Lost too much weight last week.

Hello all,

I'm fairly new here and was hoping for some advice. Here's a little history so you know where I'm coming from... When I first started my weight loss I was doing great and was dropping around 2 pounds a week. I have a lot to go, so it was a little slow for my liking, but from what I've read, you really shouldn't lose any more than that. I was going along at that pace for about 10 weeks when suddenly it stopped. I went two weeks and only lost half a pound. During those first 10 weeks I wasn't following any kind of strict diet, I wasn't using my food diary at all. All I did was completely cut out diet soda, coffee and any other kind of sugary drinks and cut down heavily on my carbs (I was a carb junkie). For the last week I've been following the food diary and despite being allowed 1850 calories per day, have only been eating an average of 1325 calories. Anyway, I got on the scale this morning and lost 9 pounds in the past week. I don't know how accurate it is, but my scale said my "lean mass" dropped 17 pounds and my "fat mass" increased 8 pounds. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice. I made my "food diary" public in case anyone wants to take a look.

Thanks,
Andrew

Replies

  • 126siany
    126siany Posts: 1,386 Member
    I wouldn't trust your scale to accurately measure anything other than your weight, so don't worry about what is says regarding body composition.

    1325 is very low for a man. It's generally recommended that men stay above 1500.

    Unless you have a great deal to lose, it seems unlikely that you lost 9 pounds of fat or muscle. A lot of that was probably water.
  • healthygreek
    healthygreek Posts: 2,137 Member
    Eat ALL your calories!!!!
  • Iron_Feline
    Iron_Feline Posts: 10,750 Member
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1175494-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

    Read this and EAT MORE! :flowerforyou:

    Scales aren't great at measuring fat / lean mass - and since you didn't drop last week you can expect a little higher loss - but yeah I'd guess some water, some fat and some muscle loss.

    You want to make sure you get a decent amount of protein in to help minimise muscle loss - resistance exercises will help with that, weights or even progressive body weight exercises.
  • blink1021
    blink1021 Posts: 1,118 Member
    I agree 1325 is low even for me I would be starving. Like you said you have a lot to lose so you may lose quite a lot at one time especially eating only 1325. I have a lot to lose too and I lost 6lbs last week and it probably had a lot to do with water retention. I would only start to worry if you are dropping a lot of weight consistently in short periods of time.
  • davemunger
    davemunger Posts: 1,139 Member
    Your weight can vary a lot day to day due to water content. I would imagine that you caught yourself at some hight points the last couple weeks and this week you caught your weight at a low point. Scales are notoriously inaccurate at measuring body fat so as others have said, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in that measure either.

    The main way you are going to improve your ratio of lean to fat is to make sure you keep exercising as you lose weight. That way you will lose the fat and not the muscle.
  • agaraffa
    agaraffa Posts: 27 Member
    I do have a lot to loose... I started at approx 317 and my goal is 170, so about 150 pounds. I think you're probably right as far as the water weight goes... from what I'm reading, too much sodium can cause water retention and until the past week I never paid any attention at all to my sodium intake, so it was probably through the roof.
  • agaraffa
    agaraffa Posts: 27 Member
    Eat ALL your calories!!!!

    I'd love to eat more. The problem I'm running into is that a lot of times I seem to come close to going over in one of the other categories (carbs, fat, sodium or sugar) before I come close to my maximum allowed calories. My goal is (with the exception of protein) to end every day with all green numbers on my food diary. Should I not be paying as close attention to those secondary numbers?
  • Iron_Feline
    Iron_Feline Posts: 10,750 Member
    Eat ALL your calories!!!!

    I'd love to eat more. The problem I'm running into is that a lot of times I seem to come close to going over in one of the other categories (carbs, fat, sodium or sugar) before I come close to my maximum allowed calories. My goal is (with the exception of protein) to end every day with all green numbers on my food diary. Should I not be paying as close attention to those secondary numbers?

    Think of fats and proteins as minimums and then once you hit them don't worry about what else you eat. Unless you have a medical problem don't worry too much about sodium and just ignore sugar. You can change what you see on your food page using the diary settings.

    I track, calories, carbs, fat, protein, calcium and fiber.

    If you have trouble eating more food try more calorie dense food such as nuts and peanut butter - have some ice cream after dinner etc,