What do I do!!

smittenbymittens · April 2016

Hi everyone
I started out at 278lbs as a 5'6" (f). I starting changing my life 3 weeks ago. I am really committed to becoming healthier and become inshape. The first week and a half I lost about 7 pounds. I have been eating 1300-1400 cals a day of clean eating. I also have been walking/light jogging on my new tredmill about 40 mins 4x a week. I have just started this week trying a weight training DVD called metashread every other day (started on wednesday) to help in addition to the walking. My problem is that for a solid week the sale will not budge. I am trying really hard to not get discouraged. I weight loss isn't linear... but I feel like since I have SO much to lose, with all this work I should be going down at least by 1 pound. Any tips or suggestions will be so much!

janejellyroll · April 2016

You aren't going to lose weight every week, even when you do everything "right." When you lose a lot of weight right away, sometimes your body will take a brief period to catch up. Patience.

jaynee7283 · April 2016

Is MFP recommending 1300 calories a day, or are you?

I started at 255 pounds with a sedentary lifestyle (desk job) and MFP suggested I have 1700 calories a day. On top of that, if I burn 500 calories exercising, I typically eat back half. So I'm really at 1950 calories on the days I exercise. I've lost 22 pounds in 102 days.

Surely MFP suggested MORE than 1400 calories a day - clean or not.

Need2Exerc1se · April 2016

Intensifying exercise can result in water weight gain. Just stick with it and you'll start losing again.

That is a very aggressive plan - low calories + clean eating + lots of exercise. If you find it gets to be too much don't give up, just alter the plan a bit. It's easy to stick to an aggressive plan at first but it's often hard to be perfect for long periods of time. Remember that a perfect plan doesn't have to mean being perfect every day.

Best of luck to you!

diannethegeek · April 2016

If you've just started strength training, your body is going to hold onto some extra water weight to help cushion and repair those sore muscles. It's pretty common not to see a drop on the scale in the first week or so of a new routine. But it's temporary and should even out once your body gets used to the new routine.

brrrycicle · April 2016

Two things.

1). Which you've already acknowledged, weight loss isn't linear, so the scale not budging might just be water retention or even "that time of month". You're still very early in your weight loss journey, so there's no rush. Enjoy the process as best you can. Try new activities, try new foods, savor this time. It didn't take us three weeks to gain the weight, and taking it off will take a bit longer. It's something I've had to tell myself when I get frustrated/impatient with my speed of loss.

2). Are you weighing (on a food scale) EVERYTHING you consume? If not, you may be consuming more calories than you think, and could be eating at maintenance instead of at a deficit. Even "clean eating" can cause you to gain weight if you're eating more calories than you burn. My weigh didn't start coming off faster until I broke down and started weighing and logging every bite. It's takes a little bit getting used to, but I've come up to over a year since I've started my weigh loss journey and I've managed to keep the weight off. If you don't have a digital food scale, you won't get the most out of MFP without one, so I suggest you buy one soon, plus they're pretty cheap on Amazon or at Wal-Mart.

Congrats on your loss so far and good luck with the rest!

lilmisfit1987 · April 2016

When you start a new strength training program you tend to gain extra water weight due to muscle repair. After the first week or two you'll lose it. Just keep at it. Don't stop your strength training! Push through it a couple of weeks and your body with adapt and that water weight will fall off. (What I'm trying to say is that you've likely lost some weight but the water weight from starting a strength training program balanced it out.) Your calorie goal also seems VERY low for your weight and height, especially with that amount of activity. I'm 5'6" and 245lbs...I eat according to what my fitbit allows me, but I never eaten less than 1600 calories on my lazy days. On days when I go for a jog or when I work (as a CNA) I eat 2000-2500 calories and I haven't had any problems losing weight. Trust me...eating less than recommended doesn't help you lose weight. When I first started losing weight I was 260lbs and I ate 1200 calories a day. Yea I lost weight fast at first but the my metabolism adapted and my weightloss came to a screeching halt. The whole point of slowly decreasing your calories as you lose weight is to keep your body guessing. It took me months to return my metabolism to normal and I gained all of the weight back in the progress...

Joanna2012B · April 2016

I weigh myself once a week. I can go two weeks of no movement and then the third week it dropped by 3-5lbs.

JanetMMcC · April 2016

What they all said. Especially don't panic, and weigh and measure everything.

Also, though this is a longer-term thing than one week, remember that muscle weighs more than fat, volume for volume. So you might be staying at the same weight but still losing fat. Have you set up your measurements in MFP, so you can check them every couple-few weeks?

For what it's worth, about the non-linear bit, here's my chart for the past year. Notice that a few days at one weight are sometimes followed by a rise -- but the general trend is down, and that's what matters. I've been on maintenance since November; the highlighted bit is a vacation at my brother's, without a scale. I still logged food, using the phone app. Even with a pizza the size of Manhattan on one night's menu for the 6 of us, and estimated logging rather than weighing and measuring everything, I still was within my 5-pound goal range (140-145) when I got home.

What do I do!!

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