Scale jumped up - need to hold my nerve!

To illustrate my point, these are my weigh-ins. Only looking at the past month, it looks like I'm stable overall (with daily ups and downs), but looking at three months the downward trend is visible. That's with a very small deficit (50-100kcal).

Everyone has a voice in their head and the voice will wreck our weight loss plan if we let it. There’s a big part of our brain that doesn’t like change. Consider the popularity of tv reruns. What’s the attraction? We know the outcome. It ends the same way every time.

But I think our brains must hate weight loss in particular. The voice is not stupid and it is sneaky. It doesn’t just say to quit. It claims to have good reasons to quit. And claims to have evidence that our plan isn’t working. Or cannot ever work. Or that, even if the plan is good with a proven record of success, it cannot work for us. Sometimes our brains claim the plan won’t work for us because of our own physical limitations, like we can’t exercise enough, or we’ve damaged our metabolism or thyroid. Or frequently we can’t succeed because of our personal character flaws, like lack of discipline or willpower.

It is all nonsense.

Weight loss has 2 parts- eating in a calorie deficit and living with it. There’s a tendency to go all in on the deficit and try to beat ourselves into living with it. Generally doesn’t work. Weight loss is a skill set. It is mostly about problem solving and persistence.

A moderate calorie deficit is easier to live with than a drastic deficit. Just keep tinkering with the numbers and you’ll get it. Fact is that there are times when it seems easy, like we are running on autopilot, and times when it seems tough. That will never change.

To lose 100 lbs I had to reinvent my program about 4 times. But to maintain I have had to keep tinkering and adjusting. I don’t see that ever ending. I stick around these message boards because it’s a reminder that I have to keep my head in the game.

Never forget, calorie counting works. It has to work, it’s how our bodies are designed. Focus on the process. Weight loss is a byproduct of the process. The only way to fail is quit. Don’t quit. Good luck.

I am with you on this. I am "white knuckling" thru a 5 pound increase ( I won't call it "gain") on the scale this week after
1. I changed my weekly loss target from 2# to 1.5#, thereby increasing my daily intake
2. getting a bad sunburn last weekend which I've learned causes inflamation and water retention.

The scale has finally started going down again so now I'm up "only" 2#. But my sunburn still hurts (and itches! ) so I'm continuing to write it off to that in my head. But it IS hard hanging in and "keeping the faith" that the numbers will work out in the end.

The chorus of "hang in there" and "trust!" here on MFP is really helpful, fortunately.

Lietchi wrote: »

gorple76 wrote: »

@Lietchi thank you so much - that’s really reassuring and just what I need to see. I’m keeping a journal and had planned out a strategy of 4 weeks waiting etc but still this morning the scale had me thinking ‘it’s not working! I need to starve myself’ which would inevitably lead me to giving up. I think I struggle to trust the process so seeing how your progress works helps immensely. I’m using happyscale which is helping a little but even that is showing an upward trend today!

I don't know how Happyscale works, but with Libra you can tweak the settings a bit. I've lenghtened the number of 'smoothing days' to 28 days, otherise my trend is too 'spiky'

In any case, it's a good strategy to wait out 4 weeks, hang in there!

Overall, I think you give *wonderful* advice @Lietchi.

Ultra tiny, tiny quibble here: Gorple's profile says female. I'd encourage comparing body weight at the same relative point in two (or more) different menstrual cycles (like start of menstrual period, or whatever). That may be 4 weeks, or not quite exactly.

@gorple76: Yup, bodyweight is weird, especially water weight. After a while, you'll get a handle on how your personal body behaves, especially if you can tolerate daily weighing calmly. (Not saying daily weighing is essential, just that it yields understanding of the weirdness faster. That's not the only consideration in scheduling weighing.) Water fluctuation can be individual, idiosyncratic. You specialize in understanding *you*.

If the scale jumped 4 pounds, and you didn't cumulatively eat around 14,000 calories over maintenance (!) in the last few days, or move that much less (!), then it can't possibly be 4 pounds of fat. (You'd notice, y'know?) After some time (probably longer than 8 weeks 😉), you'll develop deep confidence in that principle, I predict . . . as long as you stick with it long enough. (I'm in year 5+ of maintenance, after losing from obese to healthy weight.)

Quick multi-pound changes on the scale (without *massive* changes in eating/activity) are water weight or digestive contents. They have to be. Fat loss (when generally compliant with calorie goal) is gradual, always playing peek-a-boo on the scale with the bigger water/food-weight fluctuations. It shows up in many-week trends. Muscle mass gain, when working hard to do every single possible thing to achieve it, is a thing of manyMany weeks to months and years.

Repeating: Quick change? Water weight.

One thing: Undereat, and water retention increases (from physical stress), fatigue increases (decreasing movement, reducing calorie expenditure), and more. If you've been losing well, and see a sudden jump or stall, ride it out, maybe even take a maintenance day (or week or two). Resist the "cut cut cut" voice, if you've previously/recently lost well, it's a seductive, misleading, dangerous, counter-productive siren song.

@88olds is brilliant, above, on the mind game. You can win it. Hang in. You've already said you know intellectually what's going on. Mr./Ms. Intellect is right. Don't believe the emotional screaming meemies.

You can do this. You're doing *great*.

Glad to hear it - thanks for coming back with an update. (I'm always curious.) I think it can help other people who might be having similar worries, too, to see that in fact things did come out well just by being patient, and continuing on course.

Good show!