6 inches off the stomach but only 9lbs down..

The best results don't mostly come in the shortest time possible, because that's impossible, in the real world. The best results usually come from slow and steady, tedious though that may be.

1000 calories is too few for any normal-sized adult. Don't do that.

Stress causes water retention. Eating way too little is a stressor. If you're losing many inches but few pounds, that's a very strong possibility. Increased exercise also causes water retention. Water isn't fat, so it's not worth worrying about, even if it makes things look messed-up on the bodyweight scale. Eat a sensible amount, exercise a sensible amount, try to have a balanced and satisfying life alongside losing weight at a sustainable pace, and it'll sort itself out.

You're not gaining muscle, sadly. Muscle gain is very slow (pound or two per month would be great results) under ideal circumstances, and ideal circumstances include a calorie *surplus*, i.e., weight gain, plus a well-designed progressive strength training program faithfully performed, well-rounded nutrition (especially but not exclusively adequate protein), relative youth, maleness, and more. You're extremely unlikely to gain muscle at all eating 1000 calories.

How much water (or other fluids) you drink is irrelevant to weight loss, though it can matter for health, or help you feel full in some cases.

At 194 pounds, eat what MFP tells you to eat for 1-1.5 pounds loss per week, when you set your activity level based on daily life excluding exercise. Log your exercise, and eat those calories, too. Make the process as easy as possible, because even if you tried to go fast, you're going to be at this for literally months, so it makes more sense to make it sustainable . . . and that's less of a health risk, besides.

If this seems harsh, I'm sorry. Try to think of me as your cranky, outspoken, but concerned old internet auntie who'd like to see you succeed, because I'm surely old enough to be that. Settle into a routine with a sensible number of calories, eating things that give you decent nutrition and mostly keep you satisfied, and hang in there. Results will come.

hillbob1990 wrote: »

Thank you. I am part of a weight loss group where most people are losing 2-3lbs a week and I wondered why mine was slower. So do you suggest I just keep doing what I am doing (exercising 4 days a week) maybe up my calories to 1200 a day and log my weight flunctuations? Do you anticipate that the weight loss will catch up with the fat loss at a later date?

I suggest you up your calories to whatever MFP tells you for losing 1-1.5 pounds per week, and find an easy, sustainable path. (1200 *plus* all exercise calories was too few for me, when I started at just below your weight - got weak and fatigued, no one needs that!) Yes, keep exercising, as long as you feel good (it isn't sapping your energy, keeping you from doing other important things in your life, etc.). Exercise is good for us, in diverse ways. Think of it as finding a health-promoting exercise routine for life, something enjoyable, not as a quick route to faster weight loss.

I do anticipate that if you follow MFP's calories for 1-1.5 pounds loss per week, you'll see weight loss on the scale after the water weight weirdness sorts itself out. Even now, you're averaging around 2 pounds a week, which IMO is faster than ideal at your current weight.

Don't compare yourself to others: Comparison is the thief of joy. Can you visualize yourself sticking with this routine for many months? Undereating - losing too fast - often comes home to roost, either in periodic overeating episodes when it just gets too hard, or in giving up altogether.

Even if you were to lose at 3 pounds a week (a bad idea, health-wise, IMO), you'd be at that for 6 months. Is that kind of punitive routine for 6 months realistic? Even if it happens, then what? How do you keep those pounds off after that?

Treating weight loss as a project with an end date, after which you "go back to normal" is a recipe for regaining pounds with friends, the yo-yo scenario. I encourage you to take a more moderate approach, learn new habits along the way that you can keep up long term, to keep the weight off permanently. That can work very well.

I'm not speaking from theory, nor is Lietchi up there. I lost 50+ pounds with MFP, obese to a healthy weight, back in 2015, and have stayed at a healthy weight since. From experience (including some mistakes), I encourage you to think about how to make it easy and sustainable, not about how to make it fast.

Eat more. Lose slower. Or stay the course. But don't seek to accelerate. Success is shape change, increased relative strength and mobility and health, reduced weight * length of time the successful conditions are kept.

You're already going as fast or faster than you probably should in terms of weight loss, so your optimal speed adjustment is probably the opposite of what you think!

Use a weight trend app and think of your current weight as being your trending weight. Think long term.

Reality check is that very few people retain a weight loss for 2 years. Fewer for 5. Most of the people who "fail" are not morally corrupt "losers" who failed to punish themselves enough to lose weight faster. But, many of them did treat weight loss as their main project instead of treating RETAINING weight loss as their project.

I will be extremely harsh. How many people in your weight loss group have managed to come down in weight AND keep it of for a few years? Are they the examples you want to draw on and emulate? I would rather get ideas (after making changes that suit myself and my lifestyle as opposed to blindly following everything) from participants in the weight control registry in spite any issues I may have with their data collection and analysis.

Look for sustainably in what you do. Look to setting a direction and making it easy for you to continue in that direction for years; not months.

I am male. Very active from a starting position of completely inactive. Similar relative obesity starting point to you, op, even though in lbs I lost 1.5* what you want to in order to get into the normal weight range. I averaged 1.5 lbs a week my first year on mfp. It was as fast or faster than optimal.

I do want to address something often said that is technically correct but leaves people discouraged instead of energized.

If you define muscle growth as the creation of new muscle fibers then yes that creation is progressively less prioritized by the body the larger the deficit. However not optimally prioritized does not equal not effective and does not equal that it is not the best alternative given a particular starting point.

Furthermore, one of the main issues is energy availability. And an untrained obese person is at an optimal position to gain muscle due to being untrained and having ample energy reserves.

Does this mean that you will gain so much muscle that you won't see scale progress? NO.

It does mean though that you have an extra "water weight" factor that will obscure your actual fat loss a bit. Which is fine. Because working muscles far outweigh low numbers

Furthermore, water retention for muscle repair and energy reserves moving closer to now more utilized muscles (increased muscle glycogen stores) all are part of "growing muscles" even if the grams of muscle fibers in your body have not increased.

And your central nervous system also learns to recruit and use more muscle fibers and that makes you stronger and more effective.

So within long term appropriate time constraints and, most importantly, in an attempt to build up yourself as a swifter, higher, stronger version of yourself (and not as an expiation of past sins), then absolutely there is great benefit to increased strength training, movement and exercise and performing such means you will either be building or retaining muscle you otherwise wouldn't have! And this is good!