Why aren't I losing any weight?

rabbitjb wrote: »

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

A couple of things could be happening to you, first and foremost, drastically cutting calories and increasing exercise all at once puts your body into a sort of "shock" it thinks that you are starving.. so it reduces metabolism. and secondly, remember muscle weighs more than fat, If you are feeling a little sore from all this exercise you are likely building muscle, try body measurements, waist, chest, hips, arms and thighs, the scales don't always tell the whole story.

this is not true

what Evgeni said is true, but this post you can ignore because none of it is true

Excuse me,, but this information came directly from an internal medicine Dr. when I visited him with my mother regarding her weight loss for diabetes, please check your facts before you call someone a liar

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

A couple of things could be happening to you, first and foremost, drastically cutting calories and increasing exercise all at once puts your body into a sort of "shock" it thinks that you are starving.. so it reduces metabolism. and secondly, remember muscle weighs more than fat, If you are feeling a little sore from all this exercise you are likely building muscle, try body measurements, waist, chest, hips, arms and thighs, the scales don't always tell the whole story.

this is all wrong.............. all wrong.


you re likely retaining water from the new workouts. it will fall off.

also simply by the fact you said you THINK 2 teaspoons of butter, tells me you are not accurately weighing your food. Buy food scale and weigh EVERYTHING

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

rabbitjb wrote: »

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

A couple of things could be happening to you, first and foremost, drastically cutting calories and increasing exercise all at once puts your body into a sort of "shock" it thinks that you are starving.. so it reduces metabolism. and secondly, remember muscle weighs more than fat, If you are feeling a little sore from all this exercise you are likely building muscle, try body measurements, waist, chest, hips, arms and thighs, the scales don't always tell the whole story.

this is not true

what Evgeni said is true, but this post you can ignore because none of it is true

Excuse me,, but this information came directly from an internal medicine Dr. when I visited him with my mother regarding her weight loss for diabetes, please check your facts before you call someone a liar

Doctors give horrible weight loss/ exercise and diet advice and very rarely actually know what they are talking about in that respect.

OK, I did use the phrase incorrectly, true enough 1 lb is 1lb regardless if it is muscle or fat.. but by VOLUME.. Muscle is more dense than fat, and therefore weighs more than fat. if you filled a box with fat and the same sized box with muscle, the weight of the muscle (by volume) would be more, just as rocks by volume are heavier than feathers. therefore the scales can show you are maintaining or even gaining weight while you are still actually losing fat, which is the ultimate goal. you cannot get a complete picture just looking at the scales, Picture in your mind a 5 foot 3 inch woman ( overweight right), now google a picture of Aleesha Young, female body builder, yep 5 foot 3 inches, 190 lbs and 0 body fat. If I looked like that who cares what the scales say

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

OK, I did use the phrase incorrectly, true enough 1 lb is 1lb regardless if it is muscle or fat.. but by VOLUME.. Muscle is more dense than fat, and therefore weighs more than fat. if you filled a box with fat and the same sized box with muscle, the weight of the muscle (by volume) would be more, just as rocks by volume are heavier than feathers. therefore the scales can show you are maintaining or even gaining weight while you are still actually losing fat, which is the ultimate goal. you cannot get a complete picture just looking at the scales, Picture in your mind a 5 foot 3 inch woman ( overweight right), now google a picture of Aleesha Young, female body builder, yep 5 foot 3 inches, 190 lbs and 0 body fat. If I looked like that who cares what the scales say

Yes, but that doesn't happen in a week. No one gains enough muscle in a week to show up on the scales, not even if they're lifting very heavy weights. It just doesn't work like that. The muscles can retain fluid for repair, which can add to scale weight temporarily, but it's not muscle gain.

abijones75 wrote: »

The butter is whatever it takes to spread a slice of toast, so I did guess 2 tsps. I measure my milk for cereal, for everything else I've used the barcode scanner. I'm eating so little compared to what I was though, and not drinking any alcohol which I was drinking loads of over Xmas, so I had expected to see a bigger change more quickly. What you said about the exercise makes sense though, I've been sore so that could be it.

I am also going to state, as others have, that "I guess 2 tsps" is not logging accurately. You are eating more than you think. Save the measuring cups and spoons for liquids.
ALL foods needed to be weighed with a scale if you want to be the most accurate with your logging. If you don't, you're risking eating more than you think because measuring cups for solids do not take into account the volume of food; thus, they are inaccurate.

It is called Metabolic adaptation, It is a real thing, your body "adjusts" or "adapts" to the number of calories it is taking in and the number it is using over a period of time.

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

OK, I did use the phrase incorrectly, true enough 1 lb is 1lb regardless if it is muscle or fat.. but by VOLUME.. Muscle is more dense than fat, and therefore weighs more than fat. if you filled a box with fat and the same sized box with muscle, the weight of the muscle (by volume) would be more, just as rocks by volume are heavier than feathers. therefore the scales can show you are maintaining or even gaining weight while you are still actually losing fat, which is the ultimate goal. you cannot get a complete picture just looking at the scales, Picture in your mind a 5 foot 3 inch woman ( overweight right), now google a picture of Aleesha Young, female body builder, yep 5 foot 3 inches, 190 lbs and 0 body fat. If I looked like that who cares what the scales say

and how many pounds of muscle exactly did your dr. tell you women can put on in ONE WEEK eating at a deficit??

PosterPens wrote: »

i would think youre not losing because youre not eating enough. 1100 cals a day and expending ~900 cals for exercise is backfiring on you. eat more! weird right, but its true. when i took in your amount of cals at 1100 i wasnt losing either. i increased it to 1400 and the weight started melting off. so if i were you, jump your intake to at least 1400 and youll definitely see a change in the scale. enjoy it, have an extra snack high in protein.

Sigh. No.

rabbitjb wrote: »

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

rabbitjb wrote: »

lynnstrick01 wrote: »

A couple of things could be happening to you, first and foremost, drastically cutting calories and increasing exercise all at once puts your body into a sort of "shock" it thinks that you are starving.. so it reduces metabolism. and secondly, remember muscle weighs more than fat, If you are feeling a little sore from all this exercise you are likely building muscle, try body measurements, waist, chest, hips, arms and thighs, the scales don't always tell the whole story.

this is not true

what Evgeni said is true, but this post you can ignore because none of it is true

Excuse me,, but this information came directly from an internal medicine Dr. when I visited him with my mother regarding her weight loss for diabetes, please check your facts before you call someone a liar

I'm really sorry - and I know it bites because you've been told it by somebody you should be able to trust

but it truly is incorrect

all of it

Body's do not go into shock by lowering calories, metabolism is affected but not to the point you will go into starvation mode which does exist but is a precursor to death
- please look into adaptive thermogenesis, which is a thing but not to the extent that if calories in are lower than calories out you would stop losing scale weight and Minnesota Starvation Experiment amongst other studies

Muscle does indeed weigh more than fat by volume .. but the pain is DOMS and a result of inflammation and muscle repair .. you are not building muscle in a week .. oh I wish .. a woman doing everything right can possibly build 10 - 15lbs in the first year of following a proper progressive resistance programme with a proper attention to calorie and protein intake. It doesn't just happen cos someone is moving a little more, it takes concerted effort over time .. and adequate building blocks .. even in defecit somebody overweight would not build enough muscle as a noob lifter to counteract the fat loss and so the scale will not be impacted

the issue for OP is length of time allowed

Let's go into detail because I don't want to give the impression that the information the doctor gave you for your mother is incorrect.

So, does metabolism go into a kind of "shock" when there are significant changes in exercise and nutrition? The short answer is - "yes, it does." But does this lead to a sudden drop in metabolism that affects weight loss for a person in a weeks versus other possible factors that affect scale weight? The short answer to that is "Nope."

Details: When we significantly cut calories (lets say you stop eating for a few days) metabolic response actually results in an increase in metabolism at about 24-72hr depending on amount of energy decrease, personal status, etc. (research really varies on this). Afterwards and on a longer scale a metabolic slow down does occur (but really noticeable at very large cuts) but not in a way that affects the smaller cuts we see in dieting in a manner that is significant after a week. Long term starvation responses may reach 15% or higher on base metabolism (I've covered that research in a long thread here: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss) but that isn't the OP.

For someone with diabetes, probably sedentary, older and in long term diet needs this is a totally different discussion. The OP is only dieting for a week.

So, what are the details of the factors to look at first. Well, scale variance is generally due to water retention. And water retention has many factors: time of month, change in dietary salt, water absorbed (the less you take, the more you bloat...), carbohydrate to protein diet variance, recovery/healing from tissue damage, inflammation (both normal recovery, infection or dietary response), increase in glycogen sheathing for exercise capacity. And poop. Any of these factors can result in scale variance for a few pounds for a few weeks. It works itself off if you just stay calm and keep at it.

As to muscle building, that metabolic "shock", do you know what it does? It stops muscle building processes in the body COLD. If an individual is entering decreased metabolism due to significant cuts in nutritional energy the body does not build more muscle - it can't. It conserves energy. And in a short period of 1 week, doing more cardio, on a calorie cut - no, our OP is not building a significant amount of muscle that would affect her metabolism. And if she was, her metabolism would go UP.

So, the point is, while your doctor didn't lie to you about the info provided to your mother's long-term management of her disease, it doesn't apply in the way you think to the OP.

If any of the above is unclear or if you want to go into the details of this, post away.