Hi,

So i read a few threads here where people weighed themselves everyday and thought id give it a go, to help control myself but i noticed today ive put on 2lbs since tuesday! i hill walk for 1 hour everyday and then a 40 minute stroll also every 2nd day and im never going above 1500 calories, i lost 9 lbs last week and was so happy but now im disheartened should i up my walks to say 1 1/2 hours? i cant eat less then 1400 calories because i have chronic pancreatitis so what am i doing wrong?

sorry for the rant...just thought id write it out before i reached for the junk food!! im not giving up, never

That isn't how it works. The body is not a machine that gives up weight in a systematic way.

Your first week will always be the most dramatic as it's mostly water. From here on out it will be MUCH slower.

And... sometimes weight goes up. Sometimes it holds steady, but in the long run it will go down if you burn more calories than you take in. Simple as that.

WHy did the scale go up? Who knows.. saltier food? Maybe you were a bit dehydrated before? Maybe it's monthly hormones? or who knows. You simply can't know what a day to day weighing will mean. It can show you trends, but it will not tell you more than that.

Thanks berryblondeboys you are so right, slow and steady is what im looking for! i was aiming too high and expecting too much.

Thanks again for making me see sense!

Firstly, muscle weighs more than fat. If your body isn't used to the exercise you're doing, it's going to be putting on muscle in order to perform the walks you are taking.

Secondly, don't rely on the scales. It was over a month before I lost anything from the scales, but I started losing inches from my body after the first week.

I'm not sure what your metabolism is like or how your body loses weight, but for me I lose an average of 4-5lbs per month, no matter how much I exercise, and it mostly falls on the scales towards my TOM (time of the month). My advice to you is to not worry about the scales or let it dominate how you feel about your progress because losing weight takes time. You can see from my signature it took me 445 days to lose 66lbs--over a year

IF you continue to weigh your self daily your going to see your weight fluctuate ALOT, thats why most people weigh themselves once a week at the same time. Our bodies hold water, gain because of hormones and so many other variables.

I weigh myself everyday but I am consistent with the time I weigh myself in. I know that everytime after meal, my body tends to gain 2 lbs. This weight is unreliable because one day I can eat less, another day I can eat more and the weight will fluctuate accordingly. So the time I weigh myself in is as soon as I get up before having my breakfast or even drink a glass of water. To me, this weight has been consistently same every day unless I have really lost some weight.

You may be retaining water in your muscles from your workouts. Keep eating right and exercising and it will pay off.

I also agree with berryblondeboys.

No... I don't think most people weigh themselves once a week. Even weighing once a week won't explain fluctuations.

Using old data, a month could look like this for me if I weighed weekly and was ON PLAN the entire time with regular exercise:

April 1: 220
April 8: 221
April 15: 225
April 22: 218
April 29: 213

Next month repeat.

When I weigh daily I see that for the first two weeks of my menstrual cycle I hold steady and then slowly climb up. Then about 3 days after ovulation I have a 10-12 day WHOOSH... just to gain a pound or two before my period. Repeat.

With weighing daily, I can see that pattern even more clearly.

If I were to weigh monthly, depending on where my period lies, I might see a steady decrease with some months being more and some appearing less depending on where I am in the menstrual cycle.

NO matter HOW infrequently you weigh yourself, unless it's only ever 4-6 months, you are NOT going to to get rid of fluctuation weight as you never know on a given day if you weigh more less or more than the days surrounding that weigh-in date. I could get just as frustrated at seeing I "only" lost 3 pounds in a month where I felt I was on plan 100% when the month before I had lost 7. I would still question, "Why did I lose so little." Well... maybe the day I weighed I was holding water. Maybe the month before was an unusually low day... Yes, it's DOWN and that should be enough, but most of us expect to see a certain amount month after month and to see how even that can fluctuate wildly can be disheartening. So... it's best, IMO to come to grips with the reality that weight fluctuates a lot... and you can't know by looking at a single measure what it really means.

Yep, whenever I start a new exercise routine all of my weight loss stops for about 6-8 weeks (it's a long time because I'm close to goal), and then I start losing. Just keep at it!

Interesting because I would use the opposite technique to "make up" for fluctuations - if I wanted to remind myself that weight changes due to various factors and isn't really a gain, I would weigh daily. Otherwise, if its like a once a month, who knows, maybe the next day I'd be like 5 lbs lighter. But BAM! I missed my chance cause I weighed that day I happened to be heavier. Nevertheless, I weigh 1x every 3 wks approximately, mostly due to laziness and its still chilly/too cheap to turn on any heat - standing nekkid is no fun.

I haven't read all the posts but just in case I'm saying something that's been missed, i'm throwing my thoughts in too.

Do not increase your exercise to manage your weight loss. Rather manage your diet. Its possible you are not eating enough calories.

In fact its highly likely. At your weight i was eating 1600 calories a day and no formal exercise. I lost weight steadily for three months. And then i elected to stabilise my weight for this last month for reasons i won't go into here, but it has meant I'm eating even more than i was.

My weight has been stable and even dropping this month. Not much but that's good.

So my message is, exercise for health and fitness but manage your calories and what you eat for weightloss. Eat good nutritious foods and ditch everything else. Don't restrict too much. You can read all about why and how in a book called The Don't go Hungry Diet. Its behind the reason why i decided to pause.

My suggestion is to eat as much as you can while still losing weight, not to eat as little as you can. This way you will see steady weight loss and find the whole thing easier to sustain.

LOADS of water. I drink water with a dash of freshly squeesed lemon to give a refreshing taste.

You will be peeing loads. If you are not then u are not drinking enough. Take your walks in the morning before breakfast helps cause you will be burning stored energy not what you just consumed.

Get a friend you tell everything to keep you accountable for when you feel lazy.

You should be fine. Ignore the naughty scale. It was invented to make girls cry.
Instead try smaller sizes of clothes.

Really good info here. I completely agree.

Everyone has different ideas about when to weigh in and it is best to go with what feels most comfortable for you.

I usually weigh daily but am used to the continual ups and downs of this and expect them. I plot a graph so I can still see the overall downward trend...