Maintaining weight but not loosing body fat.

Hello! So I've been counting my calories and eating clean , but I have been in the gym. I haven't lost any weight no gained any neither. Is the gym what I'm missing to achieve my goal?

Answers

  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,477 Member

    how long have you been counting and tracking your calories?

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 36,410 Member

    What's your goal, fat loss or muscle gain? The two are somewhat in tension with one another.

    There are dozens of definitions of "eating clean", and none of them guarantee weight loss or - strictly speaking - are even required for weight loss. I don't recommend the approach, but people have lost weight eating only at McDonald's, or eating mostly snack foods like Twinkies. I stayed obese for a dozen years myself eating mostly whole foods, while vegetarian.

    Good nutrition is great for health, but only indirectly related to weight loss, and - for most common definitions - entirely "clean eating" isn't even necessary for reasonable overall nutrition.

    Fat loss is about calories. It takes 4-6 weeks on a reasonably consistent eating/activity regimen to see whether fat loss is happening. By around then, a meaningful rate of fat loss should be showing up in the trend of bodyweight.

    Muscle gain is about a progressive challenge to current strength, plus good nutrition (especially but not exclusively ample protein). It's most likely to happen in a calorie surplus, i.e., alongside weight gain. Even then, it will likely take many weeks to months or more to see meaningful progress. Yeah, for that, gym would be a good route, weight lifting the most efficient route.

  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,552 Member
    edited May 16

    Most people have enough excess bodyfat that can fuel muscle growth with that and don't need to eat in a calorie surplus. Now if a male is lower than around 12-15% BF (female 17-20%) then can discuss the possible need to eat in a surplus.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 36,410 Member

    Sure. But I said "most likely" to happen in a surplus, not "can't happen in a deficit" let alone "can't happen in maintenance".

    OP seems to be asking - admittedly with unclear/ambiguous language - whether they need to go to the gym to lose weight.

    We don't know their time frame. We don't know their eating or activity routine.

    They're not losing weight. It sounds like they're not going to the gym, though the language is ambiguous.

    The reason someone isn't losing weight on the timescale that usually triggers questions like that here is almost never that they're gaining muscle so fast it's obscuring fat loss. Recomposition at constant weight is possible, but gradual. Muscle mass gain during fat loss is possible, but likely even slower. Muscle mass gain is nearly always slower than any reasonably scale-observable rate of fat loss, in anything less than months. That's my point.

    If OP in fact isn't doing any strength- challenging exercise/activity, gym or elsewhere, highly unlikely muscle mass gain is why there's no weight loss. Quite unlikely there's muscle mass gain at all, if no strength challenge.

    Will going to the gym cause OP to lose weight? Depends on what they do there, and what they eat alongside that.