Gaining - again?

Something has to be happening... you don't just create energy out of thin air and store it in fat. Otherwise, if you did, your body would hold the key to our world's energy crisis. I know that doesn't help you, but can you HONESTLY say that nothing at all changes? Which would imply you're eating the same exact things and doing the same exact activities day to day?

Maybe you are... at which point we'll have to look other places.

Maybe your calories aren't low enough.... so you're in a small deficit to start and then, as your body adapts as well as becomes smaller, there's a smaller requirement and thus, you reach a new maintenance. So what is your weight, age, and daily calorie intake?

What was your highest weight?

How certain are you of your calorie intake? Meaning are you using a food scale? Are you EXTREMELY consistent with tracking EVERYTHING that passes your lips from day to day... even the weekend?

What about the mixture of nutrients that are providing said calories... what is it?

If you're truly being honest with yourself, and things still aren't working, why throw your hands up in frustration? Look for alternative solutions... that's the name of this game.... experimentation. You're going to fail hundreds of times but that's the root of weight management. Expecting this kind of stuff and reacting accordingly by learning from what didn't work and trying new things.

Worst case scenario, again, if you're being very true with yourself... you just KNOW you're in a calorie deficit and you're still not losing weight.... why not head to the doctor and rule out things that could be causing your problem? Something thyroid related maybe? Or something with water retention? Who knows.

I got stuck in a plateau myself. I found that my calorie deficit was not as great as I thought. Not because I was lying but because I was just making honest mistakes.

In case it helps, here are the reasons why I was recording my calories incorrectly. (I still make these mistakes sometimes, but I’m more aware overall.)

1. I was understimating portions, especially fruits and vegetables. I always put down my fruits as “medium-sized” because they were the average size fruits available at my local grocer. When I weighed them, they were all “large.” (I thought a “large” fruit would be like a giant one where you would say to a friend, “Look at this gigantic apple!” but it turns out it’s not so dramatic ;-) ).

2. I sometimes didn’t count stray bites here and there – when I would take a bite of my boyfriend’s dinner, or eat a baby carrot while packing my lunch. But I read that, on average, a bite has about 25 cals (depending on what it is), so those random bites could easily add up to 100 cals/day.

3. MFP has duplicate entries for lots of things, and they’re not all the same. For example, there’s one entry for baked chicken thigh with skin that is 190 cals, and another for the exact same thing that is 240 cals. I make baked chicken about once a week, and I was always using the lower cal number, because it came up first in the alphabetical list. Now I use the higher number.

4. I don’t think I burn as many calories through exercise as MFP says I do. I think people’s bodies vary in how efficiently they exercise, and mine must be efficiently using as few cals as possible. I’m a mild/moderate exerciser, and I rarely burn more than 200-300 cals/day max through exercise. I note the exercise in MFP but don’t try to eat it back anymore. I figure the slightly increased deficit probably just balances out the calculation errors I’m making in the other direction – the slightly-too-big portions, the piece of candy I forgot to log, the fact that I personally don’t burn 130 calories through 1 hour of walking, etc. And it means that if I go 50-70 cals over, it’s probably ok.

Something has to be happening... you don't just create energy out of thin air and store it in fat. Otherwise, if you did, your body would hold the key to our world's energy crisis. I know that doesn't help you, but can you HONESTLY say that nothing at all changes? Which would imply you're eating the same exact things and doing the same exact activities day to day?

Maybe you are... at which point we'll have to look other places.

Maybe your calories aren't low enough.... so you're in a small deficit to start and then, as your body adapts as well as becomes smaller, there's a smaller requirement and thus, you reach a new maintenance. So what is your weight, age, and daily calorie intake?

What was your highest weight?

How certain are you of your calorie intake? Meaning are you using a food scale? Are you EXTREMELY consistent with tracking EVERYTHING that passes your lips from day to day... even the weekend?

What about the mixture of nutrients that are providing said calories... what is it?

If you're truly being honest with yourself, and things still aren't working, why throw your hands up in frustration? Look for alternative solutions... that's the name of this game.... experimentation. You're going to fail hundreds of times but that's the root of weight management. Expecting this kind of stuff and reacting accordingly by learning from what didn't work and trying new things.

Worst case scenario, again, if you're being very true with yourself... you just KNOW you're in a calorie deficit and you're still not losing weight.... why not head to the doctor and rule out things that could be causing your problem? Something thyroid related maybe? Or something with water retention? Who knows.

I am most certainly in a calorie deficit all of the time. If you are implying that I am lying just for the sake of having something complain about - that's not the case at all.

And I've been to the Dr. She says that my thyroid, blood sugar, etc. all look great. I have PCOS but it's mild enough that she didn't feel the need to medically treat it, when I told her my weight loss woes, shew as just basically like "well, keep trying I guess."