Not seeing pounds drop off

Hi @claire7450

Welcome to MFP!


Have you been weighing foods, logging and tracking calories? Or are you “eyeballing”? Or doing “intuitive eating”?

Eyeballing can be very very misleading. Same way our eyes are modern too big for our stomachs, our eyeballing can be too big for our servings.

Intuitive eating? I know some folks and professionals are fans. I consider I ate intuitively for decades. Was not a winning plan for me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

What about taking measurements or progress photos during this period? Sometimes you can see visible improvement that your mirror and brain may not recognize. Waistbands getting looser?

Hurray for you for getting a trainer and having the girl’nads to get yourself into a gym. A lot of tender little peaches here are hesitant to do that. That takes a lot of gumption when you’re overweight (speaking from personal experience here).

You’d be unlikely to have gained several pounds of muscle in four months. Building muscle is a slow and painstaking process.

Can you get a handle based on your four months of experience so far? For me, I go to the gym in the morning. By late afternoon I’m peckish, and have to be careful what I snack on. I generally shoot for ultra high protein snacks and dinners on gym days. That’s been my own experience.

What have you noticed likewise about yourself? Maybe eating well during the week and binging or “treat meals” on weekends? I’ve built that into my plan. Yesterday for example, I was about 1,000
Calories over. 😱😱😱, right? Nope. I tend to eat low during the week and “catch up” on weekends.

How about alcohol consumption? Are you counting that?

Have you added in any funky shakes, drinks, smoothies, supplements, foreign plants extracts, “influencer” touted products, multi-level marketing products, etc etc?

BTw, fwiw I’m 61. I started here at age 56, lost 97, then intentionally added back 15 so far.

Wishing you well and hope you’ll follow up back here!

Good advice from Springlering62, as usual.

I got really active in my late 40s after cancer treatment, eventually training and competing as an on-water and machine rower, not always unsuccessfully in age group competition. I did gain muscle (over a period of 2+ years, because it's slow), but didn't lose weight (but did lose a pants size or two because muscle is more compact/dense than fat).

It took a stupid-long time for me to figure out (like 12 years?), but training pretty hard 6 days most weeks wasn't enough to trigger weight loss let alone overall good health. It's easy to eat enough extra calories to balance out that extra exercise. A couple tablespoons of peanut butter or equivalent would wipe out most of the exercise calories, and one of those fancy flavored coffee drinks would probably cancel out a couple of days' worth. (Those are just examples. Even healthy foods have calories.)

Once that switch flipped in my head, I got the eating side of the equation under better control (reasonable calories, decent overall nutrition), and lost weight steadily for around a year at age 59-60. Now 67, I'm still athletically active, and still at a healthy weight and in that same post-loss jeans size.

Results have been very worth it.

Therefore, I share Spring's questions: What are you doing on the eating side of things?

You can make this work, with the right analysis and action. I'm cheering for you!

Hey! I'm not 51, but because of medical conditions I feel like my body thinks it is (39/medically induced menopause). I am struggling with weight loss and my physician regularly tells me it is going to be hard because of my hormones.

I've been working with a personal trainer since Nov of last year, my weight continues to increase. Now at peak weight of 202.

I'll add you if you are interested in mutual support. I'm looking for engaged MFP members that are encouraging others on their feed regularly.