looking for advice or encouragement

derekoh1234
derekoh1234 Posts: 14 Member
in Motivation and Support
Hey everybody, so ive been tracking calories for 102 days at the time of typing this and im down from 277 to 245, and i know things are working but some days it just feels like its stalled out...

couple weeks ago i got really sick and my weight dropped like 7 lbs in 2 days and since then its kind of been creeping back up and thats been discouraging, not for any real reason just because its numbers going up not down. ive been looking at my weight loss report and there is a trend of every few weeks i stall out and then drop 5 lbs over a couple weeks, then stall again and I guess im just hoping for some motivation that this is going where it should.

Thanks for taking the time if anyone does and have a great day.

ps my diary and whatnot is open if anyone has tips or critiques.

Replies

  • thelastnightingale
    thelastnightingale Posts: 725 Member
    A few questions.
    • Are you female?
    • Do you have any spikes in stress levels/personal worries?
    • Does your activity level vary over the month?
    • Are you getting enough sleep?
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,013 Member
    derekoh1234 wrote: »
    Hey everybody, so ive been tracking calories for 102 days at the time of typing this and im down from 277 to 245, and i know things are working but some days it just feels like its stalled out...

    couple weeks ago i got really sick and my weight dropped like 7 lbs in 2 days and since then its kind of been creeping back up and thats been discouraging, not for any real reason just because its numbers going up not down. ive been looking at my weight loss report and there is a trend of every few weeks i stall out and then drop 5 lbs over a couple weeks, then stall again and I guess im just hoping for some motivation that this is going where it should.

    Thanks for taking the time if anyone does and have a great day.

    ps my diary and whatnot is open if anyone has tips or critiques.

    Most people's weight loss graph looks like a little roller coaster. The 7 lbs in 2 days was water weight, and it's good you gained most of it back that it creeped back up, that's the way a healthy body works.

    At your current weight, you should be looking to lose an avg of 1-2 lbs per week. That may very well look like losing 3 lbs, then 1 lb, then gain 1 lb, then lose 2 lbs.

    You've lost 32 lbs in 3 months, that is actually a pretty fast rate if loss. As you get lighter you should expect that pace to slow down. Congrats on your success so far
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,953 Member
    edited November 2020
    Ups and downs along the route are 100% normal. It's about random changes in water retention, and digestive contents temporarily in transit (on their way to being waste)**. Since they're not fat, they're not worth worrying about. If you're sticking to a good process (like careful calorie counting), the fat loss is happening, it's just hidden by that other stuff.

    When you get sick, if you eat less, the average digestive contents goes down, and some other non-fat stored energy also declines (like glycogen in muscles, that also ties up water weight). So, the scale drops. When we start eating again as we feel better, those things top back up to normal levels, and the scale moves up a little. Still not fat changes, so not worth stressing over.

    What really matters is the trend over multiple weeks, like 4-6, not just a day or few or even a week or so.

    As a rule of thumb, (when following fairly consistent eating/activity patterns) quick changes on the scale are water weight and digestive contents. Fat gradually declines over multiple weeks and months. If doing strength workouts, muscle mass can increase over many, many weeks to months. (These things are true for generally healthy people; major disease states could cause different patterns, but I'm talking *major*, not head colds - those latter just affect water weight.)

    One tool that might help you would be a weight trending app, if you don't already use one. Some examples are Happy Scale for Apple devices, Libra for Android, Trendweight (requires a free Fitbit account, but you don't need a Fitbit device), Weightgrapher, others. They're not a magic crystal ball, and can mislead sometimes in special circumstances. They just use statistics to kind of "smooth out" the bumps in daily weights, and highlight the longer-term trends.

    Best wishes!

    ** https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations
  • derekoh1234
    derekoh1234 Posts: 14 Member
    thelastnightingale wrote: »
    A few questions.
    • Are you female?
    • Do you have any spikes in stress levels/personal worries?
    • Does your activity level vary over the month?
    • Are you getting enough sleep?

    male
    nothing significant, just a overall 2020 mood...
    im on disability because of a bad neck so no, i usually workout 45 to 90min a day
    yeah 7 - 8hrs a night

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