Discouraged stay at home mom

Unfortunately, the weight is not going to come off quickly. And it won't come off at all if you don't truly stick with it. The most important part of this - the one thing that will REALLY make it work - is you truly wanting to change. No matter how much you talk about it (believe me, I have talked a mile-a-minute about wanting to change), nothing will change until you put in the effort.

Remember that weight also fluctuates day-to-day and even hourly. Find one scale and use it every time you weigh. It may not match everyone else's but it will at least be a representative of how you are doing. Or buy one on Amazon for like $20 (EtekCity I think is the brand) and use it. Weigh once per week, same time of day, same day of the week. Buy a food scale (again, EtekCity is one I bought) and use it religiously. Don't guess how many calories you are eating because you will be wrong. Measure everything in grams or ounces, measure liquids in cups and spoons. Log everything even if you go over. Be honest with yourself. Just because you don't log that candy bar doesn't mean the calories don't count.

As a SAHM, you may be best off finding workouts on YouTube or something and trying to get exercise in that way. If you have weights or resistance bands, even better, as resistance training is optimal but no exercise is necessary. You can eat better and lose weight without every working out, it just usually doesn't look all that amazing in the end.

Wishing you the best of luck.

Hi there, I am new to the message boards but not new to this weight loss/healthy lifestyle thing. I am looking for other people in the same boat as me. I am not a stay at home mom but I work in an office all day and don't get a lot of activity in. I was doing very good before Christmas, was down to about 203 (my highest ever was 224ish) then Christmas came. I gained and I'm still trying to get back to that 203. I am a lot like you, being very careful with my calories, getting on the treadmill every day but it's so slow! But I figure I am in this for the long haul, healthy eating and exercise need to become an every day thing for me. It will come off, but we need to be patient.

I've got two kids about the same age, though I am back to work now and the kids are in day care. My starting point was a little lower than you (205), but sounds like we're in a pretty similar situation Feel free to add me as a friend!

My number one recommendation, if you are really serious about losing weight, is to go out and buy a food scale. You can find a decent little digital one for $10-15, and it is so worth it. It is extremely easy to wipe out your deficit by measuring with cups/measuring spoons, or by using generic "1 chicken breast" type entries. As well, serving sizes on packages (like 54g per slice of bread) can be way off. I've had "54g" pieces of bread that have weighed nearly 70g. That adds a lot of extra calories! So, get a scale, and weigh everything. I have found that after doing this for 7 months, the weighing literally adds a minute to my food prep time.

You have lost 3lb in 4 weeks - so you're doing something right. Likely your deficit is not nearly as big as you think, due to not weighing your food, and you may be holding onto some water weight due to your new exercise program (this happens to me). As well, depending on when you weighed yourself, your cycle can affect things as well. Both mid-cycle and at TOM, I usually am up 2-3lb, due to bloating. This goes away within a few days, but masks any weight loss in the mean time.

You are on the right track! You just need to tweak your approach.

A lot of good recommendations here, especially using a food scale and use only one scale as your personal reference point. It is less important that the scale you use is extremely accurate, and more important that it is consistent. I switch from using cheaper digital scales to a slightly more expensive analogue one for this reason and that I did not want to pony up the money for an even more expensive digital scale that would show me the same weight every time I stood on it.

What you may need to do to see real body changes is to weight daily but only care about the weekly average, and compare a week one month to the same week the following month. I also see https://trendweight.com/ as very useful since it can be easy to get discouraged if the weight pulses up and down from week to week, but this can pull your data from fitness pal and show you the long term trend and can be motivating that the weight is going down, even if the scale seems like it's lying in the short term. Further, as a rule weight loss is best seen as a 1-2lbs/w marathon as weight loss beyond this is mostly, and most commonly, water or muscle tissue and not fat.

As for exercise, strictly speaking it is not necessary for weight loss. It does help keep weight off, improve health overall, and apportion weight loss so that more weight loss is from fat and not from muscle or other lean body mass or simply water. This also applies to resistance work or high intensity work much more than cardio so if you are not already, adding in some calisthenics can be helpful in sticking to the lifestyle shift and solidifying fat loss. If you can use resistance bands, kettlebells, barbells or other weights, even better.

I hope this is helpful for you.

allegralprice wrote: »

Fitness pal says I should consume 1810 a day. I never hit that, and after my excercise it's even lower yet. I substituted hamburger with turkey burger, no longer eat sweets, switches to wheat, very little cheese is used anymore (bread, cheese, and sweets were my weakness!), replaced daily noodles with vegetables, add an extra veggie to each meal, and eat small portions 3 times a day with a fruit for snack.

I do not have a food scale, so I basically go off of fitness pal app for calories, just to get an estimate.

Thanks for the response

I'm sure you've cut out a lot of calories by cutting out cheese and sweets, and replacing starches with veggies, as evidenced by your weight loss. But...you still don't know how much you're eating exactly. Any food estimates are known to be wrong. A turkey burger than 90/10 fat, can be a couple hundred calories or 500 calories, or 1000 calories if it has cheese, bacon, sesame seed bun, mayo, etc. It's important to know how much of what you're eating. Some people can cut out certain foods or soda, and lose a lot of weight. For some people, it doesn't always work.

I feel your frustration. I've been at this going on a year or so and have lost about 40 lbs- which is great, don't get me wrong- but I am still baffled how I could have made the changes I have and ONLY lost 40 lbs. To go from eating as much as I wanted to well below maintenance? Working out most days? ??? But it is what it is, and all we can do is what other posters have mentioned- log faithfully and as accurately as possible (I know honestly I can do better), enjoy the increased fitness that comes with working out, and relax. Do be aware that your relatively new workout routine may be causing your body to hold on to water temporarily affecting your weigh in.