Can anybody help me understand why I'm not losing weight? Here's a little about myself. I'm 28 years old, 270 lbs, and 5'9". I decided around Feb 1st that I was tired of being fat and was going to do something about it. The month of Feb I did 45 mins everynight on my elliptical, 20 mins of pilates, and 100 crunches. I ate what I wanted and I still lost 16 lbs and several inches. So I decided in March to start watching what I eat also to lose weight faster and I have lost nothing since Feb. No lbs and no inches! Why?!
I eat low calories and I drink nothing but water and lots of it and I still exercise. A typical day for me eating is:
Breakfast South Beach Diet cereal bar
Lunch South Beach Diet wrap kit or frozen entree
Supper Subway or chicken sandwich, anything low in calories
Am I eating to much or not enough? Can anyone tell me why I've stopped losing weight after only 2 months?
Last edited by butterfly28; 04-05-2006 at 08:35 AM.
hmm well... maybe you should eat like you did when u lost 16lbs. or maybe eat more in the morning then just a cereal bar. include some fruit. Also increase fruit and veggie intake throughout the day. Is the subway really nessesary? if it is... maybe try for some soup and salad. (do they have salads at subway?) It doesnt sound like ur getting enough calorie intake. add some healthy snacks
With all that exercise, that's ALL you eat in a day? How are you not STARVING?! I'd put my money on the idea that your body was hapy with what you were doing, and then you suddenly changed your diet, and your body, "WHOA! What's going on here?! I NEEDED all that food for energy for all this exercise you've been putting me through!"
You are not eating enough, your body is in starvation mode, it's holding onto everything you're giving it, because it's not getting enough. Try adding some fruits and veggies, some whole grains, healthy snacks, add protein throughout the day. Have small snacks between meals, but make them healthy snacks of protein and where's your dairy, you are not getting any dairy. Have a glass of milk with your breakfast bar or with you morning snack.
Thanks for the advice. Can you really not lose weight if you don't eat enough calories?
Well eventually your body's going to have no choice but to start feeding off of what you've already got if you don't provide it with enough 'fuel' to get by on, but the problem with that is it starts eating away muscle. Yeah, you'll lose weight, but you'll lose muscle as well. Or so they say.
But if you don't give your body the fuel it needs, it basically shuts everything down to hold onto what it already has for dear life. That's what the "starvation mode theory" is that Susan posted a link to.
I'm kind of unbalanced on the starvation mode theory because I've seen (and have been) on both sides. For example, years ago when I wanted to lose weight, I started eating nothing but salad, when I ate at all. Salad salad salad and that's it. I dropped down to almost 120 pounds. And now that I know what I know about calories, eating only one or two salads a day, I know damn well I wasn't even close to the "magic number" of 1200 calories a day. Did I go into this starvation mode and not lose anything? Nope, I dropped a bunch of weight in a pretty short time. Did I become a squishy blob because I lost too much muscle? Nope. Had a nice, tight little bod that I ended up screwing up completely, which I wish I never did. But we ALL wish that. Nothing I can do about that now except try and get it back off again.
However, they say dropping weight that fast isn't good for you. That's when I was younger and could probably handle it. Now than I'm older, and more educated on the whole weight loss deal, I wanted to lose slowly and safely. That's why I started counting calories. I lost at the rate of about 1-2 pounds a week. It's taken me 20 months to lose 80 some pounds. Of course, though, in the beginning, the weight came off fast. I was losing about 10 pounds per month. But then it slowed to 1-2 pounds a week.
I've ALSO been on the 'other side', where I wasn't losing weight for a while, so when I upped my calories a little bit, it started coming back off again. Whether that has anything to do with the starvation mode theory or not, I don't know. I personally think it's just a shake-up in your routine that gets things moving again. Because it takes calories to burn calories. This is why many of us believe in the calorie cycling or the "zig zag" method. Your body tends to get stuck in a rut when you consume the same amount of calories every day and kind of just gets 'bored' and used to the intake and burns calories at a steady pace. When you do a day or two of increasing calories, your body kind of wakes up and says, "Hey, cool! More calories to burn!" and starts revving things up again. Then you drop your calories back down, therefore your body is still burning at a faster pace but it no longer has all those calories to burn (from when you increased your food) so it ends up burning calories you're not really eating and, therefore, you break your plateau. That's the story behind THAT theory.
And to add, when we eat too few calories, are we REALLY starving? No. But your body thinks it is.
The human body really is quite an extraordinary thing. Think of it as a a business and the food as their workers. When there are plenty of workers, things are productive, running along smoothly, it gets rid of bad employees (fat) as it needs to in order to keep things moving along. As long as the bad employees are let go slowly, a little at a time, the business is still productive and continues working efficiently because there are still enough employees to keep things going. But if workers start quitting, the business slows down because there's not enough there to continue the efficiency. One by one, the workers drop off until there are not enough to keep things moving. So the only choice the business has is to try its best to be productive, but it's slowly losing momentum. Until it eventually has to shut down because most of the workers are gone. But then business picks up again once more workers start moving back in.
Silly analogy, I know, but sometimes when we look at things from a different perspective, it helps us to understand things a little better.
Also, your body can get used to your exercise. Might try to shake that up a bit and do different things on different days. Variety is the spice of life.
Linda - I love the worker analogy - that is great!
Thanks
Sometimes we have to think of things in such a way in order to grasp the concept. I know I do. Some people use cars as an example. If you don't give them gas, they're not going anywhere.
Help! I Can't Lose Weight!
I'd put my money on the idea that your body was hapy with what you were doing, and then you suddenly changed your diet, and your body, "WHOA! What's going on here?! I NEEDED all that food for energy for all this exercise you've been putting me through!" 
