Scale not moving

I only weigh once a week, any more than that I start stressing whether it's moving or not.

If you're exercising a lot, creating muscle may be balancing out loosing fat so it may not be a bad thing if you're looking about the same. Don't fixate on the numbers when you're hitting a flatline, focus on other aspects: are your clothes fitting the same, have you built muscle/tonned up, how are you feeling physically, how are you sleeping, where are your energy levels? These other things can be indicators of healthier lifestyles taking effect.

Also, are you doing the same routine every time you work out? Maybe you just need to mix things up a bit? Try a new work out routine, focus on a different muscle set etc... If you're stuck in a rut, it might be time to mix things up. Sometimes our bodies become too used to things and while that's great for sleep, it isn't always the best for diet/workouts.

You may also be adding muscle, which adds healthy weight. When I was not getting results, I re-checked my food choices, and became more regular in exercise. I swim and walk. So far, I've lost 23 pounds, and am thinking of adding some biking to the list. Don't give up. Log in daily, and maybe only weigh yourself weekly.

How long have you been doing this and how much did you have to lose?

As others said, could be sticky scale or broken scale. Pull out the batteries and put them back, see if that gets it moving. Or try another scale next time you can, maybe at the grocery store or a friend's house. Bearing in mind that could be several pounds heavier due to time of day plus clothing.

It sounds like you've successfully recomp'd and definitely made progress. If you didn't have much to lose, you're probably going to see the results better via mirror and measurements than scale anyway.

If you've recomp'd (gained muscle and lost fat) and are in fact the same weight, then it means you've been eating at maintenance calories. As someone said, the weight of your food item may be accurate, but the database entry you use for that food may not be.

zebasschick wrote: »

a few thoughts.

first, most digital scales have a memory feature, and they don't talk about it. it means if you lose 1 or 2 pounds, it will keep showing you the same weight until you lose the minimum amount their memory requires. mine actually did this for up to anything below 5 pounds - every day, i weighed the same to within a tenth of a pound. so i pulled the battery, and i weighed 4.8 pounds less. now i pull and replace the battery before i weigh.

This!

Try removing your batteries and trying again. I found this exact same issue with my scale. "Oh, you again? Here you go! Here's the figure from last time. You're welcome!"

Make sure the scale is always on a hard surface and ALWAYS in the same spot! It matters. But try taking out the batteries and let us know if that did the trick.

Good luck!

If you try the TDEE calculator here, 1500 is probably about your BMR.

https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

So you should definitely be losing weight, probably at least one pound per week. And it sounds like you are, despite what the scale says. Speaking of, is that how you're getting your body fat % estimate? Because most methods of estimating bf % have issues, especially scales. It's hard to rely on them. You'd be better off tracking measurements over time.

You may have benefited from noob muscle gains too, and maybe you're retaining some water due to the exercise, but it's still hard to believe you've gained the same amount of muscle and water retention for muscle repair as the fat you've lost, especially while in a deficit. That doesn't add up. Sort your scale out.

Or it could be your logging is off somehow, and you are in fact eating more than you think. Opening up your diary for others to view could help there.

schnarfo wrote: »

Thank you all! To answer some questions

I’m 5’6 and 142lbs so I don’t have a huge amount to lose, I do have a high percentage of body fat however (35%)

I mix up my work outs, I track everything through bar codes where possible so I know it’s accurate and use a food scale. I’ve been sticking to my calorie goals and working out for a month solid (1500 calories) it maybe too high but I’m not wanting to go below this at the moment so recomping might be all I get?

Thank you to everyone that replied, I really appreciated it.

In terms of non scale victories my clothes are definitely fitting better, my stomach, arms and legs have more definition but I still have a long way to go.

Bad news: Bar-coded food database items are user-entered like all the others, just the first entry someone associated with the bar code, so they can be as inaccurate as any other entry. They're not a direct pipeline to the manufacturer. On first use, always the best practice is to check against the product label or an authoritative source, so good data gets into your recent/frequent MFP foods.

If the whole eating/activity routine is new around month ago, and especially if you're shooting for slow loss, it's still possible that after a month there's still increased water retention (for muscle repair from the new exercise, maybe plus some other factors like where you are in your menstrual cycle if you have those, how hot it is where you are, whether you have seasonal allergies kicking up, or lots of other things). That can mask fat loss on the scale. Eventually, the water retention will stabilize or drop off, and fat loss - if it's happening - will start showing up on the scale.

That'd be my best bet, with logging issues in second place. That's not a diss - logging is a surprisingly subtle skill, and most of us who've been doing it a long time have had some major forehead-slap moments along the way. I think someone else already mentioned that if you make your diary MFP-public, and say so here, some of the old hands may be willing to take a look and see if anything jumps out.

For perspective on the possibility of muscle mass gain: A quite good rate of muscle mass gain, under ideal circumstances, would be 1-2 pounds of new muscle mass per month.

Ideal circumstances include relative youth, relatively male hormone profile, a good progressive strength program faithfully performed, good overall nutrition including but not limited to adequate protein, good genetics, and a calorie surplus. It's not that no one can gain muscle mass without all of those factors being perfect, but it would likely happen at an even slower rate than the 1-2 pounds per month.

It's very unusual for any realistic rate of muscle mass gain to outpace and thus mask any reasonably satisfying rate of fat loss.

I wish it were otherwise, sincerely.

But significant strength increase and some firming up or definition can happen even before muscle mass gain, and those are useful in themselves. (The initial strength increase is from better recruiting and utilizing existing muscle fibers. We have to mostly tap that out before our bodies will start adding mass, and even then it's a patience-requiring process.)

BTW, if you haven't seen it yet, this contains some really good info on water retention and body weight, plus related issues - especially read the article linked in the first post.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

Hang in there, good things are happening for you already, and more are on the way . . . it may even be more than recomp, once the predictable initial water weight weirdness settles down.

Best wishes!

schnarfo wrote: »

Thank you all! To answer some questions

I’m 5’6 and 142lbs so I don’t have a huge amount to lose, I do have a high percentage of body fat however (35%)

I mix up my work outs, I track everything through bar codes where possible so I know it’s accurate and use a food scale. I’ve been sticking to my calorie goals and working out for a month solid (1500 calories) it maybe too high but I’m not wanting to go below this at the moment so recomping might be all I get?

Thank you to everyone that replied, I really appreciated it.

In terms of non scale victories my clothes are definitely fitting better, my stomach, arms and legs have more definition but I still have a long way to go.

Did MFP give you the 1500 as a goal? I know everyone is different so I’m not making assumptions, but at 5’5” and 138 lb, because of my job that leads me to sitting quite a bit, my maintenance was actually 1600. So if you happen to have a lower maintenance like me, your deficit may be tiny.

You've gotten lots of good input here --- How did you calculate your body fat %? If you're using a bluetooth scale ... it's totally possible it's not an accurate measurement. You can use the data re: body fat % from your scale to see the trend... but it may not be true that your body fat is 35% exactly. Either way, if your clothes are feeling loser/fitting better and you SEE more definition and changes in your body - you are losing fat.

The number on the scale could be something mechanical/technical with your scale and others have already talked about that. Could be water weight (did you start this 6 day week workout recently?).

You stated you don't have much to lose. The ability to create a deficit as you get closer to your goal weight will always be tough - and the deficit will be small - leading to very slow recomp/weight loss and making it much easier to actually not be in a deficit due to poor logging (or the entries used being wrong).

Also, I'd suggest you think very intentionally about *why* the number on the scale no moving bothers you if you have multiple other types of evidence of weight loss? It sounds like you're doing good...but maybe are just stuck on that number being important when it really isn't as important necessarily as other things/sources of info.

springlering62 wrote: »

(snip great post)

Your body will retain water and direct it to sore spots or injuries for healing purposes. When it’s no longer needed, you’ll relinquish all that water and temporary weight gain will go away.

I work out regularly, but even now if I try something new, I can easily gain three or four pounds for a couple of days and then it’s gone. YMMV depending on how long and how sore you are

(snip more goodness)

If sore muscles, there is almost certainly water retention (whether it's dramatic enough to show on the scale in a particular context or not - usually is).

But if new exercise, there can still be water retention, possibly observable on the bodyweight scale, even if not particularly sore.

The two are possible symptoms of the same underlying cause, but can potentially occur independent of one another.