Healthy lifestyle & gaining weight back. Why cant I lose weight?
amariebunnie
Posts: 2 Member
Sorry if this is a very lengthy post, but I really need help/motivation! I feel all details are important to really understand whats going on with me.
Im not sure why, but my body just refuses to lose weight.
Im 22 and I’ve always weighed around 135lbs, past few years I stayed around 140lbs, and sometime between the end of last year and the beginning of this year I put on 15 lbs to bring me up to 155! I gained a LOT of the weight in my face and upper arms. This makes me so upset and I decided it was time I created a healthy lifestyle for myself.
I have been using the app, making sure I was hitting around 1200/1300 calories (I felt full, Im not starving myself)
Ive been eating VERY healthy.
3 weeks into this change and I lost 4lbs! I was 151 and I was so happy. I dont know what changed but over the course of the last 8 days, I have gained ALL the weight back and watched the scale go slowly back to 155
I have been so diligent with this healthy lifestyle... its discouraging.
The types of food i would eat:
Breakfast: cereal (cheerios, oatmeal, etc.)
Snack: fruits, oat bars, almonds
Lunch: very small grilled chicken salad
Dinner: palm sized (or less) portion of chicken, equal parts vegetable and grain (mostly rice)
I try my best to eat something every 2-3 hours to keep my metabolism up and keep me from hunger.
Breakfast. Snack. Lunch. snack. Dinner.
I get around 8 hours of sleep every night.
-I made sure all my breads/grains are whole, no more enriched bread/flours!
-When cooking I use minimal amount of Sesame oil
-Don’t really use salt anymore
-I do NOT drink soda, juices etc. never liked it. Just water.
-I almost completely cut out junk food. If someone offers me cake or chocolate, I would refuse it!
I work on my feet all day. I do not sit down once (not even to eat) since there is no chair at my workplace.
I walk about a mile to get to work everyday. And if I have my phone on me, it reads that I usually hit close to 10,000 steps just from being at work.
I drink a ton of water while im there. About 8-10 cups (I use the bathroom every 2 hrs)
I come home from work, and about 3 days a week I do 40 min of cardio in my apartment (video on youtube, includes burpees jumping jacks, jogging, etc)
My heart rate gets blasted to 182 sometimes. I am usually sore and give my body 2 days rest between workouts.
Some days I skip workouts because Im very exhausted from work/my feet hurt, but I try my hardest to do them! On nice days, my boyfriend and I go for long walks.
But even so, I feel that even if i didn’t exercise at all eating healthy in itself should effect my weight.
When it comes to going to the bathroom, never in my life have I had problems... until now. This past month has been VERY HARD on me. I make a bowel movement about 3 times a week now. Sometimes I feel very constipated and other times I just feel as if I just dont need to go. Ever. Ive started taking a daily probiotic and magnesium and its helping a tad bit.
I think my biggest problem is my medication.
Ive had asthma since I was 5 years old. Ive been taking flovent as a daily preventative ever since. Its a cortico-steroid. Im meeting with my new doctor in June to see if I can be taken off of it since my asthma is improved a bunch since then. Ive been on it for probably 17 years. Its going to be a long process.
My asthma also discourages me from exercising as much, since its very hard to breath (my asthma is mostly exercise induced) but it has improved a bit over the past month.
Ive also been on birth control pill for the past 4 years but I haven’t really noticed a change from that.
What is my problem? I try losing weight every year and it never happens.
In the past I would diet/exercise and lose a few lbs, and then give up (obviously my fault) but this time I cant stop! I want to be healthy AND lose the weight! I feel Ive made the best effort ever and now.... Im beginning to feel as though im wasting money on healthy foods and wasting time exercising if i cant make sense of why i gain it back so fast!
I will certainly be discussing this with my new doctor in June, but until then does anyone have any input?
Or even motivational/similar stories would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks for making it all the way to the end!
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Replies
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That is a long post for what is probably normal fluctuation. Take a breath. Stay on track. Do you have your period?9
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You might be overeating without realizing it. Grab a food scale (they're relatively cheap) and try weighing all your food for a couple weeks. If you don't start seeing a change - see your doctor!6
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You lose weight just like everybody else. What's going on, is incorrect logging or impatience, or both. If you stop worrying about less-important things like food choices, water intake, meal timing, metabolism, exercise, etc etc, you'll have the necessary mental energy to work on those two, really important, things.7
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You have said you haven't been going to the loo as regularly, well that alone will be masking any weight loss.
You don't mention if you weigh your foods, if you aren't doing that then that is needed because it makes a huge difference and you will see that you could be eating more than you think.
What height are you?0 -
Buy a digital food scale and weigh all your solid foods and measure your liquids with measuring cups and spoons. When you don't have much weight to lose, you really need to get strict with your logging to make progress. It's way too easy to eat at maintenance, even with "healthy food".
And be patient. Weight loss is very slow when you don't have much to lose. An average of 0.5 to 1lbs per week is good.
Weight fluctuations happen all the time, weight loss is not linear. Your weight will go up and down and up and down, that's why it's nice to use a weight-trending app like Libra or HappyScale. If your weight is slowly heading downwards each month, you're doing good.3 -
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OP you will come to realise that weight fluctuations happen for so many reasons, its completely normal. Its why a lot of us use a trending weight app so we can track weight daily, it helps us see the trend is downwards and it helps us understand why weight spikes up sometimes :- TOM for me means it'll spike up by up to 3lbs, if I have take away, again it'll look like a 2lb gain, if I haven't been able to go to the loo, 3 or 4lbs...you see, soo many reasons but its temporary. In 2 or 3 days all is as it should be once more. Knowledge is power
Know how and why fluctuations happen and that will help you deal with it. 2 -
Are you weighing all of your food and using accurate (USDA) food entries to log it?1
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Log everything that goes into your mouth ... after you have weighed and measured. You could simply be retaining water this week. I have gained two pounds this week, but I am sure just water weight from lifting. Patience is definitely the key. Best wishes! x3
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3 weeks and 4 pounds is easily within the realm of fluctuations due to water retention/loss. Chances are high the initial 4 pound loss was water loss due to removing sodium from your diet and the gains were due to recruitment of water to your muscles for repair and glycogen storage due to exercise. 3 weeks isn't enough time to gauge whether or not you are losing fat or not.
As for your diet it honestly sounds more like self-punishment than healthy. A healthy diet is a balanced diet not a diet of nothing but fruit, veg and oats. Having next to no dietary fat could be a cause of constipation...you should have fats in your diet and all I see is almonds and no clue how many. Next time someone gives you chocolate eat it, more likely to help than probiotics and magnesium. Also no way 1200 calories is supporting regular exercise, you are being overly aggressive there.
Just, as an exercise, go through a days worth of food in your diet and count up the grams of fat and the total calories and share that here.5 -
amariebunnie wrote: »
If you don't understand fluctuations then realize that most of your bodyweight is water. That the weight of your body is not just fat and as such changes in your weight day to day and week to week may have zero to do with fat. You aren't going to be able to accurately judge fat loss in just three weeks because any loss over that period of time will be buried in the noise of weight fluctuations due to things like natural changes to water retention.5 -
Good advice given. Others have repeated the idea that you're likely losing fat but that's temporarily masked by water weight. Honestly, pre-menopausal women will need to follow a new routine for around 6 weeks (full menstrual cycle plus a bit) in order to have a decent idea of whether it's working or not.
I want to underscore the possibility that inadequate fat intake is behind the constipation. Assuming that 135 is a healthy weight for you, a reasonable daily fat minimum would be roughly 50-60g daily, ideally some of that with each meal, and more than that is OK. Try that, and see if that helps after a few days.
Best wishes!2 -
I'm going to agree with everyone else here, probably just a normal fluctuation with a bit of constipation. Seriously get a food scale, I found out I was eating literally twice as much food as I thought, going by portion sizes and measuring cups and spoons. It really does make a difference.
Also try logging not only what you eat, but why (hungry, bored, it's lunchtime, it was there and looked yummy) and how you feel right before, during and an hour after (hungry still/again, stuffed, tired, satisfied, I'm so sick of this garbage, I want to throw it out a window ) that will help you pinpoint habits that are not wirking for you, and allow you to.find sustainable workarounds.2 -
I want to point out that you mentioned eating every couple of hours to keep your metabolism up. Your metabolism will not drop just because you go 5 hours between meals. If anything, it sounds like unnecessary eating and honestly not enough protein and fats. That's to add to the myriad of suggestions above. You don't need to be so over the top strict with eating as that tends to be something that burns people out. Have the piece of cake if you want, and make it fit. That's how you make this a lifestyle. 3
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If you're being accurate with your calorie counting, unless you're extremely petite, you're way undereating for your activity level which may explain why your body is in turmoil. "Starvation mode" isn't really a thing, but not getting enough/adequate nutrition and calories WILL mess with your systems, energy levels, and ability to recover from exercise. Water weight can cause massive fluctuations for some of us.
If your tracking is as accurate as you say, and your activity as as you say, you probably need to eat more. If you keep gaining weight and are weighing all your food and sticking to what you've posted, then may be time to see your doctor.0
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