Why am I not losing :( Please help!

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  • lindsay6694
    lindsay6694 Posts: 182
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    definitely take ur measurements! also...are you watchin your sugar intake? i know when i started watching that more closely....the weight really started coming off. also...cut out the sugar free things for a little while and see what happens. sometimes that hinders peoples weight loss. but youve done a great job so far! just hang in there!
  • mari0605
    mari0605 Posts: 65 Member
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    Bump
  • ccbloom1
    ccbloom1 Posts: 82 Member
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    definitely take ur measurements! also...are you watchin your sugar intake? i know when i started watching that more closely....the weight really started coming off. also...cut out the sugar free things for a little while and see what happens. sometimes that hinders peoples weight loss. but youve done a great job so far! just hang in there!

    Yes, I'm going to take my measurements today. I always say "after I shower" and then get dressed, and then I'm too lazy to take them. LO!

    Actually, I was watching my sugar until just a few days ago when I switched it to sodium to see if that was my issue. I don't think my sugar is that bad (or is it?)...I was a little over on most days but it was mostly from the milk I was having, I think. I'm going to have to double-check that. I really try and stay away from the artificial sweeteners (besides my shake with the sf/ff pudding mix) and eat everything as close to natural as possible, but cooking for a family can be tough so I don't beat myself up. I'm also trying to cut back on my milk/dairy because I started getting breakouts when I started this, and I have no idea what the culprit is.
  • funkyspunky871
    funkyspunky871 Posts: 1,675 Member
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    Oh my gosh!! I'm right with you, girl. I have about 40 more pounds to lose, and it's not coming off. In fact, I lose all through out the week (I check every other day to make sure I'm on track) and then MAGICALLY gain in all back on my official weigh-in day. It's crazy.

    Anyways, here's what I've done in the past to break through a plateau -- calorie zig-zagging. Basically, you take your weekly calorie intake and spread it out differently for each day. If you want an average of ~1400 calories a day, you're goals would look something like this:

    Monday: 1200
    Tuesday: 1400
    Wednesday: 1200
    Thursday: 1600
    Friday: 1200
    Saturday: 1800
    Sunday: 1500

    Add them all up, divide by 7, and you get an average of 1415 calories a day. http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm has a zig-zag calorie calculator, but I personally believe the changes from day-to-day intake are too small. In my experience, bigger and more dramatic fluctuations really shock the body out of a plateau.

    There's also a "quick" fix that may or may not work. It still won't hurt to try though. Have a cheat meal or cheat day! Eat a cheeseburger and french fries from your favorite restaurant. Or maybe have a dessert. (You don't have to eat junk food though, lol. A cheat day could just be a high calorie day where you have a few extra servings of fruit and whatnot to purposely go over on you goal.)
  • timetoembrace
    timetoembrace Posts: 77
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    I platued a year ago and I got frustrated and quit. I haven't gained much, 2-3 lbs, but I am now back on...I have tried 1 week and haven't lost..PMSing as well...but I am getting back ontrack. i work fulltime, college parttime, two teenage daughters and a home to run. I am SUPER busy and don't always have time to excercise, because of this I don't get to burn calories...so i have to watch every little peice of food I put in my mouth...It gets tough sometimes, but I never want to gain the 60lbs I worked so hard to lose 2 years ago.

    Keep your head up. keep going, adjust your calories a bit and you should see the platue come to an end soon..Don't wait a year like I did....I am still waiting to see if this first week back on is going to pay off....
  • ccbloom1
    ccbloom1 Posts: 82 Member
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    Oh my gosh!! I'm right with you, girl. I have about 40 more pounds to lose, and it's not coming off. In fact, I lose all through out the week (I check every other day to make sure I'm on track) and then MAGICALLY gain in all back on my official weigh-in day. It's crazy.

    Anyways, here's what I've done in the past to break through a plateau -- calorie zig-zagging. Basically, you take your weekly calorie intake and spread it out differently for each day. If you want an average of ~1400 calories a day, you're goals would look something like this:

    Monday: 1200
    Tuesday: 1400
    Wednesday: 1200
    Thursday: 1600
    Friday: 1200
    Saturday: 1800
    Sunday: 1500

    Add them all up, divide by 7, and you get an average of 1415 calories a day. http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm has a zig-zag calorie calculator, but I personally believe the changes from day-to-day intake are too small. In my experience, bigger and more dramatic fluctuations really shock the body out of a plateau.

    There's also a "quick" fix that may or may not work. It still won't hurt to try though. Have a cheat meal or cheat day! Eat a cheeseburger and french fries from your favorite restaurant. Or maybe have a dessert. (You don't have to eat junk food though, lol. A cheat day could just be a high calorie day where you have a few extra servings of fruit and whatnot to purposely go over on you goal.)

    Thanks, I love this idea! And I'm a daily-weigher as well. It can drive me crazy, but it also keeps me in-check...so good and bad, I guess. And I've dealt all too much with that magical gain on my weigh-in day far too often!

    I do have a "cheat" meal...sort of. Every Thursday, I go out to eat with DH, and I have a steak with veggies and butter at Fridays along with a couple beers. I count this in my tracker. I usually have something small for dessert like a McD's ice cream, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I have another beer. LOL!

    I'm going to give zig-zagging a try this week. I'm just really scared to raise my calories. Yesterday was the most I've eaten in a while, and I just felt so bloated and heavy (which may explain my scale not moving on this exact day!).
  • 4theking
    4theking Posts: 1,196 Member
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    Looks like your metabolism has slowed down. Send me a message if you would like and I will help you!
  • updowngirl
    updowngirl Posts: 31 Member
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    I am frustrated too---just started a bit over a month ago but weight was coming off fast. Now I am starting to exercise and it has stopped for 2 weeks--I agree with the muscle building theory and I also think your body holds onto calories when your expenditure increases initially. I've been on other diet programs and had this happen too where no loss for a while then bam it drops off when your body realizes youre not kidding. So keep with it and post again to let us know. The zigzagging thing sounds sensible and I've gotten a lot of encouragement from reading these posts!
  • bizco
    bizco Posts: 1,949 Member
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    What is your current BMI? What is your weight loss goal setting (lose 2lbs./1.5lbs/1.0lb per week)? How much more weight do you want to lose?

    Current BMI is 33. Weight loss goal setting is custom at 1.2 lbs per week. I would like to lose another 40lbs.
    Your food choices look good. A couple more questions: Do you use a digital food scale to measure your food? Most people drastically underestimate servings/portions. How are you getting the calories burned from exercise? Do you wear a chest strap heart rate monitor or do you use MFP's default database? What is your lifestyle/activity level setting (sedentary, light active, active, etc.)?
  • Lanfear
    Lanfear Posts: 524
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    Don't know if this will help or not, but I'd been stuck at the same weight since March/April time. I started couch to 5k on 23rd May, and my loss has started again - I'm on week 5 and have gone down 4lbs. Perhaps think about giving that programme a go?
  • Ambrogio1
    Ambrogio1 Posts: 518 Member
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    Listen to 4theKing. The guy flat out knows his stuff.
  • anume08
    anume08 Posts: 27 Member
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    This may sound crazy but... try not to think about weightloss for a week or so. At one point I was obsessing so much about losing the weight that I was stressing myself out (this was before joining MFP). Once I took a step back and just relaxed and I ended up losing that week when I hadn't had a big loss in about a month... just a thought...
  • ccbloom1
    ccbloom1 Posts: 82 Member
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    What is your current BMI? What is your weight loss goal setting (lose 2lbs./1.5lbs/1.0lb per week)? How much more weight do you want to lose?

    Current BMI is 33. Weight loss goal setting is custom at 1.2 lbs per week. I would like to lose another 40lbs.
    Your food choices look good. A couple more questions: Do you use a digital food scale to measure your food? Most people drastically underestimate servings/portions. How are you getting the calories burned from exercise? Do you wear a chest strap heart rate monitor or do you use MFP's default database? What is your lifestyle/activity level setting (sedentary, light active, active, etc.)?

    I use both a digital food scale and measuring cups...always measure starches and proteins, a little more liberal with the fruits and veggies. Exercise calories are from a Polar F4 HRM with chest strap. Originally had my lifestyle set to sedentary since I'm a WAHM who sits at a desk at least 3-4 hrs per day. I recently upped it to light active, mainly to get the settings for the net calories that I wanted. I also have my carb/prot/fat set to 40/40/20. I don't always reach these, but that's the goal.
  • atomdraco
    atomdraco Posts: 1,083 Member
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    What's your current carb/protein/fat %? If you workout a LOT, you might want to make sure you have enough carb.
  • ccbloom1
    ccbloom1 Posts: 82 Member
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    Lanfear - I'd love to do C25K. I've attempted it several times in the past only to end up with HORRIBLE shin splints that resulted in weeks of PT. I did do 10 minutes of interval treadmill work today, just as something different, following 30DS.

    Anume08 - not crazy at all! Actually, it's kind of been my mindset for the most part, especially since I didn't lose anything the first 3 wks of healthy eating/exercising. Today I just stepped on the scale and said WTF?!?! something is wrong!

    atomdraco - My goal is 40/40/20 for my ratios, but I'm always at a little more carbs than protein at the end of the day.
  • randisaucier
    randisaucier Posts: 178 Member
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    I hit about a 5 week plateau like you I increased my calories, from 1200 to 1500 a day and have started seeing the scale move again. I have made sure that I eat very clean cutting out all fast food and processed foods and eating 5 meals a day. It has been working really well the past week or so. Once I made minor adjustments in calories and really paid attention to the foods I was eating I begin to see immediate results!
  • kelseyk14
    kelseyk14 Posts: 95
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    Hello there,

    Monitoring your calories through this website will help BUT the kind of food you are eating still matters!! I am a Dietetics and Exercise science major and also know a lot about Natural medicine. If you see this email me at kelseyak88@gmail.com and I will help you the best I can!! :)

    Good luck!
  • bmhatcher
    bmhatcher Posts: 105
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    CC,
    I looked through here and I would suggest you really get into weight lifting. The cardio is great for getting your endurance up and starting your weight loss, but as soon as you finish the exercise, you stop burning calories. Weight lifting is great because the muscle burns fat to rebuild!! So you may have a lower calorie burn doing weight training, but it will continue for the next 24 hours. You do not have to get all "buff" either. Try using lower weights 3, 5, 8lb and doing more reps. This will help tone your body and avoid the dreaded "sag". P90X is an awesome routine!!!
    Also, are you wearing a HR Monitor when you are exercising? When I first started, I was overestimating my calorie burn by letting MFP decide what I had burned. Once I got a HR Monitor (with a chest strap) I realized I was not burning as high as I was logging and therefore not having as much calorie deficit that I needed to lose the weight.
    Hope this helps.
  • mom23nuts
    mom23nuts Posts: 636 Member
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    did you reprogram your new results into MFP to make sure your new weight reflects your new ratios and calorie needs?
  • ccbloom1
    ccbloom1 Posts: 82 Member
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    Wow, I greatly appreciate everyone's help and suggestions! I love MFPers :)

    I'm not afraid of weight-training, and I've actually started incorporating more into my workouts. I completed P90X last spring and lost a whopping 12 lbs. Lots of inches, but for the amount of exercise and eating I was putting in, I was hoping for a bit more. That's the reason I went with mostly cardio for the past 90 days.

    I did reprogram my weight...but that's a great suggestion because had I not seen it on here previously, I definitely would have overlooked that!

    Honestly, my eating style isn't drastically different now than it was prior to starting with MFP; however, the quantities of food that I eat are much different. I've always reached for the cleaner foods, whether trying to lose weight or not; it's just how I learned to eat years and years ago doing Body for Life (which is another reason I'm not afraid of weight-training). I try to stay away from processed foods (like yesterday, it killed me to eat 1/2 of a Special K crisp, but I was hungry and that was my option). I do my best to stay away from artificial sweeteners and sugar, only putting equal in my coffee on the weekends as a "treat", but I do treat myself, too. This is real life and not something that I'm doing for just 90 days.

    The weight just isn't coming off for me. I know my eating isn't "perfect", but the reality is, it's never going to be 100% perfect. I strive for 80-90% perfect. I can live with 80%, but I'd be ecstatic with 90%. Furthermore, no matter how much I measure, etc. it's tough to get EXACT calories for everything. Everything is really just an estimate, which is why consistency over time is so important. I've given it the time, and something needs to change. My body is not supposed to be 184lbs.

    I called my Dr. this morning because my friend who is a health professional asked if they tested my thyroid (which they did last year, and it was normal); however, they only tested TSH and not T3 and T4 (I'm just repeating now). I explained everything to the nurse, and within a half hour got a call back that my Dr. wanted to see me today. I'm going in shortly and will keep you posted.

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