Scale not moving

Can you give us more information?

Height and weight?
How long has it been since you lost weight?
How do you determine how many calories you're eating (i.e. food scale/measuring cups/guesstimating portion sizes)?
How much, if any, of the Fitbit calories do you eat back?

Age makes a difference in my case. At 64 I found replacing some of the carbs with more fats helps in my case but doing it can mess with the mind due to past programming There are so many factors like age that impacts weight loss so just keep reading research and making small changes.

teresa011 wrote: »

Sure i'm 5'4, currently 207 lbs.......about 3 months with the scale not moving. I measure out everything, count, weigh. I use the containers from 21 day fix. I try to eat the calories I burn from a workout back. In a day it is saying i've burned over 2000 calories, there is no way I can eat that much back. Kkenseth, yes I log everything

Are you using a food scale at all?

I have a co-worker who used the 21 day fix & their containers and from what I noticed she stuffed a lot of food in those containers. IMO using a food scale would be much better.

This might not be popular but the only thing that worked for me and many friends is cut out ALL types of bread, crackers etc, like it doesn't exist, and most dairy. Also, no pasta (the hardest) and white rice, no potatoes. I am thinking that those foods were only for the younger version of me, almost like I am allergic to it now.

Great you are moving daily! I learned to add healthy fats like coconut oil, almond butter and avocado to my diet, not sure if low fat is that helpful. I think processed sugar is the poison of our culture, it is just in everything, so check labels. Good luck, hang in there.

Also, I'm confused: you burned 2000 calories in a workout?? How?? Are you on a special program? I know this is not recommended but I never eat back my daily workouts. I just use the 300 or so calories I burn as my buffer for accidentally going over my calorie limit, which always happens. I also do resistance training and almost stopped the cardio. I did learn that it is important to let muscles rest between work outs, so I do different groups of muscles every day. I lost 30 lbs, but super slowly (2-3 years).

There's a good bit of tricksy diet-folkloric nonsense in some posts above, IMO (and others' opinions: check the disagree count - one disagree isn't meaningful, but when there's a bunch of them, it's a bad sign).

Like at least one other person, I think the container system for portioning may not be serving you well. Personally, I think using a food scale is quicker and more efficient than any kind of volume-measuring system, in addition to being more accurate. Consider the efficiency tips in this thread (yes, that's what the thread is actually about; ignore the dumb & regrettable clickbait title, which was sarcastic):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10498882/weighing-food-takes-too-long-and-is-obsessive/p1

I lost 50+ pounds at age 59-60 (after previous decades of overweight/obesity), while hypothyroid and having been in menopause for around 15 years by then, and have been at a healthy weight for 5+ years since. Method, simplistically stated: Calorie counting. Different people may have different food needs because of differences in satiation or health conditions, but generally weight loss is an outcome of calorie intake being less than calorie expenditure, just as in our younger years.

What can be different is that the average woman requires fewer calories daily than when younger (not that many fewer, really), and we tend to have less active lifestyles (not just exercise, but the totality of life, which can be a big difference, some of it utterly below radar). Those may make things slightly more difficult, but there are strategies for overcoming them.

Personally, I took a very low-drama approach to eating for weight loss, rather than looking to restrictive rules or trendy diets. It was basically this process:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

I estimated my exercise calories carefully, but ate back pretty much every delicious one of them. For me, it would've been a terrible idea to do otherwise. (That's not universal; but I'd point out that if doing meaningful amounts of exercise, an estimate of zero calories is *guaranteed* to be wrong.)

It is possible for a fitness tracker device to incorrectly estimate one's all-day calorie burn. It's not that the devices are bad, but all they're doing is estimating, and like online calculators, they rely on population statistics in their estimates. They differ from online calculators in that the fitness tracker gives a more individualized estimate, but they're still estimating. They'll be close for the majority of people, further off (high or low) for a few, and howlingly far off for a very rare few. That's the nature of a statistical estimate: It'll be close for the average person, but not every individual is average, and it's not always obvious why they aren't.

For some reason, I'm one of those rare few: Mine, a brand/model that others here report is quite accurate in estimating for them, is hundreds of calories off, for me . . . like 25-30% off. (I'm lucky: In my case, it estimates too low. But these can mis-estimate in the other direction, too, sadly.) It's not that the device is inherently inaccurate, it's that for various reasons, I'm not average.

These fitness trackers can also be inaccurate for exercise estimates, too. Inaccuracy is especially likely for strength exercise, intervals (HIIT or even normal interval workouts), in new exercisers who are fairly out of shape at the start, who have a non-average heart rate range (pretty common, even without a health problem, but most of us have no way to know) or who have just started using the device.

With any estimate, the good plan IMO is to use it as a guide for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual periods if not yet in menopause, to compare body weight at the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles). Then, adjust intake based on average weekly weight loss over the whole time period. Even then, if the first week or two look wildly different from later weeks, exclude that data and use later weeks (sometimes water weight fluctuations are weird for the first week or two, so can be misleading about fat loss, potentially in either direction).

Weight loss can work at any age. I think many of us have some helpful traits, in later years, like patience, knowing how to reach goals by chipping away at them over time, understanding our own preferences/strengths/limitations better and so forth . . . wiliness and self-insight, generally.

I think you can do this. Think through the details, and hang in there!

OK I decided to stop writing on the forums. It seems that my diet and approach is not recommended and I don't want to give anyone bad advice. I tried a lot of diets and counting/weighing and learned from what works for me. I do love my way of eating now, I don't feel deprived, my body feels good, I have energy and I lost a lot of weight. So I am going to trust that, and my doctor. Good luck everyone on their own journey.