Why isn't the scale moving?

Usually it is an issue with logging. Are you logging every bite you eat or drink? Do you weigh your food? Are you careful about which entries you use from the database?

How long have you been trying to lose weight? How much do you have to lose? Is the exercise new? You may be retaining water from the exercise, though that should even out over time.

Stats? Height, weight, age: if you have little to lose, then it will take some time to lose even a little bit of weight at a time.
If you're overweight, then it's usually that you've started a new regimen and the body isn't used to working out yet, but continuous exercise will eventually help you burn enough to lose.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I feel your pain. I started my journey 4 weeks ago. The scale was slowly going down and I was excited. I'm hungry but that is mostly mental. I workout 4 times a week and try not to "eat back" my workout calories. After I complete my day MFP says I will be almost to my goal in 5 weeks yet the last week I have gained 2 lbs. I'm so frustrated I'm starting to think my current weight is my new set weight and I need to accept it and move on.

skygirl21 wrote: »

I feel your pain. I started my journey 4 weeks ago. The scale was slowly going down and I was excited. I'm hungry but that is mostly mental. I workout 4 times a week and try not to "eat back" my workout calories. After I complete my day MFP says I will be almost to my goal in 5 weeks yet the last week I have gained 2 lbs. I'm so frustrated I'm starting to think my current weight is my new set weight and I need to accept it and move on.

If you'd been losing reasonably well until that 2-pound jump, it's probably just water fluctuation weirdness. If you're female, and have monthly menstrual cycles, that's extra likely.

But there are other things that can cause a scale jump, even when fat loss is clicking along slow and steady in the background (just masked by water retention or extra digestive contents on their way to becoming waste).

This thread (especially the article linked in the first post) is a good read on the subject, in case you haven't run across it already:

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

If eating and moving at a reasonably consistent level, accidentally finding maintenance calories - a true plateau - is going to look more like weight loss gradually getting slower and slower over a period of weeks, until it stops. If the stall on the scale was sudden, and/or if the scale hasn't yet held steady for at least a month (full menstrual cycle if you have them) or maybe longer, then you're probably still losing fat.

Even fast fat loss averages only a few ounces per day. Water and waste fluctuations vary by up to several pounds a day. That means water/waste weirdness can mask fat loss for up to a few weeks in some circumstances.

Sometimes bodies are weird, and sometimes scales are lying liars that lie. Hang in there. Decent odds things will work out OK.

Set point theory is the theory of your hypothalomus is working with your homeostatic system to maintain a certain weight, usually a certain amount of fat. This can sometimes be due to heredity. This situation creates hunger when the body gets below it's preferred weight. This can change throughout life for many reasons, usually hormonal that affects hunger. The body can set up it's own defense against losing too much weight.

Calorie balance will always dictate weight, however set point theory is not an excuse to be overweight as many people do as in "I'm just a big person and my parents were too".

A more common illustration of homeostasis is it causing water retention when fat is being lost.

Mafutalabda wrote: »

Thanks everyone. MFP isn’t allowing me to comment on anyone’s post, so I will try to answer the questions I can remember. I’m 48, 5’7”, 170. I have been working with a trainer for 8 months, and during that time I fractured each leg and have just re-injured my right knee, so it's been pretty much exclusively upper body and core. I’ve been doing yoga for the same time period, chair yoga when I am in a brace, and regular yoga when my fractures heal. When I am allowed to walk, I walk as far as my PT lets me and also use the recumbent bike. I’m not overestimating my calorie expenditure, I don't think, because I use an Apple watch. I do not weigh my food, but I do divide the total of all the ingredients for each dish that I cook into the number of servings. And I absolutely log everything I eat and drink. Maybe the next step is a kitchen scale?

A kitchen scale can be a real eye-opener. Oils and fat-containing foods (nuts, seeds, etc.) tend to be the biggies. And decent kitchen scales are not expensive, so even if it isn't a major factor for you, it can help pin down details of your own personal science fair experiment.

One comment: It's useful to recognize that even a good fitness tracker (Apple watch or whatever) is still just a statistical estimate. It's just a much more nuanced one than MFP's base estimate or an outside TDEE calculator. It does take some of the activity-guessing variability out of the situation.

But it's still just an estimate based on population statistics. Our personal real-world results tell the more complete, accurate story.

Fitness trackers - any of the good brand/models - are close for most people. But they can be noticeably far off for a few, and surprisingly far off for a very rare few.

I have a good brand/model fitness tracker that is quite close for most people here. (In fact, I've cycled through 2 different good models.) I've also been logging on MFP for almost 9 years, loss then maintenance. My fitness tracker (and MFP's estimate) is off by around 25-30% for me, compared to my logging experience over that time. That's literally hundreds of calories daily. The classic case is that people estimate food low and exercise high . . . but I eat 25-30% more calories than my fitness tracker thinks I burn, and have for that nearly 9 years. This is rare, but it can happen. And it can to some extent happen in the opposite direction, being lower in calorie needs than average.

You have some factors in your life and being that might make you statistically unusual. That's not a for-sure thing, but it might matter.

The way you can tell is to get the food scale, be as accurate as you can be (without getting obsessive) in logging, keeping that up for 4-6 weeks to see your average results over that whole time. (If you are female and of relevant age/stage, you'd want to compare body weight at the same relative point in two or more monthly cycles.)

After a multi-week reasonably meticulous practice, adjust your calorie goal based on the concept that 500 calories a day is about a pound of fat change a week, or 1100 calories per day is about a kilo of fat change per week. (Arithmetic to figure partial pounds/kilos, obviously.) This approach personalizes goals, and has a bonus impact of compensating somewhat for any systematic logging issues.

It's a science fair experiment. You can make it work for you, and I'd predict that will help you accomplish your goals.

Maybe give it a try? If you feel up to it, come back here in a couple of months, let us know how you're getting on? (I always wonder how these things turn out. :flowerforyou: .)

Wishing you success!

A few things that REALLY make all the difference:
1. It’s not how much you’re eating it’s WHAT you’re eating. Counting my macros (fat/carbs/proteins) really helped me with this. I could be in a caloric deficit but if my carb intake is higher than protein I don’t lose anything. Not just simple carbs like bread, but complex carbs like sweet potatoes stall my weight loss too.
2. Since you’ve got a great fitness routine I highly suggest high protein to lose weight and gain lean muscle mass.
3. Carbs and fats should be eaten in the first part of the day to be used for energy first. They should be avoided the last half of the day because whatever isn’t used for instant energy turns to fat storage (specifically beige fat which is the worst kind of fat for overall health).
4. To help confuse your body a little bit, carb cycling really works wonders! Don’t go crazy, but add a couple of extra grams of carbs into one or two days a week then go back to low carbs after that. Your body will go to fat to burn quicker

I’m skeptical about any method that aims to “confuse” the body. I really don’t think that’s how it works.
That said, if carb cycling helps someone? Have at.

As for timing of protein and carbs?
Whatever works to keep someone energized and sated. One interesting tidbit - it’s common advice for diabetics to have a bedtime snack that includes protein and fiber, instead of quick carbs, because for many, it helps to keep blood glucose levels steady while sleeping. But that’s not about tricking the body so much as making sure there’s a slow steady stream of energy throughout the night.

With the advent of continuous glucose monitoring which can alert you to a developing dangerous low at night, that is probably something fewer and fewer diabetics will be advised as time goes on.

——
Beige fat?
I also hadn’t heard of that.
The article above is over a decade old, but a good read.

Some newer research also suggests that beige fat is a good and necessary source of quick energy. It’s an academically dense article, and I admit I have only skimmed it. But it seems like learning about beige fat will provide some key insights into metabolic disorder.
Very exciting stuff.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7499124/

ht7wj576my wrote: »

A few things that REALLY make all the difference:
1. It’s not how much you’re eating it’s WHAT you’re eating. Counting my macros (fat/carbs/proteins) really helped me with this. I could be in a caloric deficit but if my carb intake is higher than protein I don’t lose anything. Not just simple carbs like bread, but complex carbs like sweet potatoes stall my weight loss too.

Personal experience is anecdotal and not always a reliable guide.

2. Since you’ve got a great fitness routine I highly suggest high protein to lose weight and gain lean muscle mass.

Gaining lean muscle on a calorie deficit, even if macros and calories were perfectly in line, is a difficult thing to do.

3. Carbs and fats should be eaten in the first part of the day to be used for energy first. They should be avoided the last half of the day because whatever isn’t used for instant energy turns to fat storage (specifically beige fat which is the worst kind of fat for overall health).

Untrue if you're in a calorie deficit. Lots of athletes who train early morning carb up in the evenings so that they have full glycogen loads in the morning, myself included.

4. To help confuse your body a little bit, carb cycling really works wonders! Don’t go crazy, but add a couple of extra grams of carbs into one or two days a week then go back to low carbs after that. Your body will go to fat to burn quicker

This actually has some validation as long as calorie restriction stays intact.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

OP, I had the same issue until I stopped eating carbs - rotis and rice and I started to see the weight loss. I still have 15 pounds to go, but cutting back on carbs (keeping it at/below 150 grams) and increasing protein to 100 grams helped.

Scorpiogurl66 wrote: »

I'm sure you already know muscle weighs more than fat. Maybe focus more on how your clothes fit rather than the scales. Good luck. I only need to lose 10lbs and I have cut back on calories considerably, but I've only lost 2lbs in the last 3 weeks. I think when you don't have a lot to lose, it just takes longer. Be patient and consistent with your logging and you will get there.

1lbs of muscle weights exactly the same as 1lbs of fat. And it's extremely difficult to gain muscle in a calorie deficit, and especially as a woman. Sure, there'll be some muscle mass gained, but it won't just happen.