Sorry - this is a bit of a whinge.

I have been eating sensibly (dropping all high GI foods) and eating around 1600-1800 cals a day, I joined a gym a month ago and go three times a week for an hour, doing lots of walking and having been taking metformin for two weeks.

In a month I have lost just 1lb. Really dis-heartened.

I don't eat junk food, take-aways, cake, chocolate

I'm vegetarian but i eat very little dairy anyway.

I just dont know what else I can do or where I am going wrong

Any ideas?

Hx

What does a typical day's eating look like? Can you give us a sample menu?

Hi there -

Usually if the scales isn't moving for me the top culprit is that I am underestimating my calories. Once I start measuring and being accountable for every little bit again things start happening.

My other thoughts is that if working out is a new thing are you hitting it pretty hard? Like hard enough that you have been building some muscle during the month and your water weight is adjusting for the added activity and the muscle usage?

Do you "feel" physically like you are more fit than a month ago?

I keep a food diary - this was yesterday

30gms bran flakes with soya milk

2 scrambled eggs on toast (soya and linseed bread)

Banana

Homemade veg stew (no fat) with 2 quorn sausages

Apple & pomegranite with low fat yogurt

2 black coffees with 1 sugar in each, 2 cups tea with sweetners, sugar free squash

I would say this is fairly typical.

Regarding the gym - I can tell my clothes are looser so i guess there is some toning. I do 25-30 mins of fat burning cardio at the gym, and I am doing high reps low weights.

Part of my concern/frustration is I see my gynie in mid Jan and I really wanted to have got 14-18lbs off (esp as some people seem to take of weight with Metformin too), which I though was a reasonable amount, but at this rate that is just a pipe dream.

Any thoughts?

Hx

Bran Flakes (30 grams) - 92 calories
Soy Milk (1 cup?) - 130 calories
2 scrambled Eggs - 200 calories
1 piece bread - 80 calories
Banana - 100 calories
Homemade vegetable stew - 150 calories (?)
Quorn sausages 2 - 200 calories
Apple - 70 calories
Pomegranate - 105 calories
Low-fat yogurt (1/2 cup?) - 90 calories
Black coffee - 12 calories
2 Sugar Cubes - 30 calories
Squash drink - 2 calories

Without knowing your exact weights for these foods or quantities, I tried to estimate how many calories you're eating.

If this is a typical day, you're eating close to 1300 calories, not quite.

I don't see dinner here either. I'm assuming you're eating breakfast (the eggs) and lunch (stew). But are you eating any dinner or is the yogurt your dinner?

Secondly, you aren't giving yourself enough time. I can't set a goal to lose 5 lbs in one month, because it just doesn't. I've gone weeks losing the same pound and gaining it back until suddenly, I'll drop 2 or 3 lbs and be past that "plateau".

I lose approximately 10 lbs per year.

I would let the metformin start to kick in and to let the new lifestyle change and exercise take place. There shouldn't be any hurry to reach a particular goal weight IF you're eating healthy and taking care of your symptoms. After all, this is for your health rather than to win a weight loss contest.

Even if you're not dropping pounds, you are treating your PCOS and IR. That's a win all around because you are preventing this from getting worse and developing into diabetes.

You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. It can take a couple months for changes to "catch up" especially if you're making a lot of changes at once, or have underlying medical issues (like PCOS, insulin resistance, thyroid issues, diabetes, and many others).

Many people also just lose in "whooshes" they'll see no changes for weeks and then will lose several pounds suddenly. Whooshes and other weight loss patterns don't always happen on a regular or predictable pattern. You could lose every five or six weeks, you could have gains interspersed with the losses - and none of it means you're doing anything wrong.




You could be experiencing a little water retention from the gym. When you're new to exercising (or if you've suddenly increased your exercise level or time) you can gain temporary water weight (because the body needs extra water in the process of muscle buidling, repair, and recovery).

So your exercise-induced water gain may be masking your loss (if this is what's going on, it's only temporary).


Personally, I'd recommend sticking with your current plan for another month or better yet, two. If you're still not losing, you may want to consider experimenting with different carb/protein/fat ratios.

And talk to your doctor (and bring your food logs).



And most importantly, don't think that slow loss now, means you're doomed to failure or even slow loss. It can take a while to understand the patterns your body follows, and to find the right plan for you. But because you can do everything right and still get slow or sporadic or "whooshy" weight loss, you've got to remember that the body doesn't work on a daily, weekly, or even monthly schedule. You could find that you only lose every six weeks, but when you lose, you wake up six pounds lighter. I'm not saying this IS true, just that there are so many different ways people's bodies can work, that there's no sense jumping to conclusions that drive you crazy.

And also, even if one pound a month IS your best, you can still lose all the weight you need to, one pound per month. My "average" weight loss has only been a little less than 1.2 lbs per month (Yep, it's taken me 7 years to lose 98 lbs). Now two of those years were spent trying, and not losing anything (although I was only making small changes - and I was virtually bed-ridden when I started, so I took sedentary to a whole new level of not-moving).

My weight loss has sped up, but it's still only a couple pounds a month. I'm making the changes at a pace I'm comfortable with, and taking whatever weight loss comes (because I've decided that the healthy changes are more important than the weight loss).

There are a lot of options here, but I don't think you need to experiment yet until you can determine that what you are doing isn't working, and it can take up to three or four months to determine that (especially when you have medical issues that can interfere, especially endocrine issues).

I used to be on Metformin too; but my doctor told me that it took a while for it to work in your system. He also said it helps some people, and others not, but it's worth trying if it could help you.

I gather you had cereal for breakfast; eggs & toast for lunch; and vegetarian stew for dinner; with the rest being snacks. It may have been a bit low on this day, but I imagine you change your food from day to day, which may help in the long run. I agree that you may need some time; give it a good 3 months (that will be in January) and do a review at that time.

Water retention could be an issue; it was for me, so I really had to watch my salt intake.

For me, my body needs time to get used to all the new changes. For the first month I really didn't lose anything. I don't go NEAR a scale if I can feel my muscles from being sore. They hold on to a crazy amount of water for repair. All I can suggest is keep going and drink lots of water!! Maybe play with your calories. I have found what works for me is 1,400 right now and I generally eat back my exercise calories, as promoted with myfitnesspal...the site where I log my calories.

Stick with it. I know it's hard and I know you want to see changes on the scale. But it is slow if you think of it in pounds. Think of it in calories and realize how much 1 lb really is -- about 3500 calories burned! 4 sticks of butter!

That's a lot.

Do you also track inches? That can help you see how your body is changing too. You may be shrinking fat, but not seeing much on the scale change because you are also working out and building new muscle. It isn't that the fat turns to muscle, it's just that you have two different things going on that both have to weigh something. Scale only tells something changed in weight. Not from WHAT.

GL!
A.

Thank you for all of your replies. It is nice to get the support.

I always have bran flakes or all bran for brekkie. The scrambled eggs were lunch and the stew was tea.

I'd quite like one of the 'whooshes' to come along! I wasn't aware of the water thingy when building muscle and I am aware under all the fat there are muscles feeling a bit more toned.

Maybe some of it is that I dont want my gynie to think I am a lazy so-and-so, when the truth is I am really putting effort in to lose weight to help my pcos and my overall health.

I know a pound off is a pound in the right direction - but am envious of the people who lose 4lbs, 5lbs or more a week. Still I'm not going to give up, and am going to not weigh myself for two weeks in and effort to have a nice 'surprise' when i do.

Thank you once again for all the sound and practical advice

Hx

I used to be one of those people, so "this time" I not only was envying all those people, I was also envying my "old self," and I couldn't quite grasp that I no longer was a person who could lose 5 lbs a week.

The calorie level it now takes to maintain my weight, was a calorie level on which I would consistently lose 5 to 8 lbs per week (and not just for the first month or two. My previous week's weight loss record, both times a "first week" result was 11 lbs).

As I continued on the diet rollercoaster, each diet took more work and more calorie restriction to get similar results (and often I still wouldn't get similar results so I'd work harder to see slower, smaller results).

Unfortunately, you're stuck with the body you have, but the body you have today isn't necessarily the body you'll always have.

I'm finding that my weight loss ability is snowballing. I am currently able to lose weight more rapidly than when I started, and I'm hoping to be able to lose more rapidly in the future.

My current weight loss has disproven the theory that weight loss is always fastest during the first few months of a weight loss attempt. It may be the "usual" pattern, but it's not an inevitable one.

The more I do learn about what normal and average weight loss truly is, the more shocked I am at how small it is. All these years I quit diets because I felt like I was failing (and other people thought I was too - I was getting "consolations" instead of congratulations from the WW scale ladies for my "slow" weight loss).

If I had viewed it as good progress, I wouldn't have given up. Heck, if I knew what the real "average" weight loss looked like, I would have realized I was making good progress, and I wouldn't have given up.

Instead, we're taught to see success as failure, and I'm not sure why. I don't know why the "real" weight loss statistics are so often hidden, but we think that the "average" is 2 lbs per week, when it is much, much smaller.

Now some people do (at least occasionally) lose 5 lbs a week, but if the "real" average is really half a pound or less (as I've observed in TOPS) that means that there are 9 people losing nothing.

Even in my TOPS group there are folks who lose 5 lbs a week, but I had always assumed (but I was wrong) that because almost every week someone lost between 3 to 5 lbs, that these people were losing 3 to 5 lbs every week.

Instead, I learned that the big losses were rarely acheived by the same person even two weeks in a row.

We have a contest every month in which the people who did not have a gain during the month, split a $10 prize. Usually only 2 or at most 3 people (out of almost 30) earn that honor. And some months it's only one person - or none (and then the prize the next month is $20).

So out of 30 people, fewer than 10% have a no-gain month.

I've never yet experienced even one no-gain month (I'm pretty sure that if I only drank water and ate no food, I would still gain 5 to 8 lbs during TOM).


I'm really grateful for TOPS, because it's let me see that even what seems like super-slow weight loss is still extraordinary. It's just a shame I didn't see it when I was averaging losses of 2 to 6 lbs per week.

It's kind of crazy that I've been able to lose more than 70 lbs at the rate of 1 - 2 lbs a month, when I couldn't ever do that at 2-6 lbs per week.

It's really good to get the experiences of people with similar conditions and who are some way down their journey to lose weight.

I'm in it for the long game.

Up until 1996 I was a UK size 12-14 then gradually over the next three years my weight started increasing despite no changes to my diet/exercise. My GP just said 'eat less'.

Cue a final diagnosis in 1999 of an underactive thyroid and pcos and continued weight gain, followed by a serious back injury in 2006.

I know that it may take me 5 years to get back to a size 12-14 but I just need to plod on!

So can anyone can tell me how I add a weight slider to my posts?

Hx

I think if you click on someone's ticker, you can find out how to do it.

As for the slow weight loss....... I just have to comment on a personal experience and what brought me here (35 less than when I started).

I didn't see PCOS as a health condition. I saw it as the thing that prevented me from being thin. It took me a loooooong time to actually see it as something that was going to affect me and being chubby was the least of my concerns. It was the diabetes, the cardiovascular effects, the fatty liver, the lack of energy and complications that came from the first three that really hit home that PCOS isn't just about being a little fat and not being able to fit into nice clothes or look like others.

It's really a health issue. It affects how many years I'm going to live AND the quality of those years. I've always said the last thing I EVER wanted was to be bed ridden, sick, and unable to live life or die. Being dead doesn't scare me as much as being too sick to enjoy life but not sick enough to be dead.

That context of understanding that this was a health issue, rather than a weight loss issue helps me to motivate me to continue down this path even on the weeks where I don't see the scale move.

(Like, this week, is now week 3 where I still weigh 164.4 despite being on a deficit and exercising like mad.)

I agree with PCOS being a health issue - but in all honesty up until seeing the gynaecologist last month I felt it was very much dismissed by the other health professionals I had seen. I was never given info about how only having periods once a year could increase my risks of cancer, or about the risk of diabetes etc.

So now I'm sensibly taking all the steps I can to improve my overall health (that said I have had one of those days where I Have just grazed constantly).

Still tomorrow is another day!!

Hx

I have to agree with previous posters about your body catching up when starting new regimen, one thing you need to do for sure is take measurements I lost 3 lbs but 21 inches! The inches is really what I want most in my life, i want to look good and feel good. I recently was diagnosed so ive been doing a lot of reading. I read Katie Humphrey book on PCOS (downloading off of amazon much cheaper) and I learned because of our body composition low carb(not extremes) is really critical because our receptors aren't as responsive as most people. When looking at your food choices there's a lot of carbs btwn the grains and sugars. I know that low carb is really helping me get the lbs off, I have done things like instead of having regular milk or soy I'll buy Almond milk that has 1 carb and 1 fiber- net carbs 0 and instead of pasta making zucchini strings.

I also learned that over exercising is a big mistake as for me I'm all or nothing so I've had to learn to find a balance, having a excess testosterone then going to the gym and pumping 6 days a week wasn't getting me the results I wanted. I spoke with Katie she said yoga is really great for people with PCOS and walking/running a few days a week with a few days of weight training intermixed.

All in moderation, you will see the lbs come off eventually, just don't give up remember it's not temporary its a lifestyle change.