I just recently dusted off my Wii balance board because I've been getting tired of the gym. I swear, they keep it 80 degrees in there! If I get on the treadmill and stay there for 30 minutes, I feel like I'm about to have a heatstroke or something. It's awful!
To say the least, I've been trying to exercise outside of the gym as much as possible. I've actually upped my activity a lot since incorporating the Wii into my routine. Before I was doing 3-4 days of exercise a week. This week, I've done some sort of light activity every day. I've walked 3 miles outside a couple times, been to the gym twice for week 2 of C25k and the rest of the time I've done 20-30 minutes of the Free Step on my Wii.
I feel great and my calorie burn has been awesome! I have a GoWear Fit so I've checked my averages for the past week:
Calories Burned: 3151
Calories Consumed: 1413
Meals Per Day: 5
Calorie Balance: 1738 deficit
Physical Activity: 1 hour 15 minutes
Number of Steps: 9534
Sleep Duration: 7:25
You'd think that would translate to a great loss on the scale too, but nope. I'm about ready to strangle the stupid thing! If I've had an average daily deficit of 1738, that would come out to roughly 12,166 for the week. Divided by 3500 = 3.5 pounds lost, right?
My scale hasn't budged AT ALL. In fact, I had seen 198 briefly a little over a week ago.. but now it's back up to 201! How is THAT possible?! Even if I underestimated my calories in or if my GWF is off by 10%, I should have still seen a loss. I drink at least 8 glasses of water a day, usually more. My sodium intake is probably higher than it should be, but that's why I try to drink more water. I just can't figure out why my scale is stuck at the same weight I saw over 2 weeks ago. It's really frustrating.
Do you guys think the recent surge in exercise is the cause? I'm really, really hoping that I'll see a whoosh soon..but to be honest, I'm not very optimistic. Am I doing something wrong? I know if I keep my activity level up, I could probably up my calories a little (before I was losing 2 pounds a week at 1400). Do you have any other suggestions or advice?
Your deficit just might be too high. My GWF recommends a deficit of 750 calories a day. I usually get anywhere from 600-900 deficit a day if I am recording correctly and since I have had my GWF I have lost 12.5 lbs (I got it as an XMAS present).
12.5 lbs since January 1st is translating to roughly 1 lb a week- which is fine by me. I mean this doesn't taken into accounts during this time there were two weeks I didn't lose at all because I was sick.
Also- do your best to keep salt down- salt can make me go up by 3 lbs in one day! I know your frustration- I BARELY made it to onederland yesterday and today I am afraid to look at the scale lol.
ap90 , 04-08-2010 02:50 PM
I know EXACTLY how you feel with those exact numbers! 2 weeks ago my scale was showing me 198-199 and then last week it kept going back up to 201-203.. frustrating I know! However, as of yesterday morning it has been back to 199. What I did different was increase my water intake. I drank about 3-4 L a day (took A LOT of bathroom breaks needless to say). Personally, I think if you're working out at least an hour each day, which it looks like you are, you should have much more than 8 glasses a day. Also, 1400 calories is definitely not enough to sustain an average loss of 3151 calories per day. You should maybe try increasing this for a few days and see how that works.
This is my big fear on getting a GWF or other calorie monitor. The math is pretty theoretical, I'm sorry but it is. Every body works differently and there are a slue of other factors that might be going on to effect your loss, especially if you've increased your activity. Honestly, if you're buring over 3500 cals a day and only averaging just over 1400 in cals consumed then you're not eating enough.
I don't know what I'm burning, but if I take a rough guess. My AMR is about 2000-2100. I'm eating 1600-1700 cals a day on average which means my deficit is 400-500 per day. Let's call it 500 for easy math. So I'm at a 3500 deficit for the week meaning that I should be losing 1 lb per week. This is not the case for me. I'm losing 1-4 lbs per week (I lose in whooses) and if you look at my average it's about 1.5 lbs per weeks since January. My LoseIt app tells me that I should eat just under 1400 cals to lose 1.5 lbs per weeks but I'm not, I'm eating 1600-1700 and losing 1.5 lbs per week (and I've been know to cheat occassionally). So as you can see the math is not perfect.
I've also noticed that anytime I increase my activity (for example I went from jogging a couple xs a weeks to running 5xs a week) I have to eat more to continue to lose otherwise my body starts to reserve my cals to function and my weight loss stalls. So anyway it's just a trial and error game that we have to play to find the right calorie level for our own body. Good luck!