why am i not losing weight? PLEASE help!!!

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  • Assassins_Angel
    Assassins_Angel Posts: 329
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    i found that the first few months of my lifestyle choice i actually gained 5lbs, what i did was up my calories a teeny bit (from 1430 to a minimum of 1500), stopped eating my exercise calories back and drank more water, within 2 weeks of changing i lost those 5lbs plus a bit more (ignore my ticker i gained abit due to an accident)

    i find its abit trial and error, where somethings work for some might not work for others!!

    Keep at it though, I'm sure it will start shifting soon :) xx
  • dclem2012
    dclem2012 Posts: 60 Member
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    Just thought I would jump in with a few thoughts. 1) Be sure you are eating balanced. Especially watch reduce carbs from white bread, pasta, rice, and sugars. 2) Be sure you are eating plenty of fresh fruits and veggies not only are they healthy carbs, but the contain lots of fiber (that actually negates carb effect); fiber also gives fat something to bind to and flush from your system. AND all the vitamins and minerals (which "white starches" do not contain) tell your brain that you have plenty of nutrients, so that frees your body from storing all those other carbs. 3) Add some free weight and machines to your workout. Muscle burns more calories than fat (but it takes up less space per inch than does the same weight in fat). 4) SQUATS, SQUATS, SQUATS. Especially add those dreaded squats. You can google how to do them correctly.
  • Feisty_Red
    Feisty_Red Posts: 982 Member
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    If you are doing 30 mins on a elliptical..AND an hour on the treadmill?(Hope I understood that correctly) lets just short guess that you burn maybe..500 calories in that hour and 1/2?? So..if you are taking in 1500 calories on gym days...your body is running on 1000 calories..It will hold it..if you don't eat enough calories..especially if you are more on the close side to your goal weight.. this type of plan will work the highly obese(1000 a day calories)..but only for a short time..and they will plateau as well...

    I would advise too... mix it up.. and start strength training..and not as much cardio every day...maybe 3-4 cardio.. 2-3 weight days depending? Muscle(no..you wont bulk up) is fantastic..because it allows you to burn more in a more resting state... you only burn cardio the time you are doing it ;)

    And check your water intake..as well..
  • farmgirl88
    farmgirl88 Posts: 91 Member
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    oh! also! i'm on a medication that makes me crave sweet things obsessively, so i know my diet is a little carb heavy, but literallly if all i could eat was sugar all day, i would still crave for more at night. ive cut back on my sugar intake tremendously, and i eat a lot of fruit now, i wonder if that's preventing me from losing weight though....

    Sugar is hard to part with (trust me, I know!) but it's necessary to lose weight and keep it off. When we eat too much sugar, we overwhelm our liver to the point that it can't keep up, so our body starts grasping for every ounce of fat we eat to safely package the excess sugar away for storage until we're no longer drowning our liver in "toxins." This video explains it in more detail: http://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM

    A piece of fruit or two a day is healthy, but any more than that makes it hard for your body to keep up.

    Hope this helps!
  • wackyfunster
    wackyfunster Posts: 944 Member
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    Wow, a lot of less than helpful advice here. Here's the deal:
    If you are eating at a 500 calorie deficit per day, and are accurate in calorie count and exercise cals, you will lose 1 lb. per week.
    Your body weight will vary by several pounds based upon water weight, even more for women around TOM, so it is quite possible to lose 3 pounds in 3 weeks and end up with a heavier scale weight at the end of the 3 weeks.
    3 weeks is not long enough to gauge results, for a woman, due to monthly hormonal variations. Track your weight daily, and look at it month-on-month to get a fair comparison. An app like JEFit will give you nice graphs.
    There are a variety of other factors that influence water weight... your body will retain water in response to exercise stress, in response to sodium, in response to carbohydrate intake, and in response to a sustained caloric deficit. Add all of these together, and not seeing scale results for weeks or months at a time is not unusual.

    Have patience, and you will see results in time.

    If you follow this advice, and have not seen results month-on-month, then you need to reevaluate your caloric intake (are you counting calories correctly), your exercise burn (I personally don't recommend eating back calories... just use a 'light' activity multiplier and be done with it... for 90% of people that will work better, as it reduces the margin for error in regards to inaccuracies estimating calorie burn for exercise and calorie intake for foods), and your BMR: using a formula that calculates it based on body fat is going to be a lot more accurate than the 'general' formulas... for me it makes a difference of >200 calories/day BMR, and >300 calories TDEE. Individuals with very high or very low body fat do not fit the assumptions of most BMR calculations, and so will not be able to receive an accurate estimate from the general purpose BMR formulas.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    to everyone that asked..... i am short, i'm 5'2", i'm 22 years old, anddd is chunky a body type, not sure what mine is, and im at 1200 calories... i usually eat around 1500 though after the gym and i do only cardio stuff there. i do the elliptical for 30 minutes as fast as i can for that amt of time, and then i walk as fast as i can for an hour on the treadmill uphill. and my clothes arent' fitting any differently so far. i keep looking at myself, and i don't look any different. i thought abouit taking some measurements, but in 3 weeks do you really think stuff has shrunk any? i dont know... i guess maybe i should try not eating everything i burn off at the gym, but i'm always so hungry at 1200.... this is really the first diet i've been on ever and it's really a shock to my system because i used to eat soooooooo much food, like big southern meals every meal of the day every day and up until about a year ago, i didn't go over 108 and that was a good weight for me, i guess i carry my weight poorly, bc i see other girls at 108 and i think they're about to die.. anyways, i gained 30 pounds in like a matter of months it seemed like... i don't know what happened, i guess i'm just getting older...anyways, i've been going off the machines at the gym, it takes my weight and then spits out calories burned, so i'm sure it's not all that accurate for everyone, but i assumed since i've just started working out, it would be a fair estimate.

    you know, my sister has a hypothyroid condition... is that genetic? could that explain sudden weightgain like i've had in the past year or so?

    That type of workout is probably 70-80% carb, that is the system you are training to burn calories.

    So actually measurements won't change much.

    You'll just store more glucose/water.

    I'd recommend go hard on the ellip as you do for 30 min, and keep the walking to 3.5 mph or less, on 1-2% incline, more of a fat burning workout.
    Allow you to train fat burning and carb burning system. And good news, as you train fat-burning system, it is used more at higher levels. But the reverse is not true that training the carb-burning system by itself increases fat burn. Not at all.

    You should also feed the workout, or else you are wasting your time working out, because your body has no way to make improvements from what you are doing. Now if the purpose is just to increase your calorie burn, then just walk 1 hr every day and eat at 1400.
  • vvanm
    vvanm Posts: 157
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    Please rule out any underlying medical condition. Low thyroid usually means low energy though and it sounds like you are exercising a lot. At 22 your metabolism should be functioning perfectly. Eat low glycemic foods and limit portion size on sugar a lot. You want your blood sugar to stay level so that insulin doesn't spike and make your crave food. Taste a couple of bites of what sweets you crave, but eat complex carbs for nutrition that will help control those cravings. Listing what you eat here will really help keep in check those sneaky carbs and calories.
  • Omsy828
    Omsy828 Posts: 24 Member
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    Maybe your consuming little calories but alot of carbs or fats?
  • FlaxMilk
    FlaxMilk Posts: 3,452 Member
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    If you are relying on your machine for calorie burn, you are probably eating at maintenance or very close to it. Machines are very unreliable.

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