deficit and not losing?

vsangelwings95
vsangelwings95 Posts: 24 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
i've been in a 500 kcal deficit for almost a month now... i'm sedentary, only doing 40 min of light bodyweight exercise a day (i can't do cardio). yet, i haven't lost anything. yes, i do use a scale and i try to weigh all the products possible.
stats: 170 cm, 60 kg, female, 20. trying to lose the freshman 5 kg i gained during my first year of college because i can't fit into my jeans anymore and i can't afford buying new ones

Replies

  • misskarne
    misskarne Posts: 1,765 Member
    Not losing? Not in a deficit.
  • vsangelwings95
    vsangelwings95 Posts: 24 Member
    my daily food:

    BREAKFAST:
    250 ml 1.5% milk
    40g oats
    1tbsp cinnamon
    black coffee with stevia

    LUNCH:
    50g rice
    100g grilled chicken breast
    cherry tomatotes with vinaigrette

    DINNER:
    all vegetable salad (salad, tomato, pepper, cucumber) with vinaigrette and 2 slices of lean ham

    SNACKS:
    1-2 apples a day
    1 glass carrot juice
  • ultrahoon
    ultrahoon Posts: 467 Member
    Two possible explanations:

    1.) You have one of a handful of uncommon medical conditions that require a doctor to blood test you, and medicate you for. These make it more complicated, but no no means impossible to lose weight.

    2.) You're not actually in a deficit due to errors in counting calories eaten or calories burned.

    The first one is easily taken care of one way or another by seeing your doctor. The second is by far the most likely, opening up your diary to the public so people can look over it will get you more targeted advice. Most common errors in this category are people who are 'weighing everything' yet have entries like '1 small fruit' or '2 slices meat' and people using generic or incorrect entries in the database instead of the brand they actually buy. Also machines / HRM's / MFP tend to overestimate calorie burns. If you currently eat back your exercise calories, try only eating half of them back.

  • vsangelwings95
    vsangelwings95 Posts: 24 Member
    i don't eat back my exercise calories. but during that month i spent 2 weeks in bed because of a leg injury that didn't allow me to walk a lot
  • Maxematics
    Maxematics Posts: 2,287 Member
    If you spent two weeks in bed that affects how much you're allowed to eat in a day without maintaining or gaining weight. Due to that, you weren't eating at a deficit. Looking at your stats, you don't have much to lose anyway so when you're at that point logging has to be tight. You said you weigh food and I saw you listed a day of your meals but only the weights for rice, chicken, and oats. Did you weigh your fruits and vegetables? Apples can be underestimated easily. A "medium" apple varies greatly, so even fruits and vegetables should be weighed.
  • catt952
    catt952 Posts: 190 Member
    Perhaps water retention is hiding the loss too? are you on your period?
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    Your diary is closed so please tell us how many calories you are eating/drinking on average and how many grams of protein per day.
  • katecampisi
    katecampisi Posts: 23 Member
    I think that is a very small amount of food to be eating! You must be starving. Maybe scrap the carrot juice and one of the apples and increase your protein. I was DEFINATELY in a deficit (1200 a day) and doing heavy cardio/weights for nearly 2 months before I really saw scales move. Very disheartening I know. Are your clothes loser? It took me 4 months to loose 5kg. The leaner you are the harder it is. Good luck.
  • bloody88
    bloody88 Posts: 120 Member
    edited September 2015
    Check with this chart flow made by @lemonlionheart
    BWYMv1W.jpg
    You will come to the same conclusios yourself that it's one if the two reasons that @ultrahoon gave you above.
  • WBB55
    WBB55 Posts: 4,131 Member
    Are there "cheat" days or meals you don't eat what you listed above? If I ate what you ate, I'd be bingeing at least once a week from starving the other days.
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
    It is literally impossible to be in a deficit and not lose weigh over anything but the short term. And by "literally" I mean "literally," not "figuratively."

    So, it's a question of patience and letting fat loss outpace water retention, etc. or not actually being in a deficit. it doesn't matter what you think you're eating. If you're not losing weight over time, you're not in a deficit. No matter how much you claim you are.
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
    Some have already mentioned possibilities, but I'll add a couple more that haven't been brought up:

    -You are in a plateau. Despite what some on MFP will tell you, plateaus do happen. If you are logging your food accurately (i.e. you are weighing everything) and your activity level is set properly, then maybe you are in a plateau. It is just as likely that you are not eating at a deficit, but you won't really know unless the scale changes. There are only two ways to find out if you are in a plateau:
    1. Increase calories for a few weeks and see if there is a weight gain. If yes, then you were not in a plateau.
    2. Keep doing what you are doing and see if eventually you have a quick and large loss (i.e. a "whoosh"). My plateaus last for months before a "whoosh," so it can be frustrating.

    -You are inadvertently doing recomposition. This assumes you are eating at maintenance. The reason I think you are in maintenance is I think your activity level is set too high. I know you mentioned you are not eating back exercise calories, but you really shouldn't have any extra exercise calories. Bodyweight exercises really are not cardio and should not be logged as cardio - they fit much better under strength training. If they were logged as strength training, you wouldn't be given extra calories anyway. However, you may be losing fat and gaining muscle by doing bodyweight exercises. Are you tracking body measurements?
  • wkwebby
    wkwebby Posts: 807 Member
    At 5'5" and 132 lb, your weight loss rate shouldn't be at 1lb/week (3500 cal/week deficit). Maybe your body is rebelling and trying to tell you something? Try to reduce your weight loss to 0.5lb/week (so upping your calories as @midsterne... said). Have you calculated your TDEE and made sure you are at an appropriate caloric level for your activity? Maybe your deficit isn't really the proper deficit to begin with?
  • michelle7673
    michelle7673 Posts: 370 Member
    If you were in bed for two weeks with an injury, you're not fully recovered yet, and that would affect both your activity level (which was probably truly lower than sedentary, which I think of as a healthy normally active person with a desk job) and very likely swelling. I am not sure you can use most of that time as any accurate gauge. I would recommend setting your numbers to lose half a pound a week, and I agree about not counting the bodyweight exercise as cardio. Your body needs to heal and I think that if you spend a month or so at that level, eating real food (by which i mean a bit more protein) things will even out. You'll probably lose a couple of pounds and you won't be starving, and then you might be back in a position to add cardio.
  • dhimaan
    dhimaan Posts: 774 Member
    If you aren't losing, you aren't in a deficit.

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