Seem to be stuck at current weight.

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beth42010
beth42010 Posts: 1
in Health and Weight Loss
When I started my weight loss a year ago I was at 240lbs and am now down to 170lbs. I was mostly doing cardio and very little weight training. In the past month I have been focusing mostly on weight training with still a bit of cardio in the mix. All in all an hour 6 days a week.
For the past two weeks my scale hasn't budged, most days it fluctuates up and down 1-3lbs. I eat 1200 calories a day, I weigh everything and it is mostly a protein and seeds/nuts based diet.
The one thing I've never been certain of is whether to eat my exercise calories back though. I never have, but I've been trying to do some research and everything seems very conflicting.
I just wanted some opinions on if I should be increasing my workouts or just keep going like normal where it's only been a couple of weeks?

Replies

  • beautifulwarrior18
    beautifulwarrior18 Posts: 914 Member
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    You aren't eating enough. That's why you're not losing weight.
  • malcolmjcooper
    malcolmjcooper Posts: 79 Member
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    You aren't eating enough. That's why you're not losing weight.
    I dont get it ? if you eat less as long as you keep it over 1200 why is she not eating enough
    I am not being a smart *kitten* I just don't get it
  • ellashaw77
    ellashaw77 Posts: 5 Member
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    Firsty, well done on your weight loss so far :) Secondly, I've been having the same problem, I was 174lb when I started 2 months ago and the weight came steadily off me until recently (I'm now down to 161lb). I find that if I exercise more and therefore eat more, I lose weight easier. This seems to be what other people say as well, although I'm always very sceptical of eating all my exercise calories! Hope this helps
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
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    You aren't eating enough. That's why you're not losing weight.
    I dont get it ? if you eat less as long as you keep it over 1200 why is she not eating enough
    I am not being a smart *kitten* I just don't get it

    Niether do I..

    To the OP if you recently added in new exercise you are storing Glycogen and water in the muscles for repair.

    Yes eat your exercise calories back you are already in enough of a deficet to lose the weight you want. The exercise calories are needed to fuel your next workout.

    Now the question is what are you doing for weights? If it is a heavy lifting program such as SS or SL you will probably need to increase your calories to fuel your workouts even more...

    At 1700 calories and lifting I find I have extra hungry days too.
  • Roaringgael
    Roaringgael Posts: 339 Member
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    Read this:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/919346-still-think-your-1200-or-less-diet-is-a-good-idea

    its got all the info

    cheers :flowerforyou:
  • eldamiano
    eldamiano Posts: 2,667 Member
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    When I started my weight loss a year ago I was at 240lbs and am now down to 170lbs. I was mostly doing cardio and very little weight training. In the past month I have been focusing mostly on weight training with still a bit of cardio in the mix. All in all an hour 6 days a week.
    For the past two weeks my scale hasn't budged, most days it fluctuates up and down 1-3lbs. I eat 1200 calories a day, I weigh everything and it is mostly a protein and seeds/nuts based diet.
    The one thing I've never been certain of is whether to eat my exercise calories back though. I never have, but I've been trying to do some research and everything seems very conflicting.
    I just wanted some opinions on if I should be increasing my workouts or just keep going like normal where it's only been a couple of weeks?

    Exercise and protein diet does not equal weight loss. Calorie deficit = weight loss.
  • DavidDV78
    DavidDV78 Posts: 6 Member
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    If you don't intake the proper amount of calories, your metabolism reverts to burning muscle instead of fat. As muscle is harder to burn this slows down your metabolism greatly, this is why you are not seeing weght loss. Your metabolism needs fuel to burn fat for muscle growth. Athletes eat and train, not diet and train; this is how they keep lean muscle mass and burn fat. I also would try some HIIT or Crossfit
  • RichardWorth
    RichardWorth Posts: 1
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    Imagine you eat 1200 calories a day and your body needs those 1200 calories just to stay alive (aka the BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate - it's actually more than that as stated below, but let's keep the math simple for now). Then on top of that you exercise and ask your body to burn another 1200 calories that you haven't given it today or yesterday with food. Yes, it can (and will) turn to fat and muscle stores for that, but even that process requires energy, and it can't fuel itself, or otherwise we could just not eat anything and wait around until our body did all the work and reached our goal weight and then start eating again. So 1200-1200 = 0 and you'd be effectively starving your body (as if eating nothing at all) in this extreme example.

    That guideline of about 1200 cal for women (1500 for men) is not "eat this much food a day and your body will live" it's "leave this much unexpended ready energy aka food for your body and it will live in a happy state without starting to shut down systems, including fat loss". But it needs more than that and it will find it. The key is to leave your body to get some percentage of its required energy from other stores (hopefully fat), but not too high a percentage.

    So as it turns out 1200 is not what the body needs to stay alive - there's already a max deficit built-in to that number. So if exercise is added on to that and no food calories are added back to make up for it, the deficit is higher than the maximum and the happy long-term effective and efficient state is not reached.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    2 weeks doesn't mean anything. It's very common to have stalls of up to 3 weeks... it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.

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