Not Losing Weight
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denise_dejonge
Posts: 2 Member
I’ve been faithful for 30 days. Started at 1300 calories, lowered to 1100 and increased exercise. I’ve only lost 1.5 pounds. Any suggestions?
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Replies
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Water retention can mask Fatloss so stick with it. Thats almost a half a pound per week so not really bad at all. If you don’t have a lot of fat to lose that’s a perfectly fine rate of loss. If you want faster loss you need to increase your weekly calorie deficit. 1,100 calories is pretty low so I’m thinking your daily average is higher than that in reality.denise_dejonge wrote: »I’ve been faithful for 30 days. Started at 1300 calories, lowered to 1100 and increased exercise. I’ve only lost 1.5 pounds. Any suggestions?
What is your height and weight?
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Denise, we're missing the most important information in order to help you:
What are your current stats?
What weight are you aiming for?
What kind of exercise are you doing and for how long?
How often do you weigh yourself?
And how do you track your food intake? Do you use packacking information, guess, cups and spoons, food scale?
Is there something you don't track, like cooking oils?2 -
I've you've gone 'gung ho' with exercise, you'll be training water which will mask fat loss on the scale.1
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I’m 5’2 170. I track everything that goes in my mouth, including condiments. I scan packaging, and measure other items. I exercise 3 times a week on bike and elliptical. The rest of the days I still get almost 10,000 steps per day. I eat high proteins. I figured I’d lose quicker.3
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You need more calories if youre working out. If you lose 300 cals working out youre only eating about 900 cals and your body will start storing that as fat. You should be eating at least 1500cals a day and make sure it is high protein2
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Maria_Albina wrote: »You need more calories if youre working out. If you lose 300 cals working out youre only eating about 900 cals and your body will start storing that as fat. You should be eating at least 1500cals a day and make sure it is high protein
That's not how bodies work, or people would be fat when they starve.
Eating too little can cause water retention from stress, or a lower activity level (less general movement, less fidgeting, etc) from fatigue, or a suppressed metabolism (slower hair and nail growth, etc), though.
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Calories too low and the body won’t store fat.Maria_Albina wrote: »You need more calories if youre working out. If you lose 300 cals working out youre only eating about 900 cals and your body will start storing that as fat. You should be eating at least 1500cals a day and make sure it is high protein
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Maria_Albina wrote: »You need more calories if youre working out. If you lose 300 cals working out youre only eating about 900 cals and your body will start storing that as fat. You should be eating at least 1500cals a day and make sure it is high protein
This bolded part is not true. It's a misinterpretation of what's happening.
Here's a great thread from the Sticky "Most Helpful Posts" about Adaptive Thermogenesis which describes what happens with weight loss/too low calories and other biological processes.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p13 -
What are calories for you at "active" and lose 1lb a week? I would try that level for a bit. because you ARE.
Sounds to me that you're hitting the gym /activity hard and under-fueling a bit. Can you see yourself going like this for a year or two? five? You have more than a lb or two to lose and you need to be thinking about placing yourself on a sustainable trajectory. As you lose weight you will WANT to be more active. Don't try to break yourself ahead of time
Some of your actual fat loss is being masked by what I am going to assume is substantially increased activity.
If that activity was normal in the past few years then I am probably off -- not the first time I would have missed the mark!
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you also have to take into account muscle weighs more than fat so you may be losing inches but gaining muscle0
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OP, I agree with others: Good chance that water retention is masking fat loss changes on the scale, if your logging is accurate. (That's not a diss: Logging is a surprisingly subtle skill. Many of us who've been doing it for a long time have had some serious face-palm realizations along the way.)
If you still have monthly cycles, compare bodyweight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles.you also have to take into account muscle weighs more than fat so you may be losing inches but gaining muscle
This is not the answer to OP's current difficulty, I'm quite certain.
Fast muscle mass gain under ideal conditions would be something like 2 pounds per month - half a pound per week. Ideal conditions include a good progressive mass-building weight lifting routine faithfully performed, relative youth, maleness, relative newness to strength training, good overall nutrition (especially but not exclusively adequate protein), favorable genetics, a calorie surplus, and more.
It's not that mass gain can't happen under sub-ideal conditions, but we'd expect it to be slower still.
On the flip side, half a pound a week of fat loss is about the slowest loss rate that most people would consider remotely satisfying, and even that can take multiple weeks to show up on the scale amongst routine daily multi-pound water retention and digestive contents variation.
Inescapable conclusion: No realistic rate of muscle gain is going to outpace any typically-satisfying rate of fat loss on the bodyweight scale.
I wish it were otherwise . . . so, so much.
OP is currently seeing something close to that slow fat loss rate, as far as we can tell. As a non-adolescent/20s woman, not reporting any strength training at all, getting good nutrition (as far as we can tell), and in a calorie deficit, any muscle gain would be slower for OP. (New cycling/elliptical exercise can add some muscle, potentially, but quite slowly, and the other conditions still apply.)
Strength gain can be quite fast at first (neuromuscular adaptation), definition may improve (pumped appearance from water retained in muscle for repair plus loss of a little overlying fat layer), clothes fit may even improve (glycogen depletion from new diet, posture improvements from exercise). Sometimes things like that make people think they've gained muscle mass, well before much mass gain is realistic.
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OP...what did MFP give you as a daily calorie goal? I am only an inch taller than you ... but I weigh ~120-125....and even when sedentary, 1100 calories would be too little for me and I'd lose weight. I'm younger than you I think but IDK how old you are.
I really think you need to re-assess what your maintenance level calories are (I'd guess likely between 1500-1600) if sedentary. Then on top of that you are working out and getting 10,000 steps/day. So you are likely really 'lightly' or 'moderately' active. Do you eat back your exercise calories? Do you have any other medical/health factors that would affect weight loss?
I'd say recalculate the estimate of what you could eat and stay the same weight....then subtract like 200 cals from that. And eat back 50% of your exercise cals. Do that for 4 weeks...and *then weigh yourself and make any adjustments from there.1 -
It does not hurt to assess your logging for ways to be more accurate. Food packaging can be off. Last week I had some Brownie Brittle. Package said 3 pieces (28g) was one serving for 120 calories. I weighed 2 pieces, they were 25g. If I had assumed the label accurate and eaten/logged 3, I would have consumed 40 calories more than logged. Those sorts of errors are very easy to happen, multiple times thru the day. A food scale and weighing solid food is best for accuracy.1
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If you set your diary to public and invite constructive feedback then people may be able to give you a few helpful steers in the right direction.
In all likelihood just a smidge more patience is needed and a view of long term sustainable and realistic goals.0 -
You've gotten answers from the best here. Running a calorie deficit WILL EVENTUALLY lead to weight loss. It must. I like the comment above: starving people don't gain weight. Yep, I'm on a cut these days, and we definitely don't, in the long term.
But, weight fluctuations can mask it completely for a short time. Weight every morning after the toilet in minimal dress. Drink plenty of fluids with electrolytes.
The high calorie deficit you're running seems a little extreme. You can keep at it for a short time, but it's typically easier and more effective to run a lower deficit for a longer time. To have long term success, you need to set yourself up for maintenance, which is (believe me!) just as hard as losing weight. Except that you aren't as hungry. But, do you really need to be that hungry to eat half a chocolate layer cake?1 -
I think you might have been restricting calories too much. 1100 calories is extremely low and with increased activity, your body has started slow the calorie burn because of it. Hence the low weight loss.1
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I think you might have been restricting calories too much. 1100 calories is extremely low and with increased activity, your body has started slow the calorie burn because of it. Hence the low weight loss.
How would that work? You fuel your body too little, and in return your body retaliates by storing the food primarily as fat instead of fueling itself? I only know of one thing where a normal bodily reflex results in death, and that is if you fall into cold water and the body constricts blood vessels in arms and legs in order to keep brain and abdomen warm - with the result that you drown because you can't use arms and legs anymore.2 -
On the plus side, that would prove you're not a witch.I only know of one thing where a normal bodily reflex results in death, and that is if you fall into cold water and the body constricts blood vessels in arms and legs in order to keep brain and abdomen warm - with the result that you drown because you can't use arms and legs anymore.8 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »
On the plus side, that would prove you're not a witch.I only know of one thing where a normal bodily reflex results in death, and that is if you fall into cold water and the body constricts blood vessels in arms and legs in order to keep brain and abdomen warm - with the result that you drown because you can't use arms and legs anymore.
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