When you think you are doing everything right but not working, what did you change?

Despite being at the gym 5-7 hours a week and eating well, I was continually gaining weight. All medical tests came back normal. It took 2 years of trying harder, working harder, pushing more before someone finally said, "I think you're just stressed out." So I started slowing down, which felt like the opposite of what I should be doing. I cut back on work by 5 hours a week, I starting going to yoga, I took more walks with the dog (instead of always running) and I took a mindfulness course. About a month later I started seeing results. We really underestimate the effect that stress has on us. Struggling to lose weight is especially stressful because you think about it many times a day, every day. I had to take a hard, honest look at my life, my schedule, and my expectations and learn to be kind to myself.

Change what you're doing!
I couldnt understand how I'd lost 6 pounds in 4 weeks and then it just stopped and nothing was coming off.
I was road running, using the treadmill, weighing my food, counting everything but nothing worked!
So I stopped. And allowed myself a moment of putting on my problem solving head. If somethings not working, what do you do? Change what you're doing!
Last week, I switched from endless road running and using the treadmill to interval training and weight lifting. I swapped the scales for a measuring tape. And I swapped mind numbing anxiety of 'WHAT AM I DOING WRONG??' for 'chill, lets do some nice yoga'.
Have I lost weight? Dunno havent checked yet. Lost inches? Dunno, haven't checked yet.
Do I feel better? Hell yeh! I feel stronger, more mindful and my boyfriend said my butt looks good!
I'm happier. Staying at the same weight for a few weeks is absolutely fine by me for a while.

If you do what you've always done, you get the results you've always got.
All of these posts are telling you the same thing.
Change it up. Do something different.

1. Tightened up my logging. Worked every time.
2. Tried to be patient. How long have you been "doing everything right"? Are you doing a new exercise routine? That will make you retain water. I gained weight the first few weeks and almost always see a bounce in weight the day after lifting.

I tightened up on my weighing foods and and went from logging most things to everything, especially the olive oil or butter I used to saute my foods. Even a swig from a Dr. Pepper was included in my logs. Doesn't seem like much but that 1/4 a can of Dr. Pepper I was having was about 40 calories, that eyeballed amount of peanut butter was 50 calories more than what I had logged. You do this 5 or 6 times a day and you have racked up over 200 calories each day. My other problem that I noticed was that my daily calorie burn was set too high and according to my Polar Loop I was burning about 300 calories less each day that what I had thought. Between my inaccurate logging and incorrect accurate level, I was 500-600 calories off of my goal each day!

Once I changed these things, I have been consistently losing weight each week. Some weeks more than other and I think that is partly attributed to getting several more thousand steps in each day.

Also, I use my HRM's calorie burn estimates instead of MFP because MFP estimates mine to be 2 and sometimes 3 times more than my HRM. Sad to see so few calories burned, but this has definitely helped me to lose weight.

I got a Jawbone UP24 and it really set me straight. I wasn't moving nearly as much as I thought I was a work which meant I was consuming more calories than previously thought. It was pretty eye opening actually.

You loose weight when you have a calorie deficit. The responses above all tend to reflect this. Best tactics is a lower carb diet as it helps minimise hunger. Reduction in food eaten is 80% of weight loss. Exercise is pretty much a waste of time. Makes you healthier but not lighter. And most calorie over eating is too much dairy or too many nuts. Many find their weight loss sabotaged by minibinges. (These are unforeseen social events generally). I found a 5:2 diet easiest to keep my calorie deficit at 20% of TDEE. So that helped 1kg per week for 12 weeks.

I feel a bit like that right now. Since 5th January I've been doing Jillian Michaels Body Revolution (6 workouts every week, minimum calorie burn 250 cals per workout and that's being conservative) and on top of that I've either been walking for an hour (minimum calorie burn 250 calories, again being fairly conservative) and some days I even do an extra cardio workout DVD or gym based workout on the machines for 40-45 minutes too.

In addition, I've been counting calories and eating 500 calories under TDEE (which is 1000 calories approx.) plus eating around 500 of my exercise calories back.

For the past 2 weeks I've also been doing the 5:2 fast diet, which means eating only 550 calories 2 days a week, therefore creating an additional deficit on those days of 1000 calories per day.

All in all, that should DEFINITELY mean I'm on track to lose at least 1lb per week, but it should be more like 1.5lbs.

In reality I've lost a total of 8lbs in almost 9 weeks, but nothing at all for around 10 days and the majority of my weight loss so far was in the first few weeks.

I weigh all my food, never leave anything out and log less exercise calories than I probably actually do so it's very frustrating when I'm not losing as much as I should be but don't know where to go from here.

I'm planning on continuing the way I have been, because I can't eat less without feeling very tired due to the exercise I'm doing and I'm emjoying it and don't want to stop. I still have over 20lbs to lose and I just can't see how I'm going to get the rest of it off.

This is so helpful. I have wondered why the harder I work to lose, I gain. the stress of the job, home, school, etc. really plays into this. I find when I walk in the mornings during the summer, I lose more weight then when I go to the gym in the winter. Hmmm....

The things to eliminate first include poor logging and over reported exercise burns.
The reality is that the majority of people that have issues with weight loss, once those elements are removed, fail to address the elephant in the room: their activity level.

We try to address that by increasing exercise activity. Which is great but often enough not enough. 3-5 sessions a week of exercise is 900-1500 cals burned. Per week! But it's often difficult to ncrease beyond that because of time issues, or injury or stress - inflammation or hormonal response are counter productive to scale weight loss.

The answer lies in lifestyle - moving from sedentary to active, focusing on LBM retention and increase may result in anywhere from 20% to 80% increase in cals consumed - that's 360 to 1200 more cals per day. Simply because we spend significant more time in non-exercise activity. Of course, changing general activity level is very hard. It's very difficult to change jobs if you spend 6 hours sitting, etc... But there is an easy way to evaluate and change habits.

Short term: Try this, for two weeks, see if you still aren't seeing results.

Set an alarm every hour and go for 5 minutes of walking.
Or get a pedometer and make sure you walk your 10000 steps every day.
Create strategies to do this - walk or bike to work. Use the car less, watch less TV, spend more time standing. Etc...

Long term: take on resistant training of some sort. Every lb of LBM gained uses 9-21 cals per day at rest you get to multiply that by your activity level. And even in exercise.

It's important to understand what "move more" really means.

I started weighing all of my foods. I was majorly underestimating my calories.
Then I looked into the 5:2 diet thingie. In the last 4weeks I have lost 5kgs and 12cm. But it's also teaching me the difference between hungry and wanting to eat.

chatnel wrote: »

Good advice. I do wear a fitbit and have a desk job so sit on my a*rse for over 8 hours as well as driving to and from. If I do not go to gym I am lucky if I do 5K steps per day.

There you go. Changing that is more likely to result in long term results.

Oh, and ignore the detox woo woo above.

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Oh, and ignore the detox woo woo above.
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Why ignore it?

Are people really afraid to eat healthier to drop pounds and feel amazing? So many diet pills, magic formulas (many are fraud). But to just change what you eat (food), drink and by taking care of your body. Your body releases those toxins through waste sounds pretty easy to me. We Spring clean our houses because we can see the dirt, just because we can't see inside of our bodies does not hide the fact that our bodies are toxic. Our bodies will hold onto the fat, since our livers are so bogged down.

I can understand if I was giving weird information or telling you to starve yourself, but I am not. I have been on this fitness journey for two years and accomplished my goal. Wish I would have found detoxing at the beginning, to get the pounds off safely and so much quicker.

My husband and I are doing one now! He was so excited when I went through a detox in December and lost 6.4 pounds. He does not workout much but began to see my results of how easy the weight came off. He wanted to do one too!

In the January detox, he lost 6 pounds and this detox he has already lost 6 pounds in 5 days. We still have five more days to go! He was in the obese category and by losing weight through this detox he is now wanting to working out regularly!

Just want to share the joy I found in taking care of our bodies. If your work them to hard you burn muscle instead of fat. If you do more rest based training along with a good detox. Watch those pounds melt away!

Tons of information and encouragement for those wanting to get results in the Revitalized Bodies group shown on my other post!

I lose weight really slowly and used to get really disheartened about it, so I just stopped obsessing over the scale. I lost 66lbs after my 2nd baby, and 10 inches off my waist, hips and thighs.

I wasn't as strict with weighing and measuring then, yet I still lost. I'm now losing after my 3rd baby and much more strict. And guess what? I'm losing at exactly the same rate.

So my advice? Don't stress over the scale, take measurements and go by the fit of clothes. If you're doing it right it will come off.