Feeling Frustrated with the scale

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laclar123
laclar123 Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I am feeling very frustrated with the scale theses days. I'm working out everyday in some fashion - either cardio (like Spinning, Elipitcal or walking) and/or lifting weights. Over the last two weeks I have not lost a single pound or gained a pound. My average exercise per day is about 75 minutes and by HRM says I'm buring about 800-1000 calories. MFP has my calories set at 1250 - most days I eat about 1200. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps my calorie intake per day is wrong. I have my activity level set at sedentary since I sit all day at work. I am down a total of 65 pounds from my highest weight and have about 55 more pounds to go so I want to get this right.

Any thoughts on what is going wrong???
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Replies

  • psych101
    psych101 Posts: 1,842 Member
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    Are you eating back your exercise calories?

    I'd say you need to eat more
  • laclar123
    laclar123 Posts: 3 Member
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    I eat back some - may 100 or 200. I work out at night after work and dont get home until 730 so I dont want to eat a huge amount of calories before going to bed in a few hours.
  • sunsetzen
    sunsetzen Posts: 268 Member
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    You eat 1200 but burn 1000 and only eat back 1-200 calories? For a net of 400 calories?
  • psych101
    psych101 Posts: 1,842 Member
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    Timing of your meals doesn't make any difference.

    You're not eating enough hun. Your body needs fuel to keep going - you're surviving on like 400 calories.

    The way that MFP is set up is that you already have a calorie goal set with the deficit you need to lose weight - when you workout you make that deficit larger so you need to eat back most if not all of those calories you burned.
  • STC1188
    STC1188 Posts: 101 Member
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    Sounds like you are burning out of energy and your workouts are probably suffering, which means you are burning fewer calories in your workout. Also, you are probably stressing shooting out all sorts of cortisol, leading to water retention and subcutaneous weight issues.

    Eat more or work out less. Your body needs fuel and the chance to recover.
  • leon0897
    leon0897 Posts: 35 Member
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    Yeah based on info that I read from other users I would say two things, either you hit a plateau and you just need to keep plodding along and eventually you will breakthrough or you are starving yourself based on not consuming enough calories after workouts. I know I was stuck at a weight for awhile too so I know how frustrating it can be. I literally just broke through this morning after working out.
  • georgesanchez7737
    georgesanchez7737 Posts: 61 Member
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    I agree that you are starving yourself, if you are using a HRM to get your exercise cals (as far as I understand that is one of the most accurate means) you need to eat them back. try it for a few weeks and you should see the weight start to melt again.

    I started this 2 days ago and just got done with a 35 minute jog ion the treadmill and was able to go faster and was pouring sweat, it might be the cortisol going down and water weight leaving!!

    Best of luck!
  • laclar123
    laclar123 Posts: 3 Member
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    Thanks everyone. I agree with everyone, I think I am eating too few calories and need to eat them back. Going to start trying that tomorrow.
  • akaMrsmojo
    akaMrsmojo Posts: 762 Member
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    Think of your body like a car, the more you drive the more fuel you need. You will run out of gas and damage your body. Eat all your calories back and see what happens. Time does not matter.
  • polluxy
    polluxy Posts: 31
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    I have to chime in here: I hate it when I see these threads pop up where someone is frustrated with stalled weight loss and everyone jumps and says:

    "You're not losing weight because you're not eating enough."

    False. That is a ridiculously silly statement. If you're consistently netting less than 400 kcal/day that's physiologically the equivalent of anorexia or orthorexia. (I'm not saying you have an eating disorder --- those are psychological conditions --- I'm saying that the effects on your body are roughly equivalent). If your food intake and your calories burned are correct, there is no way you are not burning fat. You are probably retaining water and you are probably burning slightly less than you think you are due to less energy, as one of the other comments pointed out. But it is a thermodynamic impossibility that you are not losing fat (and probably some muscle mass too) due to undereating combined with lots of exercise. If you were to continue like this for another couple weeks, I guarantee that you would see the retained water drop off as your muscles get accustomed to your workouts, and you would start to see that fat loss reflected in the scale with a massive weight drop.

    However, this is neither healthy nor sustainable. I wholeheartedly agree with the comments saying you need to eat more. You'll lose weight more slowly (overall) by eating at a 250 or 500 kcal deficit (0.5 - 1 lb/week) than you would by starving yourself, but you'll also maintain your muscle mass, not have water retention issues that can frustrate and demotivate you when weighing yourself, have more energy for workouts, not have nutrient deficiencies or a host of other health issues, and won't suffer the psychological effects of undereating. That's a good tradeoff. :)

    Good luck, stick with it!
  • Siansonea
    Siansonea Posts: 917 Member
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    I have to chime in here: I hate it when I see these threads pop up where someone is frustrated with stalled weight loss and everyone jumps and says:

    "You're not losing weight because you're not eating enough."

    False. That is a ridiculously silly statement. If you're consistently netting less than 400 kcal/day that's physiologically the equivalent of anorexia or orthorexia. (I'm not saying you have an eating disorder --- those are psychological conditions --- I'm saying that the effects on your body are roughly equivalent). If your food intake and your calories burned are correct, there is no way you are not burning fat. You are probably retaining water and you are probably burning slightly less than you think you are due to less energy, as one of the other comments pointed out. But it is a thermodynamic impossibility that you are not losing fat (and probably some muscle mass too) due to undereating combined with lots of exercise. If you were to continue like this for another couple weeks, I guarantee that you would see the retained water drop off as your muscles get accustomed to your workouts, and you would start to see that fat loss reflected in the scale with a massive weight drop.

    However, this is neither healthy nor sustainable. I wholeheartedly agree with the comments saying you need to eat more. You'll lose weight more slowly (overall) by eating at a 250 or 500 kcal deficit (0.5 - 1 lb/week) than you would by starving yourself, but you'll also maintain your muscle mass, not have water retention issues that can frustrate and demotivate you when weighing yourself, have more energy for workouts, not have nutrient deficiencies or a host of other health issues, and won't suffer the psychological effects of undereating. That's a good tradeoff. :)

    Good luck, stick with it!

    I know, right? It seems like every time I see a thread like this, the same people chime in and say "you need to eat more calories!" Sometimes I honestly think they're just trying to sabotage people. I think the vast majority of these "I'm not losing weight" issues are simple math errors. Underestimating calories consumed combined with overestimating calories burned is probably the biggest single factor in stalled weight loss.
  • psych101
    psych101 Posts: 1,842 Member
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    Sometimes I honestly think they're just trying to sabotage people.



    oh no! I have been foiled! My master plan is to sabotage everyone else so they will all be overweight and I will look skinny by default!!

    .....
  • cafeaulait7
    cafeaulait7 Posts: 2,459 Member
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    If someone is really suddenly netting 400 calories a day over many days, I'd say the body might think something scary is up. I do think folks slow their own metabolism that way. That's not to say they won't lose weight, and I'm sure they could get their metabolism to change again, but 400 calories a day is pretty darned drastic, imho.

    Don't let your body think it is actually starving. Starvation is not 1500 calories, for the record ;) 400, though? Hmmm.
  • tinana_RN
    tinana_RN Posts: 541 Member
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    Timing of your meals doesn't make any difference.

    You're not eating enough hun. Your body needs fuel to keep going - you're surviving on like 400 calories.

    The way that MFP is set up is that you already have a calorie goal set with the deficit you need to lose weight - when you workout you make that deficit larger so you need to eat back most if not all of those calories you burned.



    This ^^^^
  • Thommothebear
    Thommothebear Posts: 25 Member
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    I had the same thing, I started to eat back more calories and started losing again
  • graysmom2005
    graysmom2005 Posts: 1,882 Member
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    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/872212-you-re-probably-eating-more-than-you-think
  • thesophierose
    thesophierose Posts: 754 Member
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    You need to eat a lot more... add more calories into the meals you DO eat. :/

    Or you are underestimating food intake.
  • born2drum
    born2drum Posts: 731 Member
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    You should be eating closer to 2000kcals if you truly do burn 800-1000kcals per cardio session.
  • Siansonea
    Siansonea Posts: 917 Member
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    Am I the only one who took math in school? Eating tons of calories is how we got in the situation of needing to lose weight in the first place. It sure didn't "jump start" our metabolisms then, now did it? And look at, oh, every famine ever. Those people are/were REALLY in starvation mode, and guess what, none of them had trouble losing weight. Could it be that if you eat fewer calories than your body burns, you'll lose weight? Can it really be that simple?

    Yeah, it pretty much is that simple.
  • marcelus92
    marcelus92 Posts: 1
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    Definitely do not start eating more. Whatever you are doing now has been proven to be effective from your long term success losing a lot of weight.

    2 weeks is very short term in terms of looking at the scale. Your actual weight can be affected by other factors such as salt intake, carbs intake and if you drank coffee or alcohol lately.

    Don't change anything, just keep doing what you have been doing for many months and be more patient about the weighing scale. I am sure you will see a big loss in the next couple of weeks after the 2 weeks that seemed to show no progress, assuming you don't change.

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