Weight hasn’t budged for 2 months

2

Replies

  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    Mithridites wrote: »
    So let's look at the other side of the equation: calories out. How do you measure your calorie burns? Workout equipment tends to overestimate the calorie burns for me, and so does my Fitbit.

    I think this is a big culprit, too, since you mentioned that you are feeling really fatigued (which could be a result of cutting down the carbs; I know many folks experience the "keto flu" when cutting carbs, but I don't know if cutting down to 25% would still cause that). That means you are moving less - you probably aren't as fidgety, aren't exercising at the same intensity, etc - and that is lowering your CO, so the differently between CO and CI is now smaller.

    Are you counting back exercise calories, and if so, how are you arriving at the amount you are counting back?

    When you set up your MFP account, did you go through the guided setup? What activity level did you choose? If you chose, for instance, active as your level to account for your exercise, but you aren't exercising at that level, then you'd be eating more calories than you should. For my level, there's around a 200 calorie difference or so (maybe a little more) between stages-sedentary to lightly active to active.

    What loss rate did you choose?

    Water weight can be a real pain and can linger for days - some people have seen as much as 5 lbs water weight linger for up to 2 weeks. Other folks don't get losses regularly on the scale; water weight will hold on for weeks, and then suddenly drop with a woosh. New exercise, more extreme exercise than normal, heat and humidity, constipation - there are a lot of things that can cause water weight. As others have suggested, I'd agree with the idea of sticking to one thing, giving it 4 to 6 weeks, and then adjusting based upon that 6 week average result.

    I highly, highly recommend this article - especially the section on the experiences of women:

    http://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/
  • nooshi713
    nooshi713 Posts: 4,877 Member
    Do you eat your exercise calories back? Maybe you are overestimating those? From what I have read about PCOS, your TDEE may be significantly lower than expected for age, weight, and height.
  • sassysmom35
    sassysmom35 Posts: 130 Member
    I understand your frustration. I have Hashimoto's syndrome as well as mild insulin resistance (not diabetic) and I have been maintaining on 1200 calories total (not net) since last September. Weighing most everything with very few exceptions on a food scale and not eating my exercise calories in order to cover any minor logging errors to ensure a deficit. I almost never eat out and prepare my own food. Anything prepackaged gets weighed always. I am 5'3", 42 yrs, female and maintained at 174 plus or minus a lb. I am listed as sedentary due to desk job but I get over 10,000 steps per day of deliberate exercise.
    I have, in the past few weeks, cut my calories to under 1000 total again not eating back exercise. Giving me an average net in the 600 per day range. As of this morning I am 170.8 so it is working but still slow.
    I get that this is not the norm for the vast majority of people (and I'm sure I will get pooh poohed by people who think I'm full of hogwash) but medical issues can and do definitely have an effect on things. No doubt about it. I should be able to lose on way way more but I cannot. And I have a nearly 2 year streak on mfp with a total of 59 lbs lost so I'm not new to things. And yes it took me that long to lose that much (minus the past few months I've been maintaining) and that was at 1200 per day.
    I do have an appt with my endocrinologist in 2 weeks and I intend to show him my data from here and see if there are any solutions. I know net calories of 6-700 cannot be healthy and so we will have a discussion on what to do moving forward.
    I highly advise an appt with a specialist as it sounds like you are having a similar issue.
    It is so disheartening to work so hard and be so meticulous in logging and not see results. And I am militaristic about accuracy.
    Good luck!
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,986 Member
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    In the OP's defense, just because the log says 0.22 cup of corn doesn't mean it wasn't weighed out. Most packaged products I use gives teh serving in cups and grams, but the entry in MFP only shows cups for the same calorie value. I'll weigh it out in grams to a serving, then just use whatever entry has the correct nutritional information, whether it shows it in grams or cups.

    Same thing with the cottage cheese - kroger low fat cottage cheese is 113g in a 1/2 cup serving and is 90 calories. The entry in the MFP database says 1/2 cup, and I use that entry, even though I actually weighed out 113g.

    Yes, ok. But it doesn't change that there seem to be many unprecise measurements, and that there's only one week of tracking.
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @bmeadows380 I think it's less keto flu (I'm not keto) and more just the huge change in carbs. On noom I was eating probably 250 carbs in a day, just because of the fruit I ate for low calorie density. I chose sedentary for my activity level since I'm no longer commuting. I do usually (save for this week) do 30 minutes to one hour of zumba-esque workouts and set it to low effort since I'd rather not fudge the calories burned. On weekends I'm doing 20-30 miles of intermediate mountain biking

    @nooshi713 do you happen to know the formula for the PCOS TDEE? I have a feeling you're right. As an example, when I was a teenager I lost about 50 lbs over a year in what would qualify for most people as an eating disorder. I ate 400-600 calories a day, all salads no dressing. As soon as I ate like a normal person again I ballooned up :- ( Not to mention during this weight loss attempt, I had the super stressed week where I was only getting about 900 calories a day and that's when I lost 2lbs in a week. It might make sense that I just have an extremely low caloric need. which is such a bummer, I really am doing okay on measuring. Been weighing my foods all day and the portions are matched up to what I normally do within 25 calories difference (higher or lower) each meal :'(
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @sassymom25 thank you for the encouragement. Honestly, helps more than you know, it's kinda frustrating to have to show over and over that I'm measuring things correctly and that I'm not "cheating". Last weekend I was so super careful about my logging and I tried to do mountain biking again, almost passed out, did throw up, and had to take a long break just to continue. And yet everyone doesn't believe that I'm trying. I really appreciate knowing that there are other people out there that are also struggling like this, but also pushing through.
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @yirara I don't even know what to say to that, I just go by the calorie content. I weighed my cottage cheese, and that's the measurement that matched. I didn't weigh my avocado. I didn't weigh 1/2 tbsp of olive oil. I did weigh the corn and that was the matching measurement. I'll do my best to be more precise but as I go through the day my control seems to be matching the treatment, as I also showed in the photos I posted of how I measure PB. I work in engineering and boss would have my head if I was this bad as measurement lol. That's not to say that it's perfect every time by any but even if we assume that I'm 200 calories over what I log in a day, you'd think my weight wouldn't go up but here I am.

    As far as you saying that I only have one week, you didn't read my post. I just switched over to MFP from noom recently. I think I'm on day 8 or 9 logging, and I've done about 15 days low carb total.

    And for your info, yeah that bacon IS really thin ;) I just weighed it out this morning precisely and it's more than I normally eat. I chop it up into my egg.
  • harper16
    harper16 Posts: 2,564 Member
    RidingTowardEverywhere wrote: »
    @yirara I don't even know what to say to that, I just go by the calorie content. I weighed my cottage cheese, and that's the measurement that matched. I didn't weigh my avocado. I didn't weigh 1/2 tbsp of olive oil. I did weigh the corn and that was the matching measurement. I'll do my best to be more precise but as I go through the day my control seems to be matching the treatment, as I also showed in the photos I posted of how I measure PB. I work in engineering and boss would have my head if I was this bad as measurement lol. That's not to say that it's perfect every time by any but even if we assume that I'm 200 calories over what I log in a day, you'd think my weight wouldn't go up but here I am.

    As far as you saying that I only have one week, you didn't read my post. I just switched over to MFP from noom recently. I think I'm on day 8 or 9 logging, and I've done about 15 days low carb total.

    And for your info, yeah that bacon IS really thin ;) I just weighed it out this morning precisely and it's more than I normally eat. I chop it up into my egg.

    I don't know if this will help, but do you use a trending app to log your weight? I was frustrated when my weight stalled for 7 weeks, and starting to use a trending app allowed me to see when my weight was flucuating, and if my diet was impacting it.

    Hopefully you'll start to see a drop soon.
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @janejellyroll sorry I should clarify, I didn't realize how that came off. Back when I had a nutritionist I had to send her photos every day to prove my portion size, as she couldn't believe that I wasn't dropping weight on her plan (this was before we were aware I had PCOS) and it was really frustrating to have to get her to believe me that I wasn't just grabbing "table spoons" (not the same as tbsp) of whatever and not paying attention. Then we figured out I had PCOS and she sent me to a specialist who I had to drop before I got much time with her. I'm not at all trying to fight y'all on this, you guys are all giving me good advice based on real reasoning and I appreciate it as said previously I'm going to just keep weighing everything out, so far I'm noticing no difference in my portions but hopefully that and my gp can catch the issue :)
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @harper16 do you mean like a weight trending app or just a general trending calculator? Which app do you prefer?

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member

    RidingTowardEverywhere wrote: »
    @janejellyroll sorry I should clarify, I didn't realize how that came off. Back when I had a nutritionist I had to send her photos every day to prove my portion size, as she couldn't believe that I wasn't dropping weight on her plan (this was before we were aware I had PCOS) and it was really frustrating to have to get her to believe me that I wasn't just grabbing "table spoons" (not the same as tbsp) of whatever and not paying attention. Then we figured out I had PCOS and she sent me to a specialist who I had to drop before I got much time with her. I'm not at all trying to fight y'all on this, you guys are all giving me good advice based on real reasoning and I appreciate it as said previously I'm going to just keep weighing everything out, so far I'm noticing no difference in my portions but hopefully that and my gp can catch the issue :)

    No apologies necessary, we know how frustrating it can be when you aren't losing when you expect to. I just wanted to make sure you understood that nobody was thinking you were being dishonest or cheating. <3
  • nooshi713
    nooshi713 Posts: 4,877 Member
    RidingTowardEverywhere wrote: »
    @bmeadows380 I think it's less keto flu (I'm not keto) and more just the huge change in carbs. On noom I was eating probably 250 carbs in a day, just because of the fruit I ate for low calorie density. I chose sedentary for my activity level since I'm no longer commuting. I do usually (save for this week) do 30 minutes to one hour of zumba-esque workouts and set it to low effort since I'd rather not fudge the calories burned. On weekends I'm doing 20-30 miles of intermediate mountain biking

    @nooshi713 do you happen to know the formula for the PCOS TDEE? I have a feeling you're right. As an example, when I was a teenager I lost about 50 lbs over a year in what would qualify for most people as an eating disorder. I ate 400-600 calories a day, all salads no dressing. As soon as I ate like a normal person again I ballooned up :- ( Not to mention during this weight loss attempt, I had the super stressed week where I was only getting about 900 calories a day and that's when I lost 2lbs in a week. It might make sense that I just have an extremely low caloric need. which is such a bummer, I really am doing okay on measuring. Been weighing my foods all day and the portions are matched up to what I normally do within 25 calories difference (higher or lower) each meal :'(

    I don’t think there is a calculator for that. But remember that MFP is an estimate. Based on your stats, it may give you 2100 to maintain your weight but your real number may be 1800, for example. If you’re overestimating exercise calories and/or logging incorrectly, then you may be actually eating at maintenance.
  • harper16
    harper16 Posts: 2,564 Member
    RidingTowardEverywhere wrote: »
    @harper16 do you mean like a weight trending app or just a general trending calculator? Which app do you prefer?

    A weight trending app. I use Libra but if you use Apple then Happy Scales.
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    Thank you @harper16 I'll try that out. If it has correlating graphs, I'm into it! Far easier to figure it out.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    tequila5000 wrote: »
    Hello! This is all a learning process for all of us. One thing that really helped me tighten up my logging, and therefore have a more accurate calorie log, was when I learned from fellow MFP’ers the value of searching for usda food entries for fresh or unprocessed food. For example, instead of finding an entry for “medium banana”, I found an entry for “raw banana usda” and then because it had a serving portion option in grams, I could weigh my banana and be precise as to the calories, because I was weighing in grams. There are the usda entries for all sorts of raw fruits/veggies, uncooked grains, uncooked meat, things like that. Weighing my food in grams has been a real game-changer. Also, learning about the recipe builder tool and tips on how to use that were extremely helpful. I used to make a pot of soup, and had no idea how to figure out the proper calories for it. I kept reading the boards and learned from others. Keep coming back! We can learn from each other. :)

    here's the link:

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/index.html
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    I mean I showed in my photos that my level tbsp measurement was 17g, which matches the calories I’ve been recording.
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @Lillymoo01 I don’t know how a leveled tbsp could be a fluke. Same volume every time.

    @spiriteagle99 i just bought some electrolytes that I’m starting to add to water! Fingers crossed!
  • RidingTowardEverywhere
    RidingTowardEverywhere Posts: 33 Member
    @NatashaLP2014 I don’t mind at all. I actually don’t get a real “cycle” (I have the nexplanon implant) but I do get bloating/pms/etc. Last week for the first time in a couple years I actually *did* get it ( pretty normal when I hit my second year of the implant) so maybe that could be affecting this?
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