So I feel like I've been working like crazy to shed pounds; calorie counting, exercising, changing the way I eat (healthier) and yet, I dont feel as though I have lost a pound. Granted I have lost some, I lack confidence in my body that the fat will eventually melt away.

Now granted it's only been 4 weeks, I was hoping by now that I would have at least lost 5lbs, but either I have the worlds most devious scale, or I fluctuate like a crazy person. Does anyone have a recommendation on a scale? Is a digital scale better than a traditional scale?

...and I know everyone is different, but is there an average amount of time when you start to see results? I've read in some places, 4 weeks, in other places 6. My work out routine is pretty rigersous (for me). I spend a good hour working up a sweat and pushing my body like I have never pushed before. I know that I am still so very new to this and I know that it takes time, but I would like to see some sort of results of what I feel has been really hard work. I think my biggest problem right now (albeit, it's only day 2 of feeling like this); I am SO hungry. It's a little ridiculous.

Thanks to anyone who listens. I know that this is tough for everyone, I feel like I've hit a wall already and I just need to smash it down.

1st off, sorry you are feeling discouraged!

How many calories are you eating? Do you weigh or measure your food or eyeball it? Are you counting every taste and bite? What are you doing for exercise? Did you take measurements and pictures at the beginning on top of your weight?

I understand!!! I am on week three and I can't get past 180! You aren't alone....I am also hungry a lot....but today I walked to I hop and got one of their low fat meals....it helped (although I would have loved pancakes!)....it is very hard and you aren't alone! (It is even harder when the scale doesn't move)

lesson number one for newbies: you MUST journal your intake!

write it down in a book - everything! if you nibble it, scribble it. get exact measurements where you can, use your best guess where you can't. at the end of the day, plug it into a calorie tracker such as on myfitnesspal to find out exactly how much of what you're eating.

the other way - what i do - is i pre-plan my menu the day before. i don't track it any more because my meals are very limited so i always know exactly what i'm taking in regardless. but not everybody likes that kind of thing - so preplan your menu and stick to it and then no more worries that way.

and yes, it can get up to 6wks for your body to go "wait. what!?" and wake up.

Ok, and i think the poster above aluded to to this as well...

first off, you are counting calories? While thats not the only wy to lose weight, IF that IS your method, then you mUST MUST MUST purchase a digital scale (20 dollars?) and WEIGH everything you eat! If you dont do that, then you honestly have no idea how much you are consuming. Its a fact that almost 100% of us UNDER-ESTIMATE the amount of food we are eating...its not your fault. But "eyeballing" portions, or going off of what a package says, or even uses CUPS to measure can leave you off by HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of calories a day... ESPECIALLY since you started exercising (Good for you!) You could easily be eating mroe than you think because you are hungrier from the exercise.
I realize being all ocd about weighing food isnt for everyone, BUT, if you are nOT seing results ( and youre not) than you need to..

Hey! i know it sounds overwhleming, at first, but do you want to see all of your effort for nothing? have no results that feel entitled to? you must be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. And the only way to guaratee that (as a calorie counter) is by accuratley and dilligently weighing and tracking tracking tracking. After a little while, it becomes second nature. And as the above poster mentioned, you kind of get into a groove where you eat the same rotation of meals (for the most part) which takes all the guesswork out.
It takes so much more than to just start "eating healthy" I personally cringe when i see that....... You can LOSE FAT eating only twinkies, just so long as you eat LESS TWINKIES than your body needs to survive in a day

For now, to keep things simple and get you off onthe right foot, maty i make a suggestion? However boring and bland it may seem, try and stick to completely whole foods for a week or two, to make the weighing and tracking of your food easier... Just eat eggs, and chicken breast, and salad, and an apple, and brown rice, etc, etc. Things that are ONE INGREDIENT, and therefore esy to weigh and track.

If youre willing to spend alittle more, you can make the weighing your food process even EASIER. I have a Taylor Digital Food scale, and it comes pre-programmed with a databse of thousands of foods in it with their calorie counts per gram, along with their carb count and fat count and protein, etc (if you care to track those things). All you do is set an apple on it, look in the book for the code for apple, "322" punch it in, and Voila! you have the calorie count for that exact apple without having to do anything else. Because you can look up and enter, 1 apple in a website calorie tracker, but if you dont know the WEIGHT of the apple, then yyou wont know how many cals are in it, 80cals.....180 cals.... it all depends. Not all apples have the same calorie count, see what i mean?

Increase you calorie intake for a few days, than take them back down again. Change your exercise, change your workout time perhaps. Take measurements and don't rely on scale, it can be deceiving. If you have been doing strength you might be gaining muscle. Try eating low carbs and go easy on the sodium. You should be losing at least a lb a week. If what your doing now is not working, than try something different!
Good luck, and remember the weight has to come off sometime

I never bought a food scale. I can't see adding another item to my kitchen, lol, and I didn't want to go into that territory. I want to be able to eye ball things, you know? If I have to live this lifestyle the rest of my life, I refuse (REFUSE!) to be like, 85 and weighing my food. That would be NUTS, lol.

I've lost quite a bit of weight eyeballing things, and using what the package says the calories are, or using my measuring cups if I so choose not to eyeball like, milk or cereal.. To that answer, though, I bake a LOT and I know what a teaspoon looks like, and I'm usually very close to being able to eyeball amounts. I keep track of my calories, always overestimating, with an app in my phone.

It's a personal choice, though, so you decide whats best for you.

After only 4 weeks, I would suggest keeping going. Your body very well might be saying 'hey! what the hecks!?' and it doesn't realize its okay yet, you know?

Iyakamae, sounds like you're doing the right things.
However, you say you've been working like crazy to get your weight down. What type of exercise are you doing? I only ask as you may be working your muscles rather than getting that heart rate up and burning the cals. And of course, everyone knows muscles weigh more than fat.

I've only decided very recently to sort myself out, and it's a week since I started to change my habits and exercise everyday. I just do 15 - 30 mins (or however long my body can cope with before it starts to hurt) of a good cardio in the morning, before I've eaten ANYTHING, as it wakes your body up for the rest of the day. And I walk the do about 2km every night (about an hour after my evening meal) at a good strong pace.

Once a week, I take a day off the exercise, so my body can recover and get ready to go again for the next week.

The other thing that concerns me is that you say you're hungry... This is NOT good when you're trying to lose some lbs. If you get hungry, have an apple, a small salad, a handful of grapes, something to munch on when you get that niggly feeling in your tummy.

One awesome tip I was given the other day is, grab a couple handfulls of grapes and freeze them. Then once frozen, eat them like you would a humbug or something like that. It tricks your brain into thinking you're eating again, but it lasts a long time and doesn't really count towards your daily cals.

I hope all our suggestions help somewhat, and don't give up!! We're all in this together!!

xx

I agree with Kateleestar. Weighing and measuring is fine, but I wanted to be able to do this easily. We analyze thing too much sometimes. And even though a scale tells us what the nutrition values of an apple of a certain weight might be,it's still based on averages. We can make ourselves nuts with trying to get it accurate to the last calorie.

Unless I was doing an extra heavy workout in the gym or around the house, I never ate back calories burned by exercise. I assume that made up for any error in calculation or estimation. Figure what you need to maintain and cut it by 500 to 700 calories a day. Eat healthy foods (we know what they are) and increase your activity level. It will all come together. Hang in there. Your ticker shows progress. Just keep it up. And, good luck to you.

Lin

I realize that weighing food isnt for everybody... if you are able to lose weight fine with eyeballing or measuring or portion control, than thats great! Keep doing what is WORKING. But it didnt seem like what the OP was doing was working... hence the weighing food suggestion.

Also, would like to add, youve been at this for 4 weeks? Did you experience an initial large whoosh? That should have happend if you are in a deficit. Its water weight associated with the storage of glycogen in your muscles, skin, organs,etc coming off. Like on the Biggest loser, you always see that HUGE loss in the first week or 2....... Its almost entirely water weight, but if that didnt happen for you (prob not nearly as much as on TV, but still a decent drop ~ 5ish pounds or more) then you arent eating in a deficit..... That water weight is alsow eight that comes back when you start eating at maintenance as well, so keep that in mind, and dont freak out when it happens......

Irregardless, we arent sure WHAT exactly the OP is eating, how she is tracking it, and what her methods of counting are.....
My main point is that the issue probably lies in innaccuarcy of food intake, more than anything..

Sorry, but this is sooo wrong. Sure you shouldn't be starving, but if you're in a caloric deficit (which you need to be in to lose weight) YOU'RE GOING TO BE HUNGRY! You shouldn't be ravenous all the time, but hunger is normal and natural when dieting. If I ate every single time I had a little hunger pain I'd be hundreds of calories over maintenance every day.

Try drinking water and waiting it out til your next meal.

^ This.

Yeah, eyeballing doesn't work for everyone. I imagine many people can be 100 or 200 above what they think they are eating and still lose weight. Others have to be exact every single day to get anywhere. Especially those of us who may have a weird relationship with food. I also think weighing your food becomes second nature and doesn't feel difficult. I've been doing it off and on for a long time and I think it's fairly easy.

I love my food scale - it's the single best purchase I've ever made for my kitchen. I have no idea how to eyeball oz of most foods other than cheese or meat, so it helps me. The tare feature makes it easy to just use your bowl/plate on the scale, so you don't need any additional measuring cups, etc.

Anyway, whenever I start a more rigorous exercise routine it takes a while for the scale to go down. Often it takes me 1-2 months before I see numbers change, and I guess that may be due to water retention. I usually feel a difference way before the numbers show it.

If you're hungry, you may want to take a look at volumetric eating. It's basically what a lot of calorie counters do in order to be satisfied, but just has a fancy name attached to it. You can mix non-starchy vegetables into nearly every dish and it makes your meals bulky, makes you more satisfied, and gives you more nutrition without giving you additional calories.

I think it's an individual thing. In my first 3 months, (when I lost 24) I was rarely hungry. I ate whole foods, good salads, and juiced or drank smoothies. I wasn't hungry because the food I was eating was low calorie and I most always felt full. The times I failed is when I got hungry, then I would grab the most convenient and usually "bad" high calorie food. I still have that problem.....when I feel hungry, I fail, so I try to eat the right things to avoid the hunger feeling. Like now.....quick......gotta go get some oatmeal and blueberries before I grab some crap!! It's my fav breakfast.....filling and low calorie, and keeps me full for hours. And I eat lots of fruit.....some people say you can't lose when eating fruit because of the sugar content. I haven't convinced my body fat of that yet. It continues to disappear while I have several fruits a day. Anyway, I just wanted to say that what works for one, may not work for another. My experience is that I can lose weight when not feeling the least bit hungry when I eat the RIGHT foods.