Help, haven't lost in a week even though I've been eating 800 calories a day
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CannedKindness wrote: »MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »800 cal a day in your situation is a great way to wreck your health. With how little you have to go now you need to do a few things: set a loss rate of .5lb a week, have super precise logging and patience.
If you're not losing weight you're eating at maintenance, how are you determining how much you eat? Odds are you're eating a lot more than 800-900cal a day.
I am most certainly not eating more than that, I'm not a liar and I log in everything. Take your accusations somewhere else.
I think you're a little hangry. Do you just want to be told you're a special snowflake and it is totally out of your control that you're not losing weight or did you actually want helpful suggestions which people gave (and then you got angry about)?? No one accused you of anything.
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Water weight is the explanation. It's masking fat loss (and lean tissue loss, including muscle loss, because you're eating way, way too little to maintain health, let alone muscle.
There are lots of possible reasons for water weight: Time of month (exactly when a woman gains during her cycle varies by person), undiagnosed minor virus or infection, other healing, new exercise routine, extra sodium or carbs compared to previously (even if not lots or an unhealthy amount), stress, and more.
You're not eating enough. You're risking your health. I'm about your height (5'5"), likely 2 or 3 times your age (62) and lost from the 180s to the 120s in less than a year, while eating twice what you are most of that time.
Please, please eat enough to get adequate nutrition. I know you're in a rush, but you won't feel good or look cute (hair loss, bad nails, sallow, listless, more) if you stay on this course.
I just want to see you stay strong, healthy and pretty while you achieve your weight goals!
ETA: The water weight will go away on its own, with patience. Drinking adequate - not excessive - water may help.11 -
I'm 5'3", 66 years old, sedentary except for moderate purposeful exercise and even I lose weight at 1200 calories plus eating back exercise calories. If you are eating 800 calories and not seeing a loss in your second week of calorie restriction it has nothing to do with fat loss and everything to do with the factors discussed above.
I'll add my (alto) voice to the choir: if you continue to eat 800 calories daily at your height and weight you WILL become ill, and it's the kind of illness that takes months to recover from.5 -
Ready2Rock206 wrote: »CannedKindness wrote: »MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »800 cal a day in your situation is a great way to wreck your health. With how little you have to go now you need to do a few things: set a loss rate of .5lb a week, have super precise logging and patience.
If you're not losing weight you're eating at maintenance, how are you determining how much you eat? Odds are you're eating a lot more than 800-900cal a day.
I am most certainly not eating more than that, I'm not a liar and I log in everything. Take your accusations somewhere else.
I think you're a little hangry. Do you just want to be told you're a special snowflake and it is totally out of your control that you're not losing weight or did you actually want helpful suggestions which people gave (and then you got angry about)?? No one accused you of anything.
You're being ruder to me than I was to that person, when their initial post and follow-up post make it pretty clear how antagonistic they are being. I assume you heard the term special snowflake in some political video, as that's where I generally hear it, and this isn't the place to call names like that. Thank you.18 -
suzannesimmons3 wrote: »CannedKindness wrote: »Ready2Rock206 wrote: »CannedKindness wrote: »MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »800 cal a day in your situation is a great way to wreck your health. With how little you have to go now you need to do a few things: set a loss rate of .5lb a week, have super precise logging and patience.
If you're not losing weight you're eating at maintenance, how are you determining how much you eat? Odds are you're eating a lot more than 800-900cal a day.
I am most certainly not eating more than that, I'm not a liar and I log in everything. Take your accusations somewhere else.
I think you're a little hangry. Do you just want to be told you're a special snowflake and it is totally out of your control that you're not losing weight or did you actually want helpful suggestions which people gave (and then you got angry about)?? No one accused you of anything.
You're being ruder to me than I was to that person, when their initial post and follow-up post make it pretty clear how antagonistic they are being. I assume you heard the term special snowflake in some political video, as that's where I generally hear it, and this isn't the place to call names like that. Thank you.
That's the internet honey.....people call you out on dangerous eating levels....
Did you read the post? They were not calling me out on dangerous eating levels, they said it was impossible that I was doing what I said.1 -
I didn't know this place was full of jerks. I'll be leaving now. As soon as I can figure out how to delete it.5
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CannedKindness wrote: »suzannesimmons3 wrote: »CannedKindness wrote: »Ready2Rock206 wrote: »CannedKindness wrote: »MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »800 cal a day in your situation is a great way to wreck your health. With how little you have to go now you need to do a few things: set a loss rate of .5lb a week, have super precise logging and patience.
If you're not losing weight you're eating at maintenance, how are you determining how much you eat? Odds are you're eating a lot more than 800-900cal a day.
I am most certainly not eating more than that, I'm not a liar and I log in everything. Take your accusations somewhere else.
I think you're a little hangry. Do you just want to be told you're a special snowflake and it is totally out of your control that you're not losing weight or did you actually want helpful suggestions which people gave (and then you got angry about)?? No one accused you of anything.
You're being ruder to me than I was to that person, when their initial post and follow-up post make it pretty clear how antagonistic they are being. I assume you heard the term special snowflake in some political video, as that's where I generally hear it, and this isn't the place to call names like that. Thank you.
That's the internet honey.....people call you out on dangerous eating levels....
Did you read the post? They were not calling me out on dangerous eating levels, they said it was impossible that I was doing what I said.
They said it was impossible not to lose weight eating what you said, not that you were impossible you were doing it. While they weren't entirely accurate (it would be impossible in the long term, but not the short term accounting for water weight and more food in your system), they also never called you a liar. They were discussing the matter of physics and science of weight loss.
Some good advice someone gave me here once is to read everything in the voice of Kermit the Frog. Tone doesn't come through in text easily and it's easy for us to read things into text that the poster didn't intend to be there.9 -
CannedKindness wrote: »I didn't know this place was full of jerks. I'll be leaving now. As soon as I can figure out how to delete it.
You cannot delete your own posts on this board. What you can do is use the "flag -> report option" and choose "this is my post and I want it deleted." If you're on mobile, that's the three dots in the righthand corner. On a PC it's at the bottom of your post.
For the record, this is how posts you find mean should be dealt with, as well (choose the appropriate option, of course) instead of resorting to name-calling those of us who are trying to help you.9 -
I think the poster failed to notice that you were talking about ONE WEEK, which is why it's not impossible, but the point that if you were eating 800 cal and not losing over a period of time that your logging is almost certainly off (which is common) is certainly true. And, more significantly, neither an attack nor warranting the aggressive response it received.
Maybe chill and focus on the fact that you lost 8 lbs in a week and a half (so my guess is the logging isn't particularly off) and probably your body is just adjusting and the answer is to pick a more sustainable deficit and be patient and consistent.
If you want logging tips (IMO, useful, but I'd guess you don't) opening the diary is sometimes something people like to try. Many experienced loggers might see issues.4 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »I think the poster failed to notice that you were talking about ONE WEEK, which is why it's not impossible, but the point that if you were eating 800 cal and not losing over a period of time that your logging is almost certainly off (which is common) is certainly true. And, more significantly, neither an attack nor warranting the aggressive response it received.
In a later comment she mentioned that she'd been eating less than 800cal before she bumped it up to that, so she's been under eating (or think she has) for longer than a week. But she's going by labels and guesstimates, so I think logging is definitely the issue.
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CannedKindness wrote: »The user I snapped at is still completely antagonistic and says it is outright impossible that I am doing what I say I am doing. There's no need for that. This forum doesn't need to be as toxic as most of the others on the internet.
For logging in, I eat stuff with the calories on the box/jar/package sometimes, so I know that's right. The calories for cube steak are pretty generally known, and I eat that. For stuff like cornbread I do just try to guess from online logs cuz that's hard. But if I am not logging in correctly, it can't be off by more than a few hundred and that would put me at 1200. I should still be losing.
However, at first I was only eating about 500-600 a day because I was dumb and didn't know what I was doing. Only this past week I went up to 800. Maybe my body got shocked or something.
I don't have a problem going up to 1200 if that is best. I don't want to do the wrong thing. But I don't want to maintain either, I was really hoping to get down to 150 by the summer, which would be 18 lb in 6 months, which is 3 lb a month, which doesn't seem impossible. My fitness pal thinks that 1200 will lose me 2 lb a week.
Ok. I'm going to throw some things out there...don't assume I'm insulting your intelligence, these are things I learned the hard way. You could very possibly be logging 800 calories and eating 1200. I'm not saying reduce what you're eating as a knee-jerk reaction, rather see if you might be underestimating per these suggestions below.
1. Weighing is better than measuring. It's easy to think you're having a serving of 2 tbs of peanut butter (32g) when if you weighed it you may actually have gotten 45. Boom, an extra 100 calories. Same thing with items like a banana. They're about 1 calorie per gram but you could have a 75g banana or 150g. Logging "Large Banana, 100 calories" isn't very accurate.
2. The calories on a box can be misleading for a couple reasons. First, the USDA allows food companies to round down (I forget the percentage or whatever) and second, they subtract fiber from net carbs. If you want to get technical, protein and carbs are both 4 calories per gram and fat is 9. It's easy to double check nutrition fact panels with some quick math.
3. If you're making something from a recipe you make often, like cornbread, take the time once to enter all the ingredients and save it as a food. Next time...easy peasy.
4. The calories of raw and cooked meat are very different; make sure you're not weighing raw and logging cooked or vice versa.
My advice would be to weigh in every morning and use an app to track the trend so you don't stress about daily fluctuations. I'd also up your calories to 1200 per day and add 100 calories per day until you see the weight trend level out...now you know your maintenance calories. Now, slowly reduce them by 100 calories per day until your weight trends down at the desired rate. Yes, this will take longer but otherwise you're guessing at what your calorie requirements actually are. Best of luck.10 -
MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I think the poster failed to notice that you were talking about ONE WEEK, which is why it's not impossible, but the point that if you were eating 800 cal and not losing over a period of time that your logging is almost certainly off (which is common) is certainly true. And, more significantly, neither an attack nor warranting the aggressive response it received.
In a later comment she mentioned that she'd been eating less than 800cal before she bumped it up to that, so she's been under eating (or think she has) for longer than a week. But she's going by labels and guesstimates, so I think logging is definitely the issue.
I under ate for a week and a half and lost 8 lb. I under ate for another week and stopped losing.5 -
You should check out this article, it really helped me.
https://www.livestrong.com/article/485503-will-eating-too-few-calories-make-you-gain-weight/
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Sorry--you're just not going to get a lot of support around here for a very low calorie diet especially if your not under a doctor's care...4
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OK, OP. If you're still around to read this... take a deeeep breath! Yes, some people are blunt - but try not to take it personally. Eating so few calories can be dangerous, and people are concerned for you. Add the fact that you seem to be a bit impatient with your weight loss - well, people aren't going to react well. Just know that everyone is trying to help in their own way.
You've already got good advice, so I'll just lump onto it.
Eating below 1200 calories a day is not recommended for an adult woman. Your body needs a certain amount of nutrients, fat and protein to function properly. Without enough of them, you're likely to lose muscle mass, turn your nails and hair brittle, LOSE your hair (!), feel weak and exhausted, faint, and develop a bunch of other health concerns associated with malnutrition. It's not something to take lightly!
As for impatience - it's normal to feel impatience, but you'll need to work on your expectations. You didn't gain 5lbs in a week, so expecting to lose 5lbs in a week just isn't realistic (as an example). Most of us track our progress over months, not days or weeks. If you're down 5lbs in a month, that's fantastic. Slow and steady is the preferable and more sustainable method. As long as you're regularly eating below your TDEE, but above 1200 calories - you're on track.
As for your initial 8lbs weight loss, most of that is water weight and less poop in your body! Gross but true. Body weight fluctuates all the time - that's why making regular weigh-ins and tracking your weight over MONTHS is the best way to go. You may lose 2lbs one week, gain 1lbs the next week, then lose 0lbs the next week - all while sticking to a deficit. Bodies are just funny that way - but at the end of the day, you've still lost a pound!
Anyway - good luck and try not to take things personally!
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