Getting started with exercise - does it really take this long to see results?

Fitness is a lifelong endeavor. Enjoy the process.

ellivort asked some good questions and I'm curious to hear the answers as well.

In addition, how confident are you in the accuracy of your calorie tracking? Are you weighing all of your food, or making rough estimates? Underestimating calories consumed and/or overestimating calories burned during a workout could be the culprits.

Exactly what Ellivort said. Also, this isn't The Biggest Loser, this is real life. It will sometimes take 4-5 weeks for you to notice visible results. Also, you're not eating enough calories. Despite what the popular opinion is, you need to nourish your body more on workout days to lose weight. At 1200 calories a day, if you do anything more than just sit on the couch, there is a possibility that your body with fight against your goals and desperately cling to your fat reserves as your system thinks you are starving. Make sure you are getting enough fat. If you are not getting enough dietary fats (for you cell membranes, your brain, etc) you will also hang on to your old stubborn body fat for longer. If you are eating good fats like fish, olive oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil, nuts, etc., then your body will see it has new fats coming in and will easier release your body fat; not only will you release subcutaneous fat, but any dangerous visceral fat will burn easier as well.

Are those calories that your logging good, healthy unprocessed calories? Are you eating lots and lots of veggies, lean proteins and a few whole grains? If so, good, keep it up! If not, maybe reassess your diet and figure out a way to give your body the whole foods it needs.

Three weeks is nothing. How long did it take you to put on the weight? Probably a lot longer than three weeks. Give yourself some credit. You're working out to improve your life, not just to lose weight. Focus on how you feel for at least another week and keep it up, girl! You should be proud of yourself for making this commitment to health.

ETA; sorry cross posted. But will leave my post as it is. Get a food scale, you have no idea how much you are eating estimating. h

1. if your calorie goal is 1200 you should eat all of that.
2. MFP is set up for you to eat your exercise calories back. Eat back 50-75% of exercise calories (MFP over estimates burns) yor deficit is in your basic cals.
3. Use a digital scale and liquid measuring cups and spoons.
4. Weigh everything you eat, and double check the entries.

At 5' and wanting to lose 50 lbs set your goal to 1 lbs a week. Faster and you lose more muscle than needed, and are more likely to burn out because your food restriction is too aggressive.

Get your food logging in order and you should start seeing a loss.

Cheers, h.

Rome was not built in a day. Patience.

Measuring is so important. Over time I have got pretty good at knowing things by sight, but even items I am confident it I will put on the scale more often than not to make sure I am right. A decent scale doesn't cost that much. When I first started weighing I know I way underestimated what things weighed or measured. It is actually kind of fun to try to guess the measure right and then put it on the scale or other measuring device. A little personal skills challenge.

Three weeks is not very long.
When I first began weight training, I gained weight over the first six weeks and then suddenly I began losing. This was all without changing my diet.

Keep at it-- regardless of your weight, you will never regret having built up a good base of muscle. I built up my muscles more than 30 years ago and even though I have taken a few long breaks from the gym over the years, I never completely lost them during the breaks.
It's not just how you look, it's what you can do with your body and how you feel.

thiosulfate wrote: »

talialinn wrote: »

Exactly what Ellivort said. Also, this isn't The Biggest Loser, this is real life. It will sometimes take 4-5 weeks for you to notice visible results. Also, you're not eating enough calories. Despite what the popular opinion is, you need to nourish your body more on workout days to lose weight. At 1200 calories a day, if you do anything more than just sit on the couch, there is a possibility that your body with fight against your goals and desperately cling to your fat reserves as your system thinks you are starving. Make sure you are getting enough fat. If you are not getting enough dietary fats (for you cell membranes, your brain, etc) you will also hang on to your old stubborn body fat for longer. If you are eating good fats like fish, olive oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil, nuts, etc., then your body will see it has new fats coming in and will easier release your body fat; not only will you release subcutaneous fat, but any dangerous visceral fat will burn easier as well.

Are those calories that your logging good, healthy unprocessed calories? Are you eating lots and lots of veggies, lean proteins and a few whole grains? If so, good, keep it up! If not, maybe reassess your diet and figure out a way to give your body the whole foods it needs.

Three weeks is nothing. How long did it take you to put on the weight? Probably a lot longer than three weeks. Give yourself some credit. You're working out to improve your life, not just to lose weight. Focus on how you feel for at least another week and keep it up, girl! You should be proud of yourself for making this commitment to health.

To be honest, that doesn't really matter. It's all about Calories in vs. Calories out. I eat a LOT of processed food. I'm still losing weight.

With all due respect, yes, for weight loss, you can eat processed food and lose weight, but you shouldn't. Your body creates new cells out of the nutrients it receives from the foods you put in your body, so you are literally made out of what you eat. Do you really want to be made out of processed garbage "food-products"? Yes, you do need to burn more calories than you eat to lose weight, but WHAT you eat will potentially determine what tissue you are getting rid of. You want to lose fat and retain any muscle you have. Diet is critical for this. You want the least amount of muscle wasting as possible.

For example, when you eat too many hydrogenated fats, your body creates rigid membranes for your cells that make it a lot more difficult for your cells to communicate and increases the likelihood of early cell die off. This can create issues like arthritis type aches in your joints, headaches, brain fog, skin problems like acne, eczema, psoriasis, etc. If you are eating "good" fats that stay fluid, like omega-3s from fish and seeds, your cell membranes will be more fluid as well. You will have less brain fog, release fat from your body easier, have less aches and pain and recover from exercise faster.

Renzi27 wrote: »

I don't have a food scale..so I've been doing my best to estimate ounces for meat, as an example. Other things I've been using measuring cups for - like veggies and such.

Not going to lie - some days I'm over my calorie goal but not every day and it's usually not by much - and I eat all the extras I get from exercise. I count the 21 day workouts as 30 minutes of cardio so I think it shows a burn of approx. 250 calories each workout, at least that's what I get when I put it in the exercise calculator thing here on MFP.

I weigh in the morning before my shower..not every day but a few times a week...

I have about 50 lbs to lose. My pants aren't cutting off my circulation as MUCH as they were before, just thought I'd be able to buckle them by now without the inhale...

Another thing that has helped me...I weigh only once a week. Our bodies have a normal day-to-day fluctuation which can be frustrating for those trying to lose!! I agree with the comments about monitoring how your clothes fit rather than just a number on a scale. I'm 5'2" and 64. I still have 45 pounds to go to hit a healthy and realistic weight. It is an ongoing process. I sure didn't get this heavy overnight and I know it will take time to get the weight off in a healthy manner.

I have a nice digital scale that wasn't terribly expensive. I am anal retentive so I weigh everything in grams since that is a "finer" measurement (28 grams to an ounce shows that grams are a smaller and more accurate unit of measure, IMO). Things I eat daily...the "handful" of nuts for example...get weighed out and packaged once a week. I invested in some small reusable containers for this. When I buy meat, I weigh out portions before freezing. Each portion has the weight on the package...it's easy to fine tune ground meat but less so with chicken, roasts, chops, etc. I weigh them and have a pretty good idea of how many servings I should get from the roast, etc.

Using a scale has been second nature for me for years. An old cat I had to have euthanized 2 years ago was having trouble maintaining weight. I would weigh her daily portion of food to make sure she was getting enough calories and give a bit to her every couple of hours. If she ate too much or too fast, she would vomit. A 5.5 ounce can of cat food is 156 grams...1/4 of a can is 39 grams. The cats I have now all have different dietary needs. The scale helps keep them healthy. I also have a baby scale for weighing them every couple of weeks. It was something I invested in with my elderly Pixel to help monitor her weight. It also helped with getting extra weight off my now 15 yr old cat, Pipsqueak. When I have foster kittens, they get weighed regularly...in grams. When they are real tiny, a small basket on the kitchen scale works great...they "graduate" to the baby scale pretty fast!

Good luck on your venture to better health!!

1200 calories is too low if you are active. Developing strength takes more time to see results than cardio, and burns less calories in a workout.

I weigh myself every other week. I lose by going up and down daily. It took a year to lose 30lb but I never gained it back. It took another year to lose two more sizes at goal and to show good muscular definition.

Enjoy your life. Stop making the focus what, how much, when, where, why you eat.

To be short, yes you are worrying too much about the scale. If you're logging as accurately as possible the fat will come off, exercise or none.

I've been on 1200 calories for 6 months. I eat back my exercise calories, but I never trust MFP and use a heart rate monitor which is pretty accurate for steady state cardio. I lose 3# a month.

Before I tightened up my logging I didn't weigh my food. I also forgot to count milk for my coffee, ketchup, Sriracha, vitamins, calcium, etc. That stuff really adds up (100 calories for those) and made the difference between me not losing weight, and losing weight. The other thing I did was cut my wine consumption by 80%. Once I did that, even though I thought I'd fit it into my calorie count, I starting losing weigh with no major plateaus.

One more quick note: unless you're using the Recipe Builder tool and entering your own recipes, be very careful about using any entries in the MFP database that are labeled "homemade." They're based on someone else's recipe, so those totals will be wrong for you.