Weight loss stopped fast

Hey all, I'm a male, 5 ft 8, started at 20 stone and 1lb around January 18th. Always been active playing football twice a week but carry alot of fat. Started going back to weight lifting 4 times a week and 30 min on the treadmill before it. Also play football twice a week every week. I have been eating 1700 calories a day. First 1.5 weeks was great I got down to 19.6lbs. My Samsung galaxy watch calculates my workout and sets additional calories which I rarely touch. For the past 1.5 weeks I've only budged maybe 1lb but that goes up and down day to day? I should be atleast 4 stone lighter to get to a healthy range so where could I be going wrong? Am I eating too much or too little as it seems I'm working my butt off and eating clean so makes no sense....

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,600 Member
    Most probable: Water retention, possibly from the increased exercise (for muscle repair). Or, water retention for some other reasons. If you haven't read it, this article will give you a good run-down on things that will hide fat loss on the scale, sometimes for surprisingly long periods of time.

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

    I have a hard time doing math on stones, but it sounds like you lost 9 pounds in a week and a half? Some of that (very fast) loss was almost certainly water loss; it's common for the following couple of weeks for the body to rebalance that water and for weight therefore to seem to stall. It takes 4-6 weeks to get enough of a pattern to be more clear about what's going on.

    It seems like at your size, your maintenance calories could be 3000 or quite possibly more, with the workouts, depending on your job and age among other things. (What does your tracker say, as your total all-day calorie burn, all-inclusive?) If 3000, eating 1700 would get you around a 1300 calorie daily deficit, or 2.6 pounds a week loss.

    If that's in the ballpark (and it's just a spitball estimate), you're in that zone, it sounds like: 9 pounds in 3 weeks is 3 pounds a week on average, with water shifts playing peek-a-boo on the scale with fat loss, making it look like you lost faster at first, then stalled.

    (That calorie deficit, if in that area, might be faster than sensible, if you have performance/muscle-gain/strength goals alongside fat loss. I'd lose probably a pound a week at 1700 gross calorie intake, and I'm a 5'5", 127-ish pound (9st1) woman, age 66. You're almost twice my size, 100% more male, and probably much younger).

    Next most probable: Approximations in food logging. That's not a dig, logging is a skill we need to develop and foster. I see that your diary is open, which is helpful. On first glance, there are a lot of things logged "per slice" "per bag", etc. Are you weighing food? That's not essential to do, for weight loss, but it can be a really good way to diagnose a situation when not losing weight as expected, if only to firmly rule out logging practices as an issue.

    Eating clean is irrelevant for weight loss, though good overall nutrition is obviously healthful, and can influence energy level or cravings, so indirectly affect weight loss. In a direct sense, calories are the key factor.
  • thatch1234
    thatch1234 Posts: 276 Member
    Hi Ann, thank you for your very detailed response. I am a little younger at the age of 33. Completely agree with being a tad more accurate with logging however I can honestly say I never ever have more than I account for. If anything it would be I log a little more than I eat just to make sure I haven't slipped up. Considering the amount I burn a week in calories I think it's highly likely I'm eating a little on the low side and my body is freaking out a little bit. I completely understand alot of the 9lbs being water weight and fat does take longer to lose but I guess when I'm spending 5 hours a week on vigorous exercise it can be quite disheartening to not see it budge lol. However after having a good look around I have upped my intake to 2000 per day and will maybe eat back 25% of any exercise calories and see where that takes me for a couple of weeks. I will post the results here so watch this space :)
  • Xellercin
    Xellercin Posts: 924 Member
    edited February 2022
    Weight loss is never a steady thing over time on a week to week basis. I tracked my loss of 80lbs every day over a few years and even if the scale didn't budge for several weeks, the rate of loss as seen over a longer timeline was always steady if my behaviour stayed steady. I now call those periods "brewing a loss." I predictably alternated between losing nothing, and a rate of loss that was faster than one would expect given my calorie deficit. So it all averaged out when looked at from a 12 week timescale. It was shockingly predictable, and I never ever had a true weightloss "plateau" unless I ate more, like around Christmas.

    One of the main causes of weight loss failure that I see is people trying to correct for these very normal periods where the scale doesn't move, when they should really just stick with what has been working for them and give it time to see if any adjustments are actually needed.

    I personally will wait at least 6 weeks before changing anything about my routine. Granted I'm female, so I have to wait at least 6 weeks to account for hormonal cycling.

    That's just my personal experience, it may be relevant to you, it may not. Good luck figuring out your best routine.