Scale NOT moving

marialuna78 · September 2019

Hey guys! So I have been tracking and doing everything right for the past 3-4 weeks. Scale does not move. At all. Nothing. Nada. It is soooo frustrating! I am doing macros and always meking sure to est below tdee, at least 400-600 calories/day. I am eating less than I need every week for maintenance and nothing is happening. I only need to lose 10 lbs and it is not happening.

Can anyone give any ideas?

Thanks so much!

marialuna78 · September 2019

marialuna78 wrote: »

Hey guys! So I have been tracking and doing everything right for the past 3-4 weeks. Scale does not move. At all. Nothing. Nada. It is soooo frustrating! I am doing macros and always meking sure to est below tdee, at least 400-600 calories/day. I am eating less than I need every week for maintenance and nothing is happening. I only need to lose 10 lbs and it is not happening.

Can anyone give any ideas?

Thanks so much!

marialuna78 · September 2019

Apologies for the typos... iphone and being in a rush do not mix well!

L1zardQueen · September 2019

gallicinvasion · September 2019

Hello! I am assuming you’ve calculated your TDEE on a separate calculator (not MFP). If not, please let us know. The TDEE method is different than MFP’s NEAT method of identifying your daily calorie target.

1. Are you using a weight-trend app to help you see your trend, instead of just looking at one weigh-in number each week? If you are 10 lbs away from goal, it might be hard to see a slow rate of weight-loss amid other water-weight fluctuations if you’re not using a weight-trending app.
2. When you are so close to your goal and already at a healthy weight, weight loss should be very slow in order to avoid losing muscle along with the fat. Assuming you’ve got a fairly accurate TDEE number from a calculator, you might want to aim for losing .5 lbs a week instead of almost a pound a week (by eating 250 less than your TDEE, rather than 500 less).
3. Do you use a food scale? When you have such a small deficit and a low rate of loss, food-logging accuracy becomes very important, because small inaccuracies can wipe out the deficit. If you are using tablespoons for peanut butter, mayonnaise, butter, etc, it’s VERY easy to serve yourself many more calories than you’re actually logging. If you’re using measuring cups for nuts and salad dressing, or using the “size of my palm” method for meat, you are dealing with lots of opportunities for inaccuracies.
4. MFP food entries are user-entered, and probably 90% of them are just super-wrong. This could also wipe out your deficit. Verify the food entries in your diary match the package nutrition facts on your food. If it’s a whole food, use the USDA food database to get the proper name for your food, search that in MFP, and verify the nutrition facts match before you use it.

In short, my advice is 1. Weigh daily and record with a weight-trending app, 2. Re-evaluate your calorie target so you are going for an appropriate rate of loss like .5 lbs a week, 3. Get a food scale and use it for all your food eaten at home, and 4. Double-check every food entry for accuracy.

cmriverside · September 2019

Yeah, what they said ^^

With 10-15 to lose, it's going to be slow and you need to be very accurate. My last 15 pounds took nine months to lose and I was making 13 out of 14 meals every week myself from scratch and using a digital food scale set to grams for everything I ate.

Accuracy and time along with a SMALL deficit off Maintenance (like no more than 300 calories deficit per day.)

riffraff2112 · September 2019

The graphic above is your best resource. For me it just took more time. I had a decent initial loss, and then stalled for about three weeks. Since then, I consistently loss a pound or two a week. My body kind of went in shock from a change in diet and exercise and held on to its weight for dear life.. before finally saying 'ah what the hell'.

cupcakesandproteinshakes · September 2019

What they said above. If you aren’t losing then you aren’t in a deficit. Inaccurate logging is the number one culprit.

suzesvelte · September 2019

I think this issue is mainly about how small the difference is between losing/ gaining and maintaining .. while it's obvious that eating huge calorie excesses will gain you weight, actually maintaining isn't very much different to losing .. and whatever you are doing now it what you will have to do FOREVER to maintain. And that's where it's hard to stick.

It's obvious that many people over-estimate the difference and the fact that even quite small increases will add weight again. Ditto even quite small increases will stop you losing ... so this is the reality check when you are near your goal weight. I never go crazy on over-eating but I always steadily increase in size because my idea of "normal" eating is still a bit too calorie heavy in small ways that undermine my maintainance ... I know I especially have to watch extra slurps of calorie dense foods as mentioned above, and snacks like nuts or crackers which are so easy to snaffle ... it all counts. It all needs constant vigilance when you're not a "natural" for maintaining a healthy weight.

StaciMarie2020 · September 2019

If the scale does not move at all: get a new scale. A person does not have one single weight. It will vary slightly thru the day based on the mass of what we consume and at some point expel. If your scale always has the same exact number (such as 157.9 each time) then something is not right with it. Change the batteries, change the scale, try stepping on it while holding a couple of gallons of water.

Other than that, it is a matter of accuracy and patience in terms of logging. If your scale is fluctuating in the same general 2-3 pound range now as last month, you may need to give it more time. But it never hurts to make sure your logging is accurate. Weigh all solid food. Measure liquids. Try to have as much control over your food as possible when starting out, so less eating food prepared by others and try to stick to food that you KNOW the calorie contents. Prepared by others = guestimate and that could be hundreds of calories per day of mistaken logging.

MySlimGoals · September 2019

Like above can you zero the scale each time you use it and weigh on it with different weights (holding heavy items). Nearly all scales have a memory and they return to the last weight unless it is off by a good amount. It's the manufacturer's way of making their scales seem faster but is annoying if you are wanting to see small changes. I weigh with weights then zero my scale and do my real weight every time I want to take my weight and this solves the issue.

Otherwise, the chart above is a good resource and a truckload of patience as well. When you have a small amount to lose it takes longer to come off.

jhanleybrown · September 2019

If exercise is a factor in your deficit, MFP exercise calories in my experience are a lot higher than actually burn. I needed to lose 20 lbs (now 15...woot woot) and was incorporating additional exercise and going nowhere. I was accurately recording cals in...I researched my main forms of exercise and found MFP to be 30-50% over the most accurate formula I could find. My current loss rate is 5-6 lbs/month. Two months in but month one was a loss due to above.

Scale NOT moving

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