have been counting calories (1,200 per day) and walking over 25 miles every week and I have not lost any weight. What am I doing wrong - my calorie intake is definitely less than my calories burned - anyone got any ideas to help me - I need to lose 20 pounds. I am also using FitBit to track my activity and have been meeting all my goals on there also.

you dont eat enough to lose weight.

my friend was not losing any weight on 1200 a day. She bumped it up to 1400 and lost 4lbs right away

I am a Type 1 diabetic also, so you make a very interesting point.

Well...you know...insulin triggers our bodies to store fat. Since I'm insulin resistant, that means when I eat, I keep pumping out insulin, because I'm not sensitive enough to recognize I've produced enough. The net result is, without an insulin sensitizer, I'm essentially always in fat storage mode.

Before I learned about my PCOS-related insulin resistance, I was constantly accused of lying about how little I was eating or how much I was exercising. Funny enough, I'm one of those people who measurably OVERestimates what I'm eating and UNDERestimates how many calories I'm burning. (For example, MFP cardio estimates are 2-3X what I enter, and I leave strength training at 0 calories.) It seems there's no consideration for anything other than "calories in/calories out". ...And while that may very well be the nuts and bolts of weight loss for most people, it certainly isn't the be all and end all for everyone. Now that my body has a more normal insulin response to food, diet and exercise are finally working, where the same diet and exercise regime only led to weight gain, before I treated the insulin resistance. From having only gained weight, I literally started losing weight FROM THE DAY I started taking an insulin sensitizer.

Have you heard of dia-bulimia? It's a very dangerous practice where insulin-injecting diabetics will withhold their injections, so they can avoid weight gain. Insulin is so tricky. A little too much, and you gain weight on even a modest diet. Of course, withholding insulin is likely to result in nerve and organ damage, and ultimately death. So, while I am not diabetic (I produce too much insulin, in fact, albeit not very sensitive to it), I can almost empathize with the desire to withhold insulin injections. It tells our bodies to store calores as fat...the exact opposite of what we're trying to do by losing weight.

EDIT: By the way, you may be as skeptical as I was about the claims I was "plateauing" from the day I began exercising and cutting calories, without a single pound lost. I think, by definition, that doesn't qualify as a plateau. If you slash ingested calories and burn more calories each day, and 2 months later(!) you're still at your starting weight, that's not a plateau...it's a general lack of weight loss to begin with. A true pateau is after some progress, and it begins to slow or halt. As I said, in my case, all the helpful (sometimes accusatory) advice was wildly misguided. Had I not investigated a possible metabolic problem, I'd still be at my starting weight or above, 5 months later...probably with others surmising all sorts of reasons why my diet and exercise plans were to blame.

To be clear, though, I am brutally honest and realistic about what I am doing. I'm not an emotional eater, nor an overeater. I was athletic, so I know what a hard workout is. Plus, I was super-thin nearly all my adult life, so weight gain, and the inability to lose weight, was obviously something a bit abnormal for me.

Not sure if you have figure out whats going on or not, BUT 1. do you own a weigh scale? my advice is start weighing things if you are not already. chicken, pasta(i weigh mine raw and then cook it separate from my families) when i make a dish I figure out ALL the calories on my own it takes time but it works, i weigh my cheese, even frozen chicken strips or pizza i weigh it biased on the weight of their chicken size. The funny thing is you could be TOO under on your calories I used to not eat enough and it worked the opposite way you really need to get regular snacks in too if you are not to keep your insulin going. also make sure if you are burning calories walking that you are making up for that to you don't want to eat only 1200 cals and then work out and bee only at say 800, or something. If you have done all those things , the next step is to, have the dr test your glucose , hormone and thyroid(which i saw some one mention thyroid) also take measurements if you haven't done anything when I first started it took me a bit to LOOSE weight i lost inches first but now i'm at 15 lbs! since nov. other things you can try is no carbs after a certain hour. or try watching your carbs at each meal like a diabetic does as well as calories!! Good luck and don't give up!

I'm willing to bet it's a combo of two things: 1. You're not eating enough, and 2. You need to switch up your exercises. Go to this site and plug in your info on the left-hand side: http://www.cordianet.com/calculator.htm and pay close attention to CALORIC NEED. I don't know where this 1200 calorie diet came from, but it's complete bunk, and is not a one-size-fits-all diet. You have to provide fuel for your body to burn...if you're not eating enough, then your body will not allow you to lose pounds.

If you don't have access to a gym to lift weights, try setting up your own circuit where you do lunges, crunches, push-ups, etc. Site like self.com and many others have ideas for circuits...if nothing else, burpees will burn some serious calories! Also, workout tapes are great, and can be checked out at most libraries. There's also channels on TV, and websites.

First make sure you're eating enough, then switch up your workout! GOOD LUCK!

Also probably not reevant to you, but I had a similar problem. I suddenly began gaining weight about 5 years ago, and couldn't lose even a pound. Last September I tried again, but this time managed to keep going until I solved the problem. I went from not watching what I ate at all and doing zero exercise, to eating 900-1,500 cal/day, and exercising about 80-120 min/day, every day. For two months, not only didn't I lose weight...

...I gained weight.

Then, i found my way to discussions of PCOS-related insulin resistance, and it all started to make sense. I was diagnosed with PCOS decades ago, but didn't have any significant symptoms. I'd all but forgotten about it until I saw how my sudden weight gain and inability to lose weight were common among other PCOS women, and that PCOS is linked to insulin resistance. Once I started treating the insulin resistance, the weight started to fall off. I've been steadily losing 2-2.5 lbs/week for the past 2.5 months.

I have PCOS as well...I've never done anything to treat the insulin resistance & it has never been advised. I lost over 100lbs. about 3 yrs ago on my own w/just diet & TONS of exercise. I've gained 20 lbs since then & now I'm trying to get that off & it's going NOWHERE!!! If you don't mine my asking, what are you doing to treat the insulin resistance? Thanks.

1) Open up your diary. People can't give you a fully informed answer without seeing what and how much you eat.

2) You may not be eating enough. You do not burn every calorie you take in (which, by your words, it sort of sounds like... but I can't check because I can't see your diary). You still have to NET your goal calories. Eating too low for too long is unhealthy and unsustainable.

3) If you are netting enough calories and you are still not seeing any loss, then go see a doctor.

Like everyone else said, switch up your exercise. There are some great idea's out there and very cheap exercise DVD's. Also, eat 1400 calories a day see if that helps! Good luck!

and WATER WATER WATER!!! :drinker:

First, there is absolutly no credible research to show that not eating enough can cause you to stop losing weight. Most of the information that was gathered on this was based on faulty data. The research that everyone bases this on is a study that was done on women who were eating low calories and could not lose weight and then they were told to eat 400 calories more and they started to lose weight again. So, everyone took this to mean that they were eating too little. The problem in the research was that the women were told to eat 800-1000 calories a day. Their food was not monitored. When the researches upped their calories they gave them specific meal plans to follow. Later in the study they had the women write down what they thought was 800 calories worth of food (the food they were eating at the beginning of the study). When calculated they were eating over 2000 calories. So you can see why they did not lose weight, but started to when they were given a meal plan to follow that was 1200 calories.

Now another thing that can happen when a person goes low calories for a long time, they can start retaining water. When a spike in calories is introduced for a day or week, then the body will shed the water. It is called the WHOOSH effect. It has nothing to do with eating more calories to lose weight, but more to do with shedding water.

Another thing people do not consider is that the more you do an exercise the more you get conditioned to do the exercise. You start burning less calories doing the exercise. That is why the whole idea of eating back calories is faulty. If you are eating 1200 calories a day and you start adding exercise calories so that you can eat more, then you may be destroying your deficit. Lets say that the machine tells you that you burned 500 calories from your cardio session and you add 500 calories to your daily total and eat 1700 calories, but because of your conditioning you are only burning 150 you can see how those extra calories, 350 in this case, can cut in to your deficit and slow your progress. It is best to not even consider exercise calories. Just eat the calories recommended for a sedentary person and consider any extra calories as extra fat loss or icing on the cake if you will.

A few people on here have touched on something. You need to do some resistance training. The ONLY way to maintain Lean Body Mass in a defecit is to tell the body not to get rid of it and that is done by resistance training. You need to have a whole body routine in place. Research has shown that if you are dieting without resistance training, then you could lose upwards of 50% of your weight lost in muscle. That means for every pound off weight you lose only .5lbs of that is actual fat. This is not good.

Another interesting thing they found about cardio is as this: It is not an effective way to lose fat. Let me explain what they found. They found that when a person does cardio they may burn some calories during the session, but they become less active throughout the day so those calories become a wash. Also cardio can cause hunger to go out of control, so people will often find themselves eating more calories than they should.

Use your diet to lose the fat, and your resistance training to maintain the muscle.

I would still recommend going to a doctor and getting a full workup done. They can check your thyroid and other issues. If everything checks out good, then you just need to reavaluate your exercise routine and your diet. Record everything to make sure you are eating at a defecit. Check your measurements. The scale is a poor judge of fat loss. If your waist is getting smaller then you are losing fat.

you dont eat enough to lose weight.

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