me. it seems like any time i come off a rest period and go back to lifting i pick up four or five pounds. back at the start, it used to equalize itself after a while - i'd eat myself silly on something, pee for canada all night long and wake up lighter by at least those three or four pounds. it seems to be common.

I agree with crabada, you are retaining water because of beginning strength training. One month isn't really enough time to gauge your progress. It is only 12 5x5 workouts. If your TDEE is truly 1484 and that is the amount of the calories that you are consuming, then mathematically you would NOT have any loss on either the scale or tape measure. You would be doing a recomposition of your body; which unfortunately is a slow, but worthwhile process. I think that katro111 did a recomp; maybe she can chime in with her experience.

Stick with it. Get stronger and everything else will work itself out in time

1) like previously mentioned, water weight can do strange things.
2) are you actually bigger in certain areas (measuring tape, comparison photos etc.) Going by how you feel can be really impacted by perception.
3) This one is hard without an open diary and without stats (Height, weight, goal weight, goal weight lose rate etc) but in all honesty how accurate is your logging. A bit of olive oil is a LOT of calories. If you are eating less than you burn you will lose fat. It might not show up on the scale immediately (as scale weight is all of your weight not just fat) but it will happen.

They said they didn't weigh so weight is irrelevant. But yes if you retain water, you will be bigger too.

Just for shiggles I looked it up. Density of fat is 0.9 g/ml so it is 10% less dense than water and would take up 10% more space than an equal amount of water. So you would see an increase in measurements but water would cause 10% less change (assuming it was all water weight gain).

mimi337 wrote: »

Crabada if I's been working out for almost 6 months and lost 17 pounds and my clothes felt the same I would be completely depressed and probably stop lifting.

Um, thanks?

As the wonderful women in the group can attest, I've had my moments of being completely depressed about it. But quitting isn't going to get me to my goals, and I've wasted enough of my life being overweight. So I'm just going to keep plodding along.

mimi337 wrote: »

I do not recall this water weight gain but maybe I age faster than I thought!

idk anything at all about you of course, but speaking from within spitting distance of 50 myself, i think it is possible your expectations might benefit from a bit of a reset. especially when you're adding lifting into the mix.

as far as quitting, i guess that's just a personal call. my experience isn't all that long-term i guess, since i got focused on cardio and weight loss in around october last year, and made my first visit to a weight room last march, and started formally doing sl about halfway through june.

but for what my input is worth from that background: it's been pretty hard to make a lot of progress with strength while also eating at deficit and fighting the fat. come down to it in my own life, i've realised it's just one of those tradeoffs i have to pick between. if i want to i can still go for what got me motivated originally, which was getting back to the weight that i weighed at 20 and 30 and 35, just to see how it feels and/or looks. or i can lift, and keep my focus on strength.

but i no longer think i can do both as a concentrated project. and i've also come to realise that even if i do keep losing weight while lifting and somehow end up back at my original goal, 120-pound lifter me at 50 is still never going to look like whatever 120-pound non-lifter me looked like at 20.

katro111's TDEE number looks better to me. It's all the calories your body needs to function properly including the exercise. You are discouraged that you think you have muscles-fat and not lean muscle but it takes more than one month of lifting and deficit eating to recomp your body. If you are eating at a deficit and trying to gain muscle simultaneously that is what you are trying to do. Its a slow process. You need to eat more calories to gain lean muscle mass and eat at a deficit to lose body fat. Eating at a deficit while lifting helps you retain muscle while you try to shed fat. You've heard of newbie gains, no doubt. New lifters do sometimes experience some muscle gain while eating at a deficit and some of those gains are probably water retention as your muscle repairs itself. It happens in the beginning, when you get DOMS the most. You might indeed feel and be bigger because you still have the fat plus your muscles are getting bigger. But if you stick with it the fat will slowly go down and the muscle that you preserved will emerge.Then you can really concentrate on building that muscle for a leaner body. I don't know what your diet looks like. You say it's clean but what do your carbs look like? Are you getting them from vegetables and fruit or are you eating bread and pasta a lot? Even whole grain bread and pasta (which I was eating every day previously) makes me retain too much water.

crabada wrote: »

mimi337 wrote: »

Crabada if I's been working out for almost 6 months and lost 17 pounds and my clothes felt the same I would be completely depressed and probably stop lifting.

Um, thanks?

As the wonderful women in the group can attest, I've had my moments of being completely depressed about it. But quitting isn't going to get me to my goals, and I've wasted enough of my life being overweight. So I'm just going to keep plodding along.

So, something about my response has been bothering me so I'm adding this:

Yes, it can be depressing to not see the changes for which I'm working so hard. But I'd hate for anyone who reads this to get the impression that I'm disappointed with losing 17 lbs. in less than 5 months (mid-August to now). Because I actually think that's pretty freaking great.


Not fishing for compliments or affirmations or fist bumps (though I do love a good fist bump). I just didn't like the impression that my initial response gave, so I'm clarifying.

And now I'm done, and moving on.

17 lbs since mid august is amazing. That means you lost .85/week including the holidays. For every person that would be disappointed in that there are several (me!, many of my friends) that would be ecstatic.

@Mimi --

I have a couple observations.

First, it doesn't look like you're getting much protein. I have no idea if this would affect the water retention, but it will certainly have a direct affect on your weight lifting results.

Second, life it too short to spend the time and effort doing things you don't enjoy. If you don't like weight lifting, don't care about strength as an end goal, and feel like it's not helping you in your weight loss, why not try out some other activities you'd like better?

I know from my own experience that when I don't like doing something, I often don't actually put in 100% effort. However, it's not always something I'm conscious of (not) doing, so then I end up scratching my head about why I'm not getting the results I want and/or think I should be getting. You may be surprised by how fun and joy go hand in hand with success in weight loss. Yes, it's not easy, but I also don't think it also shouldn't be quite so hard.

Good luck!
Courtney

I agree with all above. Are you making sure that you are eating 1g protein per lb of lean body mass? I eat much like you do with salads & protein for lunch & dinner. It's low calorie but sometimes it isn't enough protein. I have a fruit smoothie with kefir & protein powder for breakfast. I like oatmeal but I'd be hungry in a couple hours if I started the day with a carb breakfast. Your breakfast seems small to me, too. It is important to work on strength as a 50 yr old woman. I am 45, myself. I have had neck injuries that made me feel like an 80 yr old @ 30. I never want to feel like that again. If you aren't enjoying 5x5 then find something you do enjoy. Like Crabada said, you are more likely to do it if you like it. Keep some strength exercises for your bones sake.

mimi337 wrote: »

Thanks, ladies! I do love weight lifting

i'll admit i'm a little confused by this point. (i'll also admit i barely skimmed your menu and have only the most minimal interest myself in living by calorie counts, so i wouldn't have anything worthwhile to say about that anyway). if you love lifting for itself but have no interest in strength, then that's fine. you can keep lifting at whatever level you're at, or even deload and take your weights backwards if your interest is more in cutting back even more calories. theoretically, you could starve yourself to death and keep on lifting weights the whole time, if you liked. think soviet death camps, and similar stuff. so . . . ?

so i'm confused about what the issue is, i guess. i'm wondering if maybe this is all because you were told some unrealistic thing that got your expectations too high by making strength training sound like just the latest in the long line of so-called 'miracle' cures, and you're feeling discouraged because it's not living up to the hype. lifting weights doesn't make fat magically melt overnight, but if you find that you still love doing it once you've gotten over the disappointment of that, then why not make that your focus while you're here in this particular group?

i guess what i'm trying to say is i'm not sure this particular sub-forum is the best one to be in if you're mainly here for support on the weight loss aspect alone. it's not that nobody here understands the feeling - a lot of us are also keeping our eyes on our weight. it's more just that those kinds of conversations can be had 'out there' in the rest of mfp. whereas in here, the only common denominator among all these different women is that we like to lift. so lifting is more what we talk about here and i think you'll get better conversations about that than you would about the other side of your current struggle.

i just reread this and realised that it could be taken as sounding snotty. which isn't what i intend, but it's pretty late in my day over here and i guess i'm just going for the pragmatic make-my-point mode over the option of tact.

@mimi337 It's been two weeks since your OP - has anything changed? Did you stick with lifting three times a week?

I think we all care about what we look like and are lifting to help in that department. I think the difference is, judging from hanging out in this group's forums for a while, is that instead of focusing on the aesthetics, the majority of us are focusing on our lifting performance. This, in turn, helps us take care of our physical selves much better and for the long haul. For me, this has shifted my focus away from what I look like to the point where I don't worry as much about it. Every once in a while, I'll notice more definition, or a smaller waist, or looking better in my clothes, but it's like an added benefit. It's so nice to be free of constant worry every week about my progress in the mirror, about every pound or ounce or whatever lost or gained.