Weight's stayed the same for 3 weeks - not up nor down. Any advice?

It wouldn't hurt to evaluate your logging accuracy. How often do you use a food scale for your solid food? Could you use it more often? How often do you eat food prepared by a restaurant/friend/family member? Could you prepare more of your own food. (Unless your friend/family member/restaurant keeps meticulous details of the ingredients by weight, eating food made by others forces you to estimate.) Double check that your entries in the database are accurate in their nutritional data.

Less estimation and more precise numbers can help make sure you're in a deficit. But as others have said, it could just need patience at this point.

Apart from food logging inaccuracies and sticky scales here are two more things to look into:

* scale batteries still good?
* Time of month or any other reason to retain a bit of water?

My advice is to really log your food. You've very little to lose and so inaccuracy is holding you back.

thebiblewithtina wrote: »

Jruzer wrote: »

When you say you weight has stayed the same, do you mean it hasn't changed for 21 straight daily readings? Or that it hasn't changed for 3 weekly readings?

I weigh every Friday, never on other days and for the last 3 Fridays, my weight has stayed the same.

I'm going to post this with some trepidation, because I fear the main point may be lost.

The main point is that slow loss can be a freakin' misleading b-word, in practice - excuse my vague hints at bad language. 😉 For you, OP, I'm hoping that may be a little reassuring.

Background: I'm in year 5 of maintenance now, after losing 60 pounds, so I really trust my process (details of calorie counting, what my maintenance calories are, effects of exercise and more). Over about the past year, I've been losing a few vanity pounds ultra-slowly, averaging half a pound a week, and usually less. (I like painless, especially for vanity pounds.)

I'm going to share my recent Libra (weight trending app) chart, then add a few comments after the image. The horizontal to downhill-ish connected line is my weight trend (just a statistical thing, kind of a rolling average). It's supposed to dampen out the effect of daily fluctuations. The little vertical lines connect my daily weigh-ins to the trend line. (More comments below.)


Over this period, mostly nothing much changed. There are occasional over-goal days in there (which account for some of the high daily weigh-ins, mostly from water weight & digestive contents changes). But clearly, over the full timespan, the overall trend is very slow loss.

Now, look at July specifically. The trend starts about 129.5, ends up just a tiny bit lower. The first 2-3 of weeks look like gain, in the trend line. The daily weights are crazy-fluctuate-y. I didn't change much of anything in July . . . except for one small thing. I (re-)started a strength training routine. We're not talking long sessions, daily sessions, or heavy weights. We're talking a li'l ol' lady doing some basic conditioning with lighter weights, 3 times a week, for maybe half an hour each time: Not dramatic.

That whole month looks like no loss at all, overall. But there was just fat loss still happening slowly, hidden by water retention. (It shows up, finally, in that steeper-downslope drop in August.)

Many, many things can cause that effect, via water retention: A salty dinner the night before weigh in, some sore muscles, a little head congestion from allergies, a minor injury involving inflammation/healing, and many, many more possibilities. Bodies are just that weird.**

I'd also suggest that you look closely at my daily weights (endpoints of those little vertical lines). Most of the time, I was eating at a consistent net calorie level. The daily weights were still up and down, sometimes by a pound or more. If you look super closely, you'll see periods where there are weigh-ins around a week apart, that are exactly the same weight - in September, say. My actual fat weight was declining, my daily weights were up and down in a confusing way, but it's possible that weekly weigh-ins would've implied there was no fat loss and no change in weight.

Do you see what I'm saying?

I'm not trying to convince you to weigh daily, or anything like that. I'm simply trying to use my recent experience to illustrate graphically/viscerally that you may well be losing fat, and still getting the result you see on the scale.

Best wishes!

** https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

With just weighing once per week, 3 weeks no change means nothing. The amount of water stored in your body constantly fluctuates (Waterweight: this is not fat but totally normal), as does the amount of waste in your system (Poopweight: also totally normal). And if you don't step on the scale naked then this might be another thing that is not related to fat that will vary. With weighing just once a week you might hit days where your water/poop/clothes weight just happens to be a bit higher than on the previous week.

But more likely the lack of process is due to being too impatient as weight loss will be slow for your, or not using a food scale and overeating.

Just my 2 cents worth- if I go out to eat, I gain 4 pounds for 4 days (I am sure this is due to sodium content). I have now figured that out for my body so I can rest assured during this period and just continue my eating and tracking disregarding the scale reading until 4 days later when I miraculously return to the before weight. My sister and ex- brother in law are chefs and I have witness them cook and the secret of great tasting restaurant food is salt and butter!

thebiblewithtina wrote: »

Thanks everybody. Much appreciated. I've taken all you advice on board. God bless.

Let us know how things work out in the next few weeks, OK? Hoping you see a nice drop! 🙂