2 weeks in & feeling discouraged!

Hi, basically what it sounds like is happening is that you've completely screwed up your metabolism by eating far too little.

Try not to feel discouraged. Sometimes things like water retention can obscure the progress you see on the scale. When you start a new exercise program, your muscles retain water to repair themselves. Make sure you're taking measurements as well as weighing. I started off with 30DS as well, and in the very beginning lost inches more quickly than pounds.

I do want to warn you that you may be overdoing things a bit. There really is no need to exercise seven days a week. Your body needs some time to recover. That plus only eating 1200 calories could make you burn out early on and might cause you to binge at some point, especially if you're used to eating 3500+ calories. Are you eating back your exercise calories? If not, then you are netting much lower than 1200 calories, which really isn't healthy.

Try taking a day or two off of the 30DS and doing something else. Also, make sure you are measuring yourself. You could be losing inches instead of pounds.

^^ definitely could be gaining muscle right now, your body needs some time to adjust. The scale will never measure how much you have accomplished so far. Just by giving up going out to eat and quiting alcohol is a huge accomplishment. You already have started this, don't give up and make sure you take measurements. I sugest you start keeping a journal, write what you ate, what you thought, what you passed up on, your measurements, your weight, workouts, etc for the day. I take this one day at a time. I always say to myself "just for today" . you will begin to see results. what is the calories mfp allows you before you input exercise?? I am curious on that. It gives me 1200 but I am bigger than you are. Maybe step it up more on your workouts?? or make sure your settings are correct for how active you are lightly active, sedentary, etc. Don't give up, you got lots of support here.

I guess I'm just having a hard time understanding why I would lose weight eating more calories when I haven't even lost anything at 1200?

I kinda figure it like this - our bodies are clever S-O-B's. We are genetically "trained" to survive, which means if your body thinks all of a sudden there's a famine going on it shuts down everything it can and tries to keep some "backup." Kind of like those weeks where you're at the end of the paycheck and you're running low on gas so you start coasting a lot, not accelerating fast, not going anywhere if you can help it, etc. so you use as little gas as possible.

Or you could kinda think of it like a fire - which burns better, a tiny little log or a bunch of wood? Of course you don't want a bonfire, so you have to balance out and find that middle place.


Also, I think what some folks are trying to say is "bad" about going from 3500 calories a day to 1200 is how sustainable it is. Unless you want to see saw back and forth, you can't just "diet" to get to where you want and then stop eating that way. You'll just end up back in the same place, maybe even heavier. What you have to do is essentially change the way you eat, period. Change your "habits" permanently. Which, trust me, is hard as hell to do. I've been working on that for 20+ years and for the first time I feel like I'm actually DOING it. I'll let you know in a couple more years how it worked, LOL.