Wish I hadn't weighed myself!

youknowyoursel · February 2022

I weighed myself for the first time in 6 months today. Devastated to see that I weigh a couple of kilos more than I did in July, despite regularly working out 3-4 times per week (and for the past month working out in the gym 6 days per week). Obviously, I'm not being strict enough with my eating and logging, as my depressing mass of belly fat seems to be the same size.

Has anyone else totally derailed their commitment with a weigh-in disaster? I'm ready to give up all attempts at fitness. Getting up at 5am daily to work out isn't fun and totally not worth it if I can't lose weight. Any advice would be much appreciated.

girlwithcurls2 · February 2022

I have absolutely derailed my commitment. But I'd never give up my fitness. When I have that come-to-Jesus meeting with myself about why I'm still fat, it's all about my calorie intake. I am a walking example of not being able to outrun your fork. Workouts are great for your body and mind, but they aren't a guarantee for weight loss.

You didn't mention anywhere if you are tracking your food/drink intake. Maybe start there to get an idea about how much you are eating. For me, at the beginning, it was not hard at all because my portion sizes were 1.5-2 times what they needed to be. Bringing those into a normal range helped a lot. At some point though, you have to be really careful to know what's going in your body in relation to what's being expended through your exercise. Also, most of the exercise is overly generous with calorie burns. So eating back 1/2 of your exercise calories might be a better idea.

But don't give up. Think of how strong you are. Last week, I was texting my daughter nearly in tears because I tried on three pairs of jeans and they all look awful. (So what. I hate jeans, I was just tired of the ones I have...) This week, I was texting her about how strong her mom is, doing push ups with my feet elevated on the fireplace

Learn what isn't working. Keep doing what is working. You can do this.

Lietchi · February 2022

Exercise is for health and fitness, not for weight loss. You can lose weight without exercise too. And you can't out-exercise a bad diet! It's a lot easier to eat many calories than it is to burn a lot of calories.

Also, I would recommend choosing an exercise regime you actual enjoy! That goes for any changes we make to lose weight and improve our health. If we don't like our exercise or the foods we eat, we are inevitably going to give up at some point.

Another suggestion would be evaluate a lot more frequently if you're progressing. Waiting 6 months just created huge expectations. You don't necessarily need to weigh yourself (some people have a difficult relationship with their scale) but some sort of way to measure progress: a tape measure, certain (non stretchy) clothes,...

88olds · February 2022

Don’t go to pieces over one weight in. If you weighed yourself the day after a demanding workout the issue could be water retention. You need more data to get a baseline. I drove myself crazy over this issue and paid a high price for my impatience. Don’t change anything until you got at least 2 weeks of weigh ins. A month would be better.

And as already pointed out, exercise is vastly overrated as a weight loss tool. Fact is I can undo an hour at the gym in less than 5 minutes with a fork in my hand. And you don’t say how much you are trying to lose, but a high level of fitness combined with a weight loss plan can work on tight margins. Especially if you’re close to goal weight. It can require a lot of patience and spot on tracking.

If after your get a better picture of where you are in the process you find your plan isn’t working, try to fix it. Never quit.

Machka9 · February 2022

I weigh myself daily so that I keep in touch with my ups and downs.

Xellercin · February 2022

I don't exercise for my weight, I exercise to not have osteoporosis, to feel comfortable in my own body, to manage my stress and sleep, to be able to do the things I want my body to be able to do, and to have really wicked good posture. Exercise is 100% worth it no matter what you weigh, because you should see what older people who didn't exercise look like compared to older people who did. The difference is SHOCKING.

If weight gain stopped me from exercising, I would lose all of the benefits of exercise and I'm never willing to do that. Thankfully my motivation to exercise has nothing to do with my weight, so I never have to worry about losing motivation because of what the scale says. Besides, from a vanity perspective, I'm going to look better at ANY weight if I've been exercising diligently. So yeah, if my diet has gone off the rails and I'm gaining, that's *exactly* when I'm most grateful that I have been exercising.

That said, if you aren't enjoying your exercise, you should try doing something different. Exercise doesn't have to be hard and shouldn't be unpleasant. If you don't like it, no wonder you are looking for excuses to stop. The best exercise is the exercise you like doing. It's loving care you give your body, not punishment you put it through for not being good enough or thin enough.

As for weight loss, that's an eating thing. So maybe ease up on the level of punishing exercise if you aren't enjoying it, find something relaxing and enjoyable that can be a nice part of your day instead, and put some of that discipline towards eating for weight loss.

You don't need to give up, you just need to figure out a plan that requires a lot less effort for a lot more reward. Good luck, you can do this, you can find an enjoyable lifestyle that produces the kind of body that you want. It's very, very doable. I went from obese to very lean years ago, and I enjoyed the entire process, and never once pushed myself to exercise in an intense, unpleasant way that I didn't enjoy. I'm disabled, so all of my exercise is gentle and relaxing, and all of my food is delicious.

You can do this.

marshall461 · February 2022

not derailed but certainly let down. i am tracking my food intake at about 1800 calories, hydrating, sleeping, the gym every other day (for over all health in general). Hopped on the scale this morning for a 1 pound gain. I am not a happy camper

healingmysticmelody · February 2022

I thought working out builds your muscles and muscles weigh more than fat so you gain at first if you work out a lot… but then lose faster if you stick to your proper calorie intake because more muscles mean more calories burned?

AnnPT77 · February 2022

healingmysticmelody wrote: »

I thought working out builds your muscles and muscles weigh more than fat so you gain at first if you work out a lot… but then lose faster if you stick to your proper calorie intake because more muscles mean more calories burned?

Muscle gain - sadly - is slow (I wish that it were otherwise!).

Under ideal conditions, two pounds of muscle gain per month would be a very good result. Ideal conditions include relative youth, maleness, favorable genetics, a good progressive strength-training program faithfully performed, being relatively new to strength training, good overall nutrition (especially but not exclusively protein), and a calorie surplus (i.e. weight gain going on). The further from those conditions, the slower the muscle gain.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to gain muscle in a calorie deficit, just that one would reasonably expect a rate slower than 2 pounds a month. And keeping existing muscle while losing fat is a very useful thing - strength training can help with that.

On the flip side, 2 pounds a month of fat loss (half a pound a week) is about the slowest observable rate of fat loss.

And yes, a pound of muscle at rest burns more calories than a pound of fat at rest . . . something on the order of 4 calories difference per pound per day, researchers estimate. That's not overwhelming.

(I suspect that people with relatively more muscle tend to find moving easier and more enjoyable, so move more in daily life than people with relatively less muscle and relatively more fat . . . and that difference could be lots bigger than 4 calories per pound per day in impact. It's also possible that the act of building the muscle will burn a few extra calories, but again, not likely overwhelming numbers immediately.)

Gaining strength and muscle is a wonderful thing, well worth doing for many reasons. But it's unlikely to be a huge driver of weight loss, or to hide a meaningful rate of fat loss on the bodyweight scale for weeks at a time.

AnnPT77 · February 2022

youknowyoursel wrote: »

I weighed myself for the first time in 6 months today. Devastated to see that I weigh a couple of kilos more than I did in July, despite regularly working out 3-4 times per week (and for the past month working out in the gym 6 days per week). Obviously, I'm not being strict enough with my eating and logging, as my depressing mass of belly fat seems to be the same size.

Has anyone else totally derailed their commitment with a weigh-in disaster? I'm ready to give up all attempts at fitness. Getting up at 5am daily to work out isn't fun and totally not worth it if I can't lose weight. Any advice would be much appreciated.

You know what can really derail commitment? Giving up for psychological reasons.

I'm in agreement with others: Fitness and weight loss are separate goals.

I started getting active in my mid-40s, working up to training pretty hard 6 days most weeks, even competing in races (not always unsuccessfully) within a couple of years. But I stayed class 1 obese for well over a decade, doing that.

Why? How? Slow metabolism?!? Nah.

An energetic workout is only good for maybe a nice hearty peanut butter sandwich on healthful whole-grain bread, and a glass of skim milk on the side. I can easily eat that much extra . . . and am likely to feel like doing it - entitled to do it, even - when working out.

Later, at age 59, I finally caved and got the eating side managed. It was much easier than I expected, and happened without much changing my exercise routine. Heck, I didn't even change the range of foods I eat, just portion sizes, proportions of various meal components on the plate, and the frequency of some calorie-dense foods. (I can't think of anything I intentionally gave up, though frequency of some things unimportant to me may've dropped to zero.) It was simpler than I'd ever dreamed, and easier. I wish I'd done it decades earlier.

In under a year, I lost from class 1 obese to a healthy weight, 50+ pounds (nearly 1/3 of my starting body weight), and I've been at a healthy weight for 6+ years since (still doing about the same exercise, eating the same foods).

Being active, becoming fit, was a huge quality of life improvement for me (even while remaining fat).

Reaching a healthy weight was - somewhat unexpectedly, for me - also a huge quality of life improvement.

They're both worthwhile, can complement each other . . . but they're not one and the same thing.

(Bonus if you can find some exercise/activity you actually enjoy doing, or at least tolerate. I did; and I'd do it even if it weren't good for me - so fun! The idea that exercise needs to be miserable and exhausting to be effective - total myth. Also myth: Eating healthfully at appropriate calories is necessarily and universally unpleasant deprivation. Find your happy exercise and eating, or at least tolerable patterns.)

Keep going. You can do this.

cwolfman13 · February 2022

youknowyoursel wrote: »

I weighed myself for the first time in 6 months today. Devastated to see that I weigh a couple of kilos more than I did in July, despite regularly working out 3-4 times per week (and for the past month working out in the gym 6 days per week). Obviously, I'm not being strict enough with my eating and logging, as my depressing mass of belly fat seems to be the same size.

Has anyone else totally derailed their commitment with a weigh-in disaster? I'm ready to give up all attempts at fitness. Getting up at 5am daily to work out isn't fun and totally not worth it if I can't lose weight. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Exercise and fitness should be done for exercise and fitness...exercising regularly doesn't default to losing weight. If it did, people who exercise regularly would ultimately wither away. In general, unless you're training full time like an athlete, the calorie expenditure that comes with regular exercise simply isn't as big as people think it is. Relative to the calories you burn just being alive and then going about your day to day, exercise calories are pretty much downright paltry. Trying to out exercise your diet tends to lead to exercise being no fun, burnout, injury, and a whole mess of other unnecessary mental and physical stress. If you're not really managing your diet, it's pretty hard to lose weight...losing weight in particular requires deliberate dietary management, not just regular exercise. I can be more loose in maintenance, but even then I have to be much more conscious about diet than your average Joe who doesn't care. It's pretty damned easy to negate calories burned through exercise with food if you're not paying attention.

Fitness is your physical ability to perform and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your weight. As an example, one of my regular cycling buddies is obese...but he's actually tremendously fit and can ride circles around me in terms of endurance/distance as well as the watts he can throw down on the pedals. He rides a lot more than I do and is more fit on the bike than I am...but he also likes to throw down some food after he throws down those watts, and my man isn't much of a salad guy. Jokes aside, he doesn't really manage his diet at all and thus doesn't lose weight and is obese.

I'm a regular exerciser and active person in general and I've had my weight go up and down and all around...just depends on how I'm managing my diet more than anything else. I exercise namely due to the numerous health benefits of regular exercise...plus, much of my exercise is also what I would consider enjoyable recreation for me. Riding my bike or mountain bike, hiking, walking my dog, skiing, golfing, etc. I hit the weight room 3x per week and that's really the only thing that I do that I really call a "workout"...but plenty of exercise besides.

amfmmama · February 2022

I read somewhere that weight loss is 80% diet, and 20% exercise. I hate it, but I find it to be true. Unless I track and eat at a deficit, the weight is not coming off. Also, when I avoid the scale it is for a reason, I usually know that I am not going to like what I see, so I don't look! The scale = accountability You decided how often and be consistent.

sbelletti · February 2022

I weigh daily. Good, bad or ugly. The more I do it, the less it affects me emotionally. Now, it's just a task to collect data and not the source of that day's happiness.

We all have bad days on the scale. Keep moving forward! Tomorrow is another day. Followed by another and another. Each one a day filled with opportunities to make good decisions for yourself.

healingmysticmelody · February 2022

Excellent information Ann and Wolf. Thank you!!

Wish I hadn't weighed myself!

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