I'm Freaking out ????

I'm no expert either, but you're way under the amount you need to eat. It sounds like you don't need to lose pounds, but build muscle and for that you need food. I'd research about what you need. maybe a visit with a dietician? It sounds like you're burning too many calories so your body is holding on to every bit of everything it can and is destroying your muscle because as far as your body is concerned, fat burns fewer calories than muscle and is therefore more essential. Please eat more, eat protein.

Unless you're training for a half or a marathon, I wouldn't think that much cardio is even remotely necessary on a daily basis. Work in some strength training. Don't be afraid of food. You actually will HAVE to eat more the more you're training.... Realistically, you can't both lose fat and build lean muscles at the same time.... you'll have some loss here and some gains there but if you want to focus on losing fat... focus on that first... but the main way to do that is by watching what goes in your mouth -- and being realistic about it! You HAVE to have a baseline in which to start from. Sounds like you know what you're doing.... have you look at iifym.com (If it fits your macros). Maybe that'd be a good place to start, but.... man alive you couldn't get me to do that much cardio. I'm lucky to get two hours of cardio in a WEEK. I'm good for 30 minutes and like to do HIIT and weight lifting. Doing legs for me at the gym is LIKE cardio because my heart rate is UP THERE!

But like I said, 2 hours of cardio and then another hour of weights at home... is too much. Your body NEEDS the fuel and is going to hold onto everything you got because you're not feeding it enough! I went from 166 to 130 in about 5 months with eating MOSTLY clean (I'm a VERY busy mom of 3 boys) but I only worked out an hour a day MAX and never on the weekends unless I skipped a weekday. Most workouts were done in about 50 minutes. Maybe it's time to mix up your entire workout repertoire?

I'm assuming your husband also wants you to be healthy, correct? It doesn't sound like you're thinking about what your body needs. Like you see one way to achieve this perfect body, and that's by not feeding it and over-working it with cardio.

Take a break, reevaluate what you want and need. If you are starting to have legitimate fears in regards to eating, address them NOW professionally. Please, it can spiral out of control if you aren't honest with yourself.

After you've taken a break, do some research on what you need to do to reach your goals. It's pretty simple, actually, and takes TIME. Quick fixes aren't fixes at all. Nobody can last doing the program you're doing. I weight about 160 and I'm 5'7". I typically net about 1800 cals/day. Sometimes I'm a little under, and sometimes I'm a lot over. I'm steadily losing. Lots of protein is what I focus on. I lift 3x a week, and that's about it. This shouldn't feel like torture!

Good luck.

Hi all.
I have been trying to lose weight for the past two years since I got married. I did so awesome starting at 185 my highest, and then dropping to 150. I was eating clean, brown rice, fish/chicken and lots of veggies and fruits... Gym every day for two hours. Weight training and cardio.
Then I hit a major plateau. Stopped losing, moved across the country to the east coast, adjusted to being away from my hubby. (We live in two different cities, he works I got to school) and working full time.
I love working out, have a treadmill weights and all of it! But find it hard lately to keep motivated. I gained about 10 lbs back.
For the past five days I've been tracking, and I reviewed and it says I'm 13000 calories UNDER my net goal.
I'm like afraid of food lately. Summer is rolling around, I wanna surprise my husband with an amazing body, I'm 22 by the way.

For the past five days, in the morning I eat a grapefruit or protein shake. Then I do up to 2 hours on the treadmill, incline 15.0 and 4.0-4.5 always changing to get my heart rate up and down. Then I eat vegetable soup, 1 cup and a huge salad. Fills me up and tastes delicious!
Then I have 1 oz natural almonds, or 1 cup green grapes. And I don't eat after 6.

Then at night I do some small weights, ab workouts for an hour or 30 minutes depending.
I haven't been weighing myself cause I hate the scale, but I really dislike my body and how it's not changing I feel like I keep wasting time and I'm so upset.

This time I'm determined to do it before summer...but I'm worried I'm hurting myself . I get hungry at times, but refuse to eat late, and I feel like when I do I'll get fat all over again. I know this won't happen... But sigh. Food has become my enemy I swear.

Perhaps someone can shed some light.... Will I lose dramatically? Gain it back? I plan on doing this for a month or two...then slowly reintegrate fish/chicken.
Just wanna feel good/healthy and beautiful!


I'd also like to find some motivating friends

You hit a plateau because for whatever reason you were not creating a calorie deficit. However, food is not the enemy and it saddens me to see you view it as such. Food is wonderful, amazing and meant to be enjoyed - not just some foods, but any foods you like! The key is moderation. Until you get to your realistic healthy goal weight, you can still enjoy any food you want as long as you create a calorie deficit. To aid you in that goal, count calories to stay within the goals set for you by MFP. I would make one suggestion on those goals though. The default is set to 50:30:20 (carb, fat, protein). Go into and reset those manually to 40:30:30 which slightly decreases your carbs but increases your protein. That little change can give noticeable results quickly and it is better for your body which needs the protein during weight loss to minimize lean muscle loss. Increase your protein with lean meats, protein powder, Greek yogurt, nuts, and eggs. If you focus on protein, it is hard to go over on carbs BUT don't get into the problem of too low of carbs either. Both sugar and sodium will cause water weight gain so those are two things to watch your intake. It really does not matter when you eat. The recommendation for weight loss is to include a good multi-vitamin as well to help ensure you get your daily micro nutrients.

Ok, as for the exercise you are doing. I can relate! I have and continue to do so but not daily do 2 hr stretches of exercising BUT not near the cardio you are doing. Your body will adapt to that level of cardio making it ineffective for weight loss without increasing the intensity or duration. In the short term, 2 hrs may work but in the long term it is not sustainable. I created my own exercise weekday routine that basically follows as 10 min walk, 15 min stairs (cardio), 10 min walk, 10 - 15 min elliptical, 10 min walk, 10 min warm-up, 10 min walk, 15 - 20 min strength training, 10 min walk, 20 min (squats, crunches, stability ball, kettlebell), then tracking my steps for the rest of the day to get to at least 10,000 steps (3.79 mi) or more. The total session without walking factored in gives be a calorie burn of about 900 calories and I can adjust if short on time the 10 min walking portions. I can also break up the routine into three sessions if necessary for the day. I aim to complete my basic routine in the morning on a fast which helps to burn stored fat. Now that I am under 5 lbs to my goal weight, exercising on a fast is not as important but I don't like exercising with anything on my stomach. I give my body a break on the weekends with an exercise goal of 500 calories that can essentially be achieved by my warm-up exercises and walking.

Body image: You are sending yourself a very powerful message to fail in your weigh loss journey. I know it is hard but find one good thing you like about your body and tell yourself "Dang, that looks good!". Forget focusing on a time limit for losing the weight. Focus instead on your improving health and well being. The weight loss will come on its own when you focus on these. All the added stress you are mentally experiencing is hindering your weigh loss. Find an activity you enjoy rather than spending 2 hrs on a treadmill. Perhaps try yoga to help reduce your stress level. Anything that helps you reduce your stress is going to ultimately help you lose weight.

Time based goals (must lose by summer) are going to be stressful and aggravating and usually lead to failure if you can remove the emotion from it.

Guess what makes it harder to lose weight/fat? Stress.

And frequent and/or intense exercise.

And under-eating too much for your level of activity.

I sure hope you are sleeping well, or that's another stress.
Hope you are eating nutrition food too, or that's another stress.
Hope you don't have any food sensitivities, or seasonal allergies, or that's another stress.
Hope life doesn't have much stress for you. Ya right.

You might want to be very clear in separating 2 things.

Diet is for weight loss, done right only fat loss, done wrong muscle mass loss and setup for future failure.
Exercise is for heart health and body improvement, done right can encourage fat loss, done wrong can encourage muscle mass loss.

Are you even close to following MFP's plan correctly, by eating the majority of your exercise calories back, or you think bigger deficit is better?

If you do think that, why not just stop eating until the weight is gone?

Whatever reasons you come up with, which probably aren't even all of them, you are doing to yourself right now anyway, just took longer.

As to that much exercise, another fact.

Exercise if done right tears the body down.
Rest for recovery and repair is what builds it back up, stronger if diet allows.

Where is your rest? Recovery takes even longer when in a diet.

This 100%.

Yup, you are freaking out. Time to breathe, relax and get back to some kind of balance.

I'm sure you realise that you're going over the top in terms of exercise and undereating, but for me I think the main battlefield is what's going on in your mind. Do some soul-searching to try and work out what's going on in your head and challenge any unhealthy bits. Nurture yourself in whatever healthy ways work for you and make sure you reach out to friends and family for support (they're probably concerned about you).

Best of luck with it all!