I weigh myself every Friday and normally I see about a two pound loss. This week I saw none. I'm really frustrated by this and I don't understand what happened so I thought maybe someone could give me some insight.

I weighed 153.8 last week. I weigh 153.6 now so basically the same thing.

I wore the same exact clothes, no shoes.

I'm starting to get cramps a little so my TOM should be hitting within the next week (lovely!). I'm wondering if this is causing some sort of strange shift...

I've been doing a little strength training, only upper body, but mostly cardio. I've really gotten into reading while walking so I do about an hour each time. I've done this almost every day for the past week just for the pleasure of it.

I could have sworn my diet was under control, that I wasn't eating mass amounts of food, but now I'm not so sure.

I don't feel "thicker", my stomach doesn't feel bloated, and I look just fine.

Body fat percentage is still high, got a long way to go, but I don't think it's increased. I just emailed my trainer to ask for my old body fat percentage figure to see exactly how much it's changed.

I'm stronger than I was before, I can feel muscles, my endurance is better, etc.. But that stupid freaking number...

I know, I know, don't get caught up with the numbers. Still, I have a goal and it's not a really insane one - 143 by graduation or at least close to it and I'm still 10 pounds off. I know the "logical" conclusion is that I gained muscle but that doesn't really make sense does it? I gained the same amount of muscle mass as fat lost in one week? =/

How are you tracking your food? Points? Calories?

BUT, it's probably PMS. Lots of people hold or even GAIN during the PMS week.

I just do it mentally now, I got kinda sick of writing it down and I know I won't do it forever. I've been doing it mentally for a month or more, this is the first week that I've been like, "Whaaaaa?"

I try to shoot for between 1200 and 1500, I usually fall closer to 1500 by my estimations. Keep in mind that I've been walking for about an hour and having a hard workout every Friday so I'm probably burning about 2200 calories rather than the lowest figure, 1700. I can't imagine that I ate 2200 calories almost every day, I don't even think that's possible. =/

Is it technically my TOM if I haven't actually "started" the grosser part yet? >.>

It definitely could be your calorie intake. It could be TOM. It could just be water weight unrelated to TOM. Could be a combo of those things.

Side note though, why are you only doing upper body? Some kind of lower body injury?

Anyway, as you will hear over and over again here, weight loss isn't linear. A .2 loss is still a loss. Chances are you won't lose 2 lbs every week, sometimes it will be more, sometimes less, sometimes none. If everything is in line, it will reflect on the scale.

I only really do upper body because I rely on walking/jogging/running so much that I hate to make myself sore. I jog now mostly for pleasure and if my legs hurt I'm kinda like ugh, don't wanna... But maybe if I do some it won't sting so much that I can't still jog.

I think it'd be worth throwing in some lower body, those are some HUGE muscles to ignore. You don't have to go full out from day one. If you add it little by little you probably won't get too sore. I agree, running isn't quite the same while sore, but when I am sore, running usually helps it go away a little faster.

"gaining muscle" is the LEAST logical conclusion.

Its possible if youd weighed yourself yesterday, or the day before, you would have seen your loss--> but for whatever reason, you are retaining water right now. THAT is the only logical conclusion. You didnt gain muscle, you didnt gain fat (you may not have LOST anythough, given your current "tracking" methods).

I agree!! Weight training has made running SO Much easier for me. The stronger those muscles are, the easier it is for them to carry you around. Running through leg soreness isn't nearly as bad as trying to carry stuff around with arm soreness, for some reason.

You're probably retaining water. You're lucky, when I retain water the scale jumps up several lbs.

This could happen for any number of reasons. Furthermore, sometimes our weight loss isn't immediately reflected on the scale, so it's likely that you will have a larger loss next week or even the week after that, if you stay on track.

However, you DID lose this week, albeit a small amount, so that is proof right there that you are headed in the right direction!

I should reword that. Not the most logical but the most common. You hear it a lot - "Oh, I didn't lose anything because I gained muscle." But if I'm losing, on average, 2 pounds a week, that would have to mean I gained 2 pounds worth of muscle to create that balance and that's insane. Would be pretty cool but yeah, not happening.

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'm feeling a little better. After I stepped off that scale I was in such a bad mood. =/

Microanalyzing the why's of week to week is pointless.

Weight loss is not linear. Weight loss, gain or neutral does not equal FAT loss gain or neutral

If three weeks from now nothing is different then it is time to tweak, until then just keep on keeping on.

Easier said than done, ennay.

I worked out almost every day. Might have skipped one, two days at most. My calorie intake wasn't excessively high and I was hopeful. I'm trying to race the clock and I'm running out of time. No, it's not a life or death situation and I clearly stated that I know I shouldn't get caught up on the numbers. But when you want something so bad and you have such a short amount of time to get it, it's very easy for you to say don't worry about it, very hard for me, the person working at it, to not care.

Having said that, it's not the first time I've gotten on the scale and seen my weight hold. It's just the first time I've seen it hold with no easily seeable reason. The one other time it happened was because my calorie intake was meh and my workout routine took a dive. But when your calorie intake is fine and your workout routine is pretty good, it can be confusing. Naturally I'd wonder what the cause was.

Like a few people (myself included) said, it's not that your hard work hasn't (or isn't going to) pay off, it's just that it's taking the scale a bit longer to catch up. Think of it as an investment in next week's (or possibly the following week's) weigh in.

I'm sure we all do understand your frustration, but I find it helps to look at the bigger picture on slow weeks. That is what truly matters.

Hang in there!

I've lost 99 lbs. NONE of the last 50 have come off in any kind of logical pattern. Often, loss is not linear. A lot of us lose in a sawtooth tragectory. It's normal.

Weight loss isn't linear. You can analyze everything you did and still come up doing it all right and lose nothing. It sucks, but our bodies aren't perfectly little machines that follow mathematical logic.

When I lost weight it was at a rate of 1.8 pounds per week. I never actually lost that amount per week though! Sometimes I lost more, sometimes less and sometimes none at all.