Scale isn’t budging
sarahlucindac
Posts: 235 Member
Hey everyone. I’ve been on this journey since March and have lost 31 lbs, I have another 20-30 to go. I eat around 1300 calories a day and workout 3-5 times a week. Until about two weeks ago, I was seeing a steady loss of about 1.5 lbs a week. Recently, I had to go off of the birth control pill and ever since, my body has felt all out of wack and the scale won’t budge. Is this a temporary setback due to my hormones adjusting or am I on a plateau? I watch my macros and get plenty of water. I see changes on my body and my clothes are more and more baggy but I’m getting a little annoyed about the scale not budging. Perhaps it’s note worthy that most of my exercise was from hiking until the last month. I’m doing strength training and elliptical in the gym until the summer let’s up. Any words of wisdom? Do i just need to change my workout again? Any ladies that have been through similar things with changes in birth control?
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Replies
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How are you measuring your calorie intake? Are you using a food scale? It definitely could be a stall due to hormone changes, but it could also be logging errors. If you make your diary public, we could take a look and see if that might be the case.6
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I'd wait this out. Hormone changes plus changing your exercise habits are likely to blame.12
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Weight loss isn't linear. I'd regularly have 2-3 weeks of nothing loss, then boom, overnight I'd be at my lowest by 3-4 pounds.
If you start something new (especially strength training), expect not to lose any weight for a couple weeks. Your body will start keeping more water inside to repair those muscles, but you will still be losing actual fat. Birth control and med changes can take awhile for the body to adjust to as well.
If you were losing 1.5 pounds/week, and haven't changed anything, it's likely not a counting issue. Just do what you are doing and give it a couple more weeks.4 -
I would definitely wait it out. Hormones can have a huge impact on our health and weight. A true stall is 3 weeks of no change, but given the fact that you recently stopped birth control, I'd give it at least 5-6 weeks for things to start to normalize again. I might even consider eating at maintenance for 2-4 weeks to give your body a chance to heal and recover and then begin weight loss efforts again. In the grand scheme of things, a few weeks isn't that big of a deal, and your overall health will probably thank you.2
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I know that strength training can cause to "plateau" due to muscle gain (muscle weighs a lot more than fat) and it can make you leaner. Even though technically there is maintainence (sometimes people look leaner and they gain weight too sometimes)
Also, birth control can cause it too. I know when I'm due at that time of the month I can easily gain 5ish pound and then it disappears instantly when it's done. Just be patient it will eventually or should go down. (:15 -
Angielosingitagain wrote: »I know that strength training can cause to "plateau" due to muscle gain (muscle weighs a lot more than fat) and it can make you leaner. Even though technically there is maintainence (sometimes people look leaner and they gain weight too sometimes)
Also, birth control can cause it too. I know when I'm due at that time of the month I can easily gain 5ish pound and then it disappears instantly when it's done. Just be patient it will eventually or should go down. (:
Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat. A pound is a pound is a pound.
HOWEVER, muscle is more dense than fat, so 1lb of muscle takes up less volume than 1lb of fat.
Also, you aren't making huge muscle gains in only a few weeks, more than anything, if you plateau when beginning a weight training routine it is due to water retention.
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Angielosingitagain wrote: »I know that strength training can cause to "plateau" due to muscle gain (muscle weighs a lot more than fat) and it can make you leaner. Even though technically there is maintainence (sometimes people look leaner and they gain weight too sometimes)
Also, birth control can cause it too. I know when I'm due at that time of the month I can easily gain 5ish pound and then it disappears instantly when it's done. Just be patient it will eventually or should go down. (:
Unfortunately, under the best of circumstances, muscle gain is an agonizingly slow process. (The "best of circumstances" include being young, male, eating excess calories, getting plenty of protein, and doing a well-designed progressive (increasingly difficult) weight training program regularly. Really excellent results from that kind of regimen are perhaps a pound a month of muscle gain for men, and half a pound for women.)
No realistic amount of muscle gain outpaces any significant rate of fat loss: Gaining 1/4-1/2 pound of muscle in a week would be a truly great result. Losing 1/4-1/2 pound of fat a week is about the slowest observable rate of weight loss (if even observable between fluctuations).
A pound of muscle is smaller (denser) than a pound of fat, sure. But muscle gain isn't why people in a true calorie deficit don't lose weight.
When starting a new exercise routine, people add water weight (your muscles need it to repair themselves). That's the most common reason for scale stalls when a new exercise routine starts. It can be up to several pounds. If fat loss is happening, it will be hidden on the scale until it offsets that water-weight gain. Then normal progress (on the scale) should resume.
People in a calorie deficit who take up weight training often think they've gained muscle, because they've gained strength. But it's standard for strength to increase quite a lot quite quickly when starting strength training, through neuromuscular adaptation (recruiting and using existing muscle fibers more efficiently). Total newbies to weight training may gain a bit of new muscle tissue at first, even while losing weight, especially if they're obese to start. And people often think they have more muscle tissue when they start training because the water retention/repair causes a bit of a pump (muscles get a little firmer), or because the fat loss that's hidden by water weight causes the pumped muscles to show a bit more, and they get a bit firmer/tighter.
So, weight training is totally worth doing for strength gain, better appearance, and retention of existing muscle, but actual muscle mass gain will be negligible.
OP, it's likely water weight from hormones and/or exercise. I know it's frustrating, but patience is the answer. Things will sort themselves out, if you're on track with your eating.
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Angielosingitagain wrote: »I know that strength training can cause to "plateau" due to muscle gain (muscle weighs a lot more than fat) and it can make you leaner. Even though technically there is maintainence (sometimes people look leaner and they gain weight too sometimes)
Also, birth control can cause it too. I know when I'm due at that time of the month I can easily gain 5ish pound and then it disappears instantly when it's done. Just be patient it will eventually or should go down. (:
Introducing strength training causes a stall on the scale more often because of the increased fluid in the muscle to help cushion and repair it after a workout, the "pumped" effect. It's just water weight masking fat loss, though, not actual gain. And it drops off as you get used to the new activity. Most people wouldn't gain muscle fast enough to mask weight loss in a deficit. The average person gains what? 1-2 pounds of muscle per month while doing everything right (eating in a surplus, plenty of protein, progressive lifting, etc). It's just not a fast enough process to even out again weight loss.6 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »Hey everyone. I’ve been on this journey since March and have lost 31 lbs, I have another 20-30 to go. I eat around 1300 calories a day and workout 3-5 times a week. Until about two weeks ago, I was seeing a steady loss of about 1.5 lbs a week. Recently, I had to go off of the birth control pill and ever since, my body has felt all out of wack and the scale won’t budge. Is this a temporary setback due to my hormones adjusting or am I on a plateau? I watch my macros and get plenty of water. I see changes on my body and my clothes are more and more baggy but I’m getting a little annoyed about the scale not budging. Perhaps it’s note worthy that most of my exercise was from hiking until the last month. I’m doing strength training and elliptical in the gym until the summer let’s up. Any words of wisdom? Do i just need to change my workout again? Any ladies that have been through similar things with changes in birth control?
You've made a lot of changes that cause your body to fluctuate in weight recently. Going off birth control and changing your workout routine. I would give it 2-3 more weeks before you change it up again, since any changes you make come with these kinds of water fluctuations. You could just exacerbate the problem by making a lot of quick changes. I would guess that you'll see weight loss again in that time, but if not then you'll be better armed to figure out what's going on.2 -
Very helpful and insightful, thank you! I really feel in my gut that I am making progress. I feel amazing, I have a lot of energy, my clothes are literally slipping off of me. It’s just that damn scale. I guess considering the circumstances, I’m lucky I didn’t see it go up and that it’s just maintaining at a super annoying number.
Question - the possible water retention from strength training, is this something that eventually goes away or is it just more water that I’ll perpetually carry around with me due to regular exercise?
Loss or no loss, I will not give up. If anything, this only strengthens my resolve.
Thank you very much to those that have commented and offered advice, I appreciate it very much
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The hormone change is likely causing water retention, which is why that scale isn't budging. It should level out and you'll see a drop! You may want to add a 30-minute walk or something in the evenings... It's amazing what an extra couple hundred calories burned will do
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WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »
Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat. A pound is a pound is a pound.
HOWEVER, muscle is more dense than fat, so 1lb of muscle takes up less volume than 1lb of fat.
So, in short, muscle weighs more than fat?
If you had a 1'x1'x1' block of fat and a 1'x1'x1' block of muscle, one would weigh more. I would wonder why you are carting around blocks of fat and muscle...6 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »Very helpful and insightful, thank you! I really feel in my gut that I am making progress. I feel amazing, I have a lot of energy, my clothes are literally slipping off of me. It’s just that damn scale. I guess considering the circumstances, I’m lucky I didn’t see it go up and that it’s just maintaining at a super annoying number.
Question - the possible water retention from strength training, is this something that eventually goes away or is it just more water that I’ll perpetually carry around with me due to regular exercise?
Loss or no loss, I will not give up. If anything, this only strengthens my resolve.
Thank you very much to those that have commented and offered advice, I appreciate it very much
With the strength training, I've seen people report both things.
I mostly strength train in my rowing off season. I've generally added a couple of otherwise unexplained pounds in the Fall, and I hang onto them until Spring when I stop, unless I take an extended break from the training.
I've read others here say theirs fluctuates up and down with training sessions and rest days.
So who knows? One thing for sure: It doesn't keep increasing and increasing, even if you keep challenging your body. The water weight itself more or less levels out. As long as you're in a calorie deficit, you're still losing fat, and that will eventually outpace the water weight. A weight trending app (Happy Scale for iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight, others) could be your friend, though they do take a couple of weeks or so to have enough data to estimate a reasonable trend.
Best wishes!2 -
First of all, you only have 20-30 more lbs to lose. It will get slower at a certain time. When did you last recalculated your goal? 1.5lbs per week might not be possible anymore. Furthermore, there are a few pills out there that generally keep waterweight low on a lot of people. Maybe you were on one of those. And finally, yes, coming off the pill will mess with your hormones for a while.0
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sarahlucindac wrote: »Hey everyone. I’ve been on this journey since March and have lost 31 lbs, I have another 20-30 to go. I eat around 1300 calories a day and workout 3-5 times a week. Until about two weeks ago, I was seeing a steady loss of about 1.5 lbs a week. Recently, I had to go off of the birth control pill and ever since, my body has felt all out of wack and the scale won’t budge. Is this a temporary setback due to my hormones adjusting or am I on a plateau? I watch my macros and get plenty of water. I see changes on my body and my clothes are more and more baggy but I’m getting a little annoyed about the scale not budging. Perhaps it’s note worthy that most of my exercise was from hiking until the last month. I’m doing strength training and elliptical in the gym until the summer let’s up. Any words of wisdom? Do i just need to change my workout again? Any ladies that have been through similar things with changes in birth control?
First, yeah hormone fluctuations could be causing weird water weight stuff to be going on for a couple of weeks
Certainly don't panic!
Now that you have 20-30 to go, you should be expecting more like 1 lb per week. 1.5 is pretty fast!
Now would be a great time to give a long hard look at your logging. How accurately are you weighing/measuring? How discerning are you being about what database entries you choose? Are there things you let slip through, like midnight snacks, condiments, beverages, etc? When you have more to lose, you have more wiggle room, but as you get closer to goal it can't hurt to tighten it up a little if you're struggling.
Congrats on your success so far!4 -
FireOpalCO wrote: »WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »
Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat. A pound is a pound is a pound.
HOWEVER, muscle is more dense than fat, so 1lb of muscle takes up less volume than 1lb of fat.
So, in short, muscle weighs more than fat?
If you had a 1'x1'x1' block of fat and a 1'x1'x1' block of muscle, one would weigh more. I would wonder why you are carting around blocks of fat and muscle...
No.
1lb = 1lb and 1g = 1g and 1 ton = 1 ton
It doesn't matter how much volume it takes up, a pound still equals a pound.
A pound of feathers is equal weight to a pound of bricks.
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/muscle-really-weigh-fat/5 -
WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »FireOpalCO wrote: »WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »
Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat. A pound is a pound is a pound.
HOWEVER, muscle is more dense than fat, so 1lb of muscle takes up less volume than 1lb of fat.
So, in short, muscle weighs more than fat?
If you had a 1'x1'x1' block of fat and a 1'x1'x1' block of muscle, one would weigh more. I would wonder why you are carting around blocks of fat and muscle...
No.
1lb = 1lb and 1g = 1g and 1 ton = 1 ton
It doesn't matter how much volume it takes up, a pound still equals a pound.
A pound of feathers is equal weight to a pound of bricks.
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/muscle-really-weigh-fat/
I didn't say pound, I gave dimensions. Angielosingitagain also never said pound of fat and pound of muscle. You must have added that in your head. You got into this "a pound is a pound" argument all by yourself.
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I'm sorry I was not clear and didn't mean this discussion of what pound is and I meant to say muscle is more dense (which if you took the same volume of fat and muscle therefore muscle weighs more) Also, in my knowledge when muscle repairs and such water or fluid retention may happen. (Which can also be why slowing weight loss) and yes to op eventually it will go away! (:
Yes a pound is a pound according to the scale, but weight is not everything technically if you replace 1 pound of fat with one pound of muscle, a demsions or ones overall size (like appearance not the actual number on the scale) will be different. Again sorry, I feel really bad and I didn't mean to give misinformation.3 -
Angielosingitagain wrote: »I'm sorry I was not clear and didn't mean this discussion of what pound is and I meant to say muscle is more dense (which if you took the same volume of fat and muscle therefore muscle weighs more) Also, in my knowledge when muscle repairs and such water or fluid retention may happen. (Which can also be why slowing weight loss) and yes to op eventually it will go away! (:
Yes a pound is a pound according to the scale, but weight is not everything technically if you replace 1 pound of fat with one pound of muscle, a demsions or ones overall size (like appearance not the actual number on the scale) will be different. Again sorry, I feel really bad and I didn't mean to give misinformation.
No worries: You're absolutely on the right track. Getting strong is good (useful!), and building muscle is good. Muscle-y people are smaller and usually look better than non-muscle-y people of the same weight/height. Muscle building involves some temporary water weight gain, which isn't really a problem, but freaks people out.
Don't feel bad, and keep posting! 3
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