Need advice as to why I’m not losing

Rowdib wrote: »

Wow. I’m an educated woman, and in my way of thinking, if I’m cooking my own food at home, at least I know what is going into it and how it is cooked. And so from what I’m gathering here, if I open a can of black beans to use in a recipe, the nutritional information in the side of the can is not to be trusted?? That just doesn’t seem right to me. And if you can’t trust the nutritional information on the packages, then where do you get it? The nutrition fairy?? If I go to a restaurant I have no reassurance of exactly what is in my food, how much exactly is there, or how it was cooked. Or am I supposed to trust their handy nutritional guides? Come on. And btw, by not eating nachos, I know damn well I haven’t consumed a days worth of empty calories in one setting. And that my friend, is all the accuracy I need when it comes to nachos. I think these boards could use a little more positivity and a little less criticism. I know I asked for advice, but good grief, I never thought people would be this negative. It’s hard enough to do what we’re doing, a little encouragement goes a long way.

The nutritional information on the side of a can is absolutely not to be trusted, at least in terms of how much food it claims is in the can. Weigh everything at least once to see what a correct portion looks like. Surprises can go both ways - I regularly eat a brand of peas and snaps which claim to have 3.5 servings in the can. By weight it is barely over 2 servings! That’s an extreme example but it’s not unusual for prepackaged foods to be off by about 20%, which is allowed by law.

I think your current issue is probably a simple one of swelling masking any weight loss. If you have visible swelling in your legs, that is many pounds of water weight, which can swing wildly depending on how much you eat or drink or stand up. When I injured my knee and had swelling I gained a pound a day for a week! But not any of it was fat, it was all caused by swelling. My suspicion is that your better way of eating with less sodium caused the water to come off quickly in the first week, and then in the second week your body adjusted and there was a rebound effect. It’s going to be difficult to see your actual weight loss on the scale in the short term until you lose enough that you have less water weight variance. Keep going, you will get there. Have faith! Don’t undereat just because what you were doing seemed not to be working.

As far as trusting nutrition information, the best you can do is the best you can do. It helps many people to limit meals eaten out, to question prepackaged foods using common sense and measuring, and to measure ingredients accurately using a scale, and log accurately using entries from the usda database. A good kitchen scale is about ten dollars and not that hard to use - in fact once you get used to using it, they are a convenient way of reducing the number of dishes you need to wash, since you measure directly into your dish instead of using a cup or spoon.

These forums have seen a lot of people with problems similar to your own, and more often than not, the biggest issue is inaccurate logging. Until you are logging accurately there’s no way to diagnose what else may be happening and no one else can offer any useful advice. Log accurately as a first step.