My weight has been going up slowly over the past few days. I have irregular periods and I don't know if it will be my TOM soon. I have been eating less, too. It's weird. I'm actually not hungry. Sometimes I forget to eat. I cut down on carbs. I am trying to quit drinking diet soda. I have been drinking a lot more water. I exercised so much last week my legs still hurt. But I am still gaining. I don't know what else to do.

The body dislikes losing weight and will do anything to not do it. Plug on through it and try not to judge the scale as day to day but Month to month if the trend is downwards it's all good.

If not then re-evaluate the diet and I don't mean how much u eat but what it eating low carb is one if those diets that requires extra strict monitoring of food and u may be thrown off but the most unusual of foods.

i think you should check your weight weekly or monthly.... with some diets you gain a little at first and then drop a couple together!
also... water retention... give the topic a read, i hear that can also cause the gain....

Oooh, I respectfully disagree. I don't believe we were intended to be overweight. That is why we require so little food and need so much activity. Think about the olden days. We were always moving. And there was little food around, so for our protection and survival we don't require a whole lot of calories to function well on. Back in the day there was mostly famine, not the feast that is always surrounding us.Our bodies do not like walking around with all of that extra fat on us. I think our bodies are very forgiving and actually want that weight off almost as much as we do.

I would ask you though, are you tracking your calories? I mean really precisely? If you were losing fine without it (and it seems you were - 30 lbs!!!) and all of the sudden you're not, it may be that initially *watching* yourself, eating healthier and exercising was enough to get the scale going down.

But now, it may be time to carefully monitor them. Measurements and all. It could be you're no longer creating a calorie DEFICIT. And that's what it's all about.

Okay just re-read your post. It says it's only been a few days. I'd still track those calories, but this is perfectly normal. We're not machines and can't lose at a steady pace week after week after week. There WILL be times when a particular week (or 2) is not a losing week. Stick with your healthy eating plan and exercise and eventually the scale will have no choice but to move on downward.

I agree whole heartily with Robins sediments...I also wanted to address the excercise/leg pain. When our muscles are injured, they hurt. When they are repairing themselves our body hydrates the area, Kind of like when you have a splinter in your finger...you have some inflammation. Well, if you excercise so much that your legs still hurt, there will be fluid retention as your body is repairing your muscles.

Take a tape measure sometime and measure your calves and thighs before strenuous exercise. Do it again a few hours after you are done. You will almost always measure more right after the activity...

The scale can be very misleading. As Lori Bell said above, a likely cause of the recent scale gain was simply water retention as your muscles are repairing. Trust in yourself more than the scale.

agree about the exercise/muscle soreness, but I also would suspect hormones are at play given the change in appetite. I would suspect that TOM is coming and you'll likely see a whoosh then.

Thanks for all the replies. I know in my head that this weight loss journey will have its ups and down. But when I start to gain, I panic. Hopefully it is just water retention. I have been counting my calories. Maybe I need to adjust them a little bit.

Sometimes I get frustrated because it seems the people around me can lose weight so much easier. They go without soda for a week and they lose 10 pounds. If I just look at a piece of cake the wrong way, my butt will grow 2 sizes.

Oh boy! Well, if it has been over only a few days it could just be one of those things. For whatever reason my body will drop a few pounds over a two to three day period. Then it will go up .5 to in one case as much as 1.4 pounds in the following week before going back down again.

My only other idea in addition to what has been said is that diet soda contains a lot of sodium. That may cause water retention. Perhaps looking at what you are eating and if it is highly processed stuff look at replacing it with less processed stuff, for example eating an apple in place of a 100 calorie snack pack.

I'm hoping you get a whoosh soon.

Totally agree! Hang in there

I think you're doing something right to have lost that much weight. Just stay true to what you've been doing! Maybe there is something processed that you could replace with something more Natural. Hang in There!

Whether intended or not we are and becoming more overweight and the body is not helping the situation

1500-2000 calories per day to function WELL as you put it is not a small amount. humans are incredibly inefficient especially with regards to engery turning to heat and being lost.

agreed which is why we evolved to store energy whenever there was some available i.e a disposition to get as we now call it fat.

in which case why are we still able to get fat? if the body was against the concept of getting fat you
1 wouldn't have a predisposition to store energy as fat
2 would reach a certain point where the body switches off its fat storage facility. as nature has no turn off for the bodies fat storage then perhaps its because we are meant to carry on getting fat. too little water (shutting down of muscles/cramps lack of energy etc. to much heat sweating cramps and so on .all natural counter measures along with to much sun skin darkens to protect it. burning blisters form to protect the area and so on within the body getting fat doesn't have a countermeasure or if it does it certainly isn't very good.

Then answer this. if the body is as you put it wanting to get rid of the weight as much as we do. why is it so hard to achieve? surely by your logic if the body wanted the weight to go it would be very easy to shift. as it is not easy to shift as the hundreds of people on these boards can relate to with their personal struggles it must be seen that our bodies don't wish us to lose the weight. furthermore if the body disliked being fat a person who lost the weight would be able to keep it off easier but again is a major ball ache keeping it off.

there is also the problem of plateauing. a plateau is the body resisting change why would it resist something it wanted to achieve?

A little (actually a lot) pressed for time. I can't touch on all of your points, but this one stood out to me:

The problem doesn't lie with the body *usually* - the problem with the *shift* as you called it - lies within the BRAIN.

If we remove the brain from the equation on the premise that this somehow overrides the bodies desire to lose weight as you appear to state above.

How do you come to your belief that the body wants to lose weight as much as we do?

I realize you are asking Robin this question, but I would like to add my .02.

You have the answer to your question right on your signature. You state that "food is your heroin". Yep...a body doesn't need heroin. It doesn't want to be a heroin addict. You basically end up dying from heroin usage if you don't quit using.

The body doesn't like to be fat. It develops heart disease and diabetes as a result of fat. It preforms much more optimal at a lower weight. If the body liked to be fat we could run faster, (heck, run period.), sleep without apnea, lift more, jump higher and reproduce better if we were fat. But no, we are the only animals on the food chain (besides our domesticated pets we stuff into obesity) who eat until we become bed ridden. We eat until we have to apply for disability, and we eat until we take the handicapped motor carts away from the little old ladies at Wal-mart. You don't see a cow, eat until they can't make it to the watering hole....(and we're supposed to be smarter than a cow ) We eat to obesity because food is our heroin. It's an addiction. It's the brain that says more, more, more. All the while the body is saying, "Stop, I can't breath, Stop I can't move, Stop my heart is sick, Stop blood is full of sugar."