Why am I not losing much weight ?

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dannymabe4132
dannymabe4132 Posts: 1 Member
edited December 2021 in Getting Started
Hi I am 39 and go to gym 2 to 3 times a week plus walk 2 to 3 times a week 1 to 2 miles and I have set my daily activity to low to none and to lose 1kg a week I need to eat no more than 1500kcals, which I have been doing, but I am lucky I I only lose 100g ??.... can someone please advise what I can do to lose more weight I'm currently 92kg, and want to be around 75kg

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  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Actual numbers and a timescale would help as "not much" means very different things to different people.
    Lose 100g in a day? A week? A month?
    When did you start to diet?

    Remember MyFitnessPal intends you to eat back exercise calories so the (very low) goal you set for yourself is 1500 + exercise.
    If you selected a low activity setting how are you accounting for those walks?
    You have picked the very fastest rate of loss and also what may be an inappropriately low activity setting - often a bad combination for sustainability.

    The more info you give the more the responses can be tailored to you. e.g. "go to the gym" - to do what precisely? I might burn 250cals or 800cals with my gym activities depending on what I do there.
    Is this a new thing as novel exercise often leads to water weight gain from inflammation in response to starting a new routine.
  • milky_nutella
    milky_nutella Posts: 4 Member
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    I think 1500kcal + exercises maybe too little. The body protects itself against from hunger and hard times.
  • mrmota70
    mrmota70 Posts: 525 Member
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    Your calorie at 1500 seems a bit low for a 39 year old. Your body may not be wanting to let go of excess since it thinks not enough going in. Going to the gym and doing what? Your walks are at what speed? Commendable that your moving but a mile walked say between 1.5-2.5 mph is not going to count much in regards to making an additional dent in your cal deficit. 3.5-4.5 walk will be very close to a 6 mph jog and while not a significant amount for a single mile 3-5 miles will be a very nice workout. This should be a lifestyle and not a chase for a #. The weight will come off but it’s a matter of sticking with it and not be so defeated when things aren’t dropping off or you see a creep back up. As one reply stated your body may retain water to protect itself if your shocking it with activity it wasn’t used until you just started. It could be a while before you see continuous drops and you’ll hit plateaus and yes muscle is heavier so scale will go the other way. Good luck.
  • susancongreve1205
    susancongreve1205 Posts: 1 Member
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    As others have said it sounds to me as though you are eating too little calories. This will stall your weight loss because your body will go into panic mode as it believes it is being deprived and weight loss will become
    very challenging. At a starting weight of 92kg I would expect your daily calorie limit to be higher, and I would also revise your weekly weight loss goal to 1lb a week, rather than 2. Remember that as you lose weight you will naturally need to reduce your daily calorie limit which the app calculates for you. If you start too low, it will become difficult for you to maintain any weight loss you do see in the long run. So I’m summary, I would eat at least 300 calories more a day (even then that may be too low depending on how many calories you are burning - but maybe start here and see how you get on) and keep tweaking or adjusting the calories until you see a loss: good luck!
  • makinlifehappen
    makinlifehappen Posts: 110 Member
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    What are you eating?
  • mrmota70
    mrmota70 Posts: 525 Member
    edited December 2021
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    Surprising that any of the folks including myself replying with the point that your intake is low are getting a lot of disagrees. If you were severely overweight going low is typically recommended, but usually monitored by a Dr. Everyone is different so I’d recommend stop looking here for the right solution. Talk to your Dr maybe get them to recommend you to talk to a nutritionist. I based my response on my experience over 2 years that I’ve actually had to increase my calories to slow down, but continue to loose weight with plateaus and increases in weight. On July 25th my weight was 202 lbs (92 kg) this past weeks weigh in I was at 187. Roughly 3 lbs a month. These have been a tough 15, but I’ve kept at it. It’s been up and down which is usually the way it should flow. I’m 51 and my daily cal is at 2100 however I usually workout about 5-7 hundred Cals daily. I typically eat all those cals back. So yeah I’m purposely loosing it slowly. Again find what works for you long term.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,382 Member
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    While eating so little that fatigue (subtle or obvious) kicks in is a possibility, experience here suggests there are two other issues that are more common explanations of unexpectedly slow loss:

    1. Expecting results too quickly. If someone changes the nature of their eating (foods eaten, timing, amount of food, etc.) and adds exercise, water weight shifts can confuse things on the bodyweight scale for multiple weeks, and the direction/magnitude of those shifts can be pretty dramatic for some people. Putting it more starkly, over periods less than 4-6 weeks at the beginning of a new eating/exercise regimen, water weight can hide fat loss on the scale.

    OP, how long have you been at it? If less than 6 weeks, keep going. No matter how much time's passed, read this, if you haven't, and give it a think:

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

    2. Food logging is a surprisingly complex, subtle skill. There's a learning curve. Most of us, when we start out - as with any semi-complicated skill - aren't perfect at it. OP, if you open up your diary - even temporarily - some of the old hands can take a look, and maybe either rule out logging accuracy as part of the problem, or suggest some ways to improve accuracy.

    I'm not a person who thinks that everyone needs to be ultra-precise at logging. If logging loosely produces results, great. But when people say "I'm losing much more slowly than expected", making sure the logging accuracy is pretty good can be part of diagnosing what's really going on. Just being compulsively detailed about it for a couple of weeks can yield insights, then you can back off to a less formal routine, armed with new insights, maybe. If you don't have a food scale, get one, and use it. (They're cheap. I got a decent one on Amazon recently for under $10.) Don't use other people's personal whole-dish estimates (like "lasagna, one serving" or "ham sandwich"). Log every bite, lick, taste, condiment, dressing, vegetable, beverage, so-called "cheat day" . . . as precisely as you can. If you have to estimate, don't pick the lowest-calorie similar thing: Pick at least medium, better high-ish. Create your own recipes/meals, log individual meal components (a ham sandwich is 2 slices of a specific brand of bread, weighed to see if label is right, then using calories per gram from the label; a weighed portion of ham using the accurate brand/source/cooking method (boiled, roasted, deli . . . .); weighed amounts of mustard or mayo or veggies or whatever, etc.)

    There's also a third possibility that contributes to people saying "I'm not losing in a calorie deficit":

    3. How often do you weigh in, and under what circumstances? I'm a small-ish li'l ol' lady, maintaining a healthy weight, and my weight has varied over the past week or so by around 3 pounds (around 1.3 kg) - and that's when weighing ever morning under conditions as consistent as I can create. I'm not gaining or losing, this has been approximately my same weight for months now, complete with that fluctuation range (and more). If I weighed once a week, or less often, and d it at varying times of day or in varying clothing, I could accidentally get a crazy-inaccurate view of what my bodyweight is doing, just by picking the wrong days/times/etc. Again, I'm not saying everyone has to weigh daily, but if you're not weighing consistently over quite a long time period, results can be weird.

    I agree that it's possible to undereat enough that one generates a surprisingly long pseudo-stall on the bodyweight scale. ("Pseudo" because often a significant component of it is stress-related creeping water retention increases that hide ongoing fat loss. But sure, eat little enough that energy tanks, and fat loss will be slower than expected.)

    I suspect the incidence of "disagrees" on posts here is because - to me at least - it feels like people are jumping quickly to "eating too little" as the explanation, when the (IMO somewhat likelier) potentials of logging learning curve or water weight weirdness haven't been reasonably ruled out yet.

    OP, we all want to help you succeed, truly. Repeating myself: It would help if you'd open your diary, even temporarily. It'd also help if you answered @sijomial's useful questions.

  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    open your diary.

    Anytime someone comes on and says 'I'm not losing weight', we want to see your diary. At least I do. BEcause until we can see it, and see how you are logging, and how accurate it may or may not be, really, the only thing we can say is:

    It is possible (even likely) you are eating more than you think you are due to inaccurate logging; and/or
    If you are eating back exercise calories, you may be eating back too many; and/or
    it is possible water retention from new or different/harder workouts are masking weight loss (or TOM in the case of women)

    There are a bunch of other reasons to not lose weight, but those are really the most COMMON. Without an open diary, we can't offer much more advice.

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