Slow Metabolism?
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jdubsms
Posts: 4 Member
I'm in an interesting situation. I started exercising on a daily basis in mid-June and I weighed 171. At that time I started counting calories as well (1200 per day). I started by walking 5 miles 3 days per week. After a few weeks I went up to 5 days per week. Now I go to the gym Mon-Fri and do 60 minutes on a stationary bike and some light weights. I now weigh 165 pounds. I know that I've gained some muscle but 6 pounds in 3 months is disappointing. Anyone have any ideas of what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance!
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Sometimes it takes a while for your body to realize the new changes taking place. With your new workout regimen, excess water goes to the muscles for repair. It usually takes a few days to a few weeks to shed the excess water. Also, if your sodium levels have been high, that takes 3-4 days for your body to shed the excess water from that. Continue doing the right things as you're on the right path. Be patient and you'll see the results you're looking for.3
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See your doctor and ask for a full thyroid panel if you suspect that your metabolism is doing something bad. I turned out to be hypothyroid. I now take medication for that.
Make certain you weigh all your foods. Sometimes the calorie counts on packaging are off. Cups are too inaccurate a measure for solid foods, though liquids like milk and yogurt are fine. When you do that make sure the cup is level. Don't pile yogurt above the rim of the cup, for example. And estimating is a sure way to gain weight, so def don't do that.
A good digital food scale is 15 bux on Amazon and it will enable you to know exactly how many calories you are truly consuming. When you make something like a casserole use the recipe builder function so that you can know how many calories in a serving. When I make something like a salad, I just tally all the ingredients of it separately. X weight of lettuce, x weight of tomato, etc and then MFP totals it.
women add muscle bulk slowly. Assuming that you are not a steroid user, I would not expect that to total more than 2-3 pounds, and that is if you are lifting heavy and eating plenty of protein. However, your muscles do temporarily add water and glycogen as part of their repair process after a workout. I never weigh the morning after a workout; it will be misleading.3 -
You lose weight mainly through food intake, you say nothing about your calorie defecit or approach to eating
It is all but impossible to out exercise a bad diet, and by bad that means eating close to maintenance
That said you have lost 6lbs over 8 weeks ...0.75lbs a week that's a great rate of loss so actually your calorie defecit sounds pretty good to me ...well done4 -
Mid June to mid August is 2 months, no?4
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Mid June to mid August is 2 months, no?
Yes. Figuring 2 months is approximately 8 weeks, 6 lb isn't bad. It's 3/4 lb per week.
OP - since your food/exercise diary isn't available to the public, there's info we don't have that we more-or-less need to help. You say you are (or were) at 1200 Cals/day. Are you eating the Calories you've earned through exercise? If so, how exactly are you determining your earned Cals? Also, how exactly - as in, are you measuring liquids and weighing solids - are you determining how many Cals you're eating every day?
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Check your maths. You say you've lost 6lbs in three months since mid June. But it's only 2 months since mid June! Just under 1lb/week is excellent.
If you are new to dieting you might find that inaccuracies are creeping into your calorie counting (there are loads of inaccurate foods in this app - the green ticked ones have been checked).
Excellent that you are increasing your activity levels, keep that up and the weeks will tick by in no time. You might want to buy a cheap step tracker on eBay or somewhere. I find mine (a cast off from my husband) excellent for keeping track of normal activity.
Keep going, keep checking your calorie count, keep active and balance your diet and you'll do fine.
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Excellent advice above, except for that the green, "verified" foods haven't been "checked" in any way, form or fashion - they just fit a set of (random, generated) parameters set my MFP, that may or may not correspond with accuracy.5
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Gosh I didn't know that. Thanks! I have found some discrepancies in the verified quantities. I just assumed that they were checked by dopy staff! Need to double check!1
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Vegplotter wrote: »Gosh I didn't know that. Thanks! I have found some discrepancies in the verified quantities. I just assumed that they were checked by dopy staff! Need to double check!
Entries can get the green check mark several ways:
1. They are system entries, taken from https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods and entered by MFP
2. They are user-created entries with a sufficient number of verifications
3. I imagine manufacturer entries get a green check as well
The problem with # 2 is that this is crowd-sourced and people can answer Yes to "Is this data correct?" without having carefully scrutinized every value.
I eat mostly whole foods and get the syntax for them from https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods and then search in the MFP database for a matching entry.3 -
I'm in an interesting situation. I started exercising on a daily basis in mid-June and I weighed 171. At that time I started counting calories as well (1200 per day). I started by walking 5 miles 3 days per week. After a few weeks I went up to 5 days per week. Now I go to the gym Mon-Fri and do 60 minutes on a stationary bike and some light weights. I now weigh 165 pounds. I know that I've gained some muscle but 6 pounds in 3 months is disappointing. Anyone have any ideas of what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance!
How tall are you and what's your goal weight? When you are within 25 pounds of your goal weight, you should be shooting to lose 0.5 pound per week. You're losing 0.75 pounds per week (assuming 8 weeks mid June - mid August) so you're either doing great or losing a little faster than you should, depending on how much more weight you have to lose.
Except for women who are very short, active women can eat more than 1200 calories and still lose weight. Are you eating 1200 calories total (net calories) or 1200 calories plus calories you've earned from exercise (gross calories)?1 -
I'm in an interesting situation. I started exercising on a daily basis in mid-June and I weighed 171. At that time I started counting calories as well (1200 per day). I started by walking 5 miles 3 days per week. After a few weeks I went up to 5 days per week. Now I go to the gym Mon-Fri and do 60 minutes on a stationary bike and some light weights. I now weigh 165 pounds. I know that I've gained some muscle but 6 pounds in 3 months is disappointing. Anyone have any ideas of what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance!
You won't gain muscle at a deficit, especially if you are not incorporating heavier weight lifting. You are not obese, so any newbie gains would be minimal.
Six pounds is great progress and comes out to approximately 3/4 pound a week. Since you are at 1200 calories, which is usually 2 pounds a week for most people, and losing at a slower rate, you are eating more than you think through overestimating output and underestimating input.
Do you weigh your food and measure your liquids? Log every single thing you eat?
Do you log exercise calories and eat them back? Where do you get those burns from?
It is very common to underestimate intake and overestimate calorie burns.
You are doing great, though! Just keep up the hard work.
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Focus on cleaning clean than working out too much. Honestly i was in the same boat. I was exercising at least an hour daily and eating 1200-1400 depending on my workout and was incorporating all food groups but nada weight was going down after I reached 171 from 180. I decided to focus more on my eating than working out. I dance at home for a at most 1hour... I just crank up the radio and dance. I eat 16 oz steamed veggies+ 4 oz grilled chicken/fish/or boiled eggs or eat 1 cup of rice+ 16 oz vegetables with salt as condiment , or just eat salad with a protein. In between I munch on apple sauce or low calorie fruits if needed. No dairy, No more than 1 Tablesspoon of oil daily, No bread etc. I started losing weight.
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I just restarted 2 weeks ago. I go to the gym monday-friday do 30 minutes cardio and count my calories I try to stay below 1400 a day I've lost about 6lb so far.0
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I havent read all of the posts but your body might be in starvation mode. Your body might be hanging on to all of the calories knowing its not getting enough food.0
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I havent read all of the posts but your body might be in starvation mode. Your body might be hanging on to all of the calories knowing its not getting enough food.
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Thank y'all so much for the insight. I never thought about weighing food. I weigh 166lbs and I'm 5 feet tall. -like a rolly polly. I want to get down to 150. Anything below 150 would be a miracle. My calories are net; I take into consideration the exercise I do. I looked at my weekly nutrients and I am very low on carbs. I've been meeting/exceeding my protein intake. Just trying to find out where I'm going wrong.0
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I havent read all of the posts but your body might be in starvation mode. Your body might be hanging on to all of the calories knowing its not getting enough food.
Dieters don't actually stop losing weight due to "starvation mode": http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/0 -
Thank y'all so much for the insight. I never thought about weighing food. I weigh 166lbs and I'm 5 feet tall. -like a rolly polly. I want to get down to 150. Anything below 150 would be a miracle. My calories are net; I take into consideration the exercise I do. I looked at my weekly nutrients and I am very low on carbs. I've been meeting/exceeding my protein intake. Just trying to find out where I'm going wrong.
Since you're not weighing your food, you're likely eating more than 1200 calories, but 0.75 pounds per week is a great rate of loss for you.2 -
queenliz99 wrote: »I havent read all of the posts but your body might be in starvation mode. Your body might be hanging on to all of the calories knowing its not getting enough food.
By 'hanging onto the calories' you could mean two things:
1) That the energy demands are the same but somehow the body is magically fuelling itself on fresh air, because its hoarding all the calories instead of using them. Not possible.
2) The energy demand has decreased - by slowing down non-essential processes such as hair growth, nail grow, skin cell turn-over, and also through becoming more lethargic in order to conserve energy. This is noticeable, but not usually the case.0
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