Can anyone tell me why I'm not losing weight?
ButterflyBrains
Posts: 56 Member
When I first started here, I was 140lbs, and I lost to 135lbs.
I went to camp for a week and ate crappy, bringing me to 145lbs.
Since then I have been doing very well, eating a little under my calories and biking almost every day for at least an hour. It's been three weeks and I am still stuck at the same weight, and I can't figure out why. Maybe it's water retention? But that seems like a lot for water. I have so been eating a lot of rice, lately, but it's supposed to be only 80 calories per 1/2 a cup. I eat maximum 1cup a day. Could that be it?
I'm confused....
I went to camp for a week and ate crappy, bringing me to 145lbs.
Since then I have been doing very well, eating a little under my calories and biking almost every day for at least an hour. It's been three weeks and I am still stuck at the same weight, and I can't figure out why. Maybe it's water retention? But that seems like a lot for water. I have so been eating a lot of rice, lately, but it's supposed to be only 80 calories per 1/2 a cup. I eat maximum 1cup a day. Could that be it?
I'm confused....
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Replies
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1) do you log everything you eat?
2) Do you weigh all solid and semi solid foods and measure all liquids except water?
3) How did you figure out your calorie target?
4) Do you eat back exercise calories? How do you calculate the burn if you do?
We need more information.0 -
Setting your diary to public might help you to get more specific advice. Otherwise, here are my very general suggestions.
1. Three weeks is still within the possibility for this to just be water weight. You may just need to ride it out.
2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.
3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.
4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.
5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.
6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.
7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.
8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.
9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.0 -
You're eating too much.
For things like rice, you want to weigh it dry, and I'm quite sure it's typically closer to 120 calories for 1/2 cup anyway...0 -
Are you measuring rice cooked or uncooked?0
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diannethegeek wrote: »Setting your diary to public might help you to get more specific advice. Otherwise, here are my very general suggestions.
1. Three weeks is still within the possibility for this to just be water weight. You may just need to ride it out.
2. If you aren't already, be sure that you're logging everything. Sometimes people forget about things like veggies, drinks, cooking oils, and condiments. For some people these can add up to enough to halt your weight loss progress.
3. Consider buying a food scale if you don't already have one. They're about $10-$20 dollars in the US and easily found at places like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Measuring cups and spoons are great, but they do come with some degree of inaccuracy. A food scale will be more accurate, and for some people it makes a big difference.
4. Logging accurately also means choosing accurate entries in the database. There are a lot of user-entered entries that are off. Double-check that you're using good entries and/or using the recipe builder instead of someone else's homemade entries.
5. Recalculate your goals if you haven't lately. As you lose weight your body requires fewer calories to run. Be sure you update your goals every ten pounds or so.
6. If you're eating back your exercise calories and you're relying on gym machine readouts or MFP's estimates, it might be best to eat back just 50-75% of those. Certain activities tend to be overestimated. If you're using an HRM or activity tracker, it might be a good idea to look into their accuracy and be sure that yours is calibrated properly.
7. If you're taking any cheat days that go over your calorie limits, it might be best to cut them out for a few weeks and see what happens. Some people go way over their calorie needs without realizing it when they don't track.
8. If you weigh yourself frequently, consider using a program like trendweight to even out the fluctuations. You could be losing weight but just don't see it because of the daily ups and downs.
9. Some people just burn fewer calories than the calculators predict. If you continue to have problems after 4-6 weeks, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor or a registered dietitian who can give you more specific advice.
^^^^ Great advice!
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A cup is not always a cup and rice is closer to 250 than 160 a cup depending on whether short, medium, or long grain. Add some more if you are using any butter or coconut or anything else to prepare it.
Purchase a food scale and weigh everything you eat. Don't forget to log things such as condiments, oils, cooking supplies. Don't trust packaging you don't double check. Start with verified entries in the database... and verify them yourself, creating your own if they are off.
Yes it could be water retention, TOM, or a number of other things.
Suggest you weight yourself daily after using the bathroom and before eating or drinking anything and you input the numbers you get into a web site/app such as www.weightgrapher.com, www.trendweight.com, happy scale for the iphone, Libra for android.
All of them will show you your weight loss trend and smooth out daily variations in water weight allowing you to focus on the more important trend and liberating you from psychological dependency on a single number.
Depending on your cycle you could be at a high water point. weightgrapher superimposes your previous 28 days/user defined cycle to show you a comparison0 -
I have a food scale and I weigh my rice dry.
I also log everything.
Thanks everyone, a good advice!0 -
It's probably the exercise, I have the same problem myself and so do a lot of others.. I guess it'll catch up at some point.
How do your clothes fit?0
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