Hi everyone, I'm new here. About three weeks ago, I became fully aware of how much I weigh and how it is affecting my health and my life. Before that, I didn't think much about my weight and I didn't acknowledge what my body is going through because of it.

So, 16 days ago I started using an app to log my daily food intake and I began keeping track of how many calories I was taking in every day. What a shock!!
I was eating well over 2500 calories a day and not exercising at all. Since I started keeping track, I've limited my daily caloric intake at 1,600 cal a day.

I'm discouraged. I've not lost *any* weight in 16 days.

Is it because I've only been counting calories for a short time and it takes time for the body to start shedding pounds or am I doing something wrong? How long does it usually take for someone to see the results on a scale? I would love any and all comments... thanks so much!

Are you measuring ALL food and counting drinks? Counting sauces, creamers, and weighing your meats on a scale, etc?

Keep at it and don't feel discouraged just yet! This is a "rest of your life" kind of thing, so it will always take tweaking.

I recommend taking photos and measurements too, sometimes the scale doesn't change but our body does.

For some people it's not just the calories but the kind of food they're eating. Do mix your approach every few weeks, experiment with cutting out common "problem" foods - dairy, eggs, sugar.

The best advice i can give is to focus on looking at your diet, and actually keeping at it, don't think about how long is it going to take, if you eat right i promise you WILL see results ! But you should not focus on results, focus on your diet, the results will come !

Forever... It's not just a diet, it's a lifetime commitment. Even though I am thin, I still struggle daily with food choices. I cannot eat like I used to. For example I used to go to the gas station in the morning, and get some coffee and a pastry with it. Now I just get some coffee. It's the little habits that you are going to have to form in your mind. Yes, I wish I could have a pastry, but I haven't got one in years. This is just an example of a habit change.

Do not get discouraged. Stick with it, make the right food choices, don't give up. The weight will start falling soon. You can do it!

Hi - the answer is a very long time - and you need to stop thinking of what you are eating as a diet but as a lifestyle change


this is going to possibly come as a surprise but are you eating in the right zone to not go into starvation mode
too many calories is over-eating causes weight gain - too few under eating causes weight gain too
in other words when you go the food calories counting app did you do a calculation of how much you should eat to lose weight
if your a MFP (my fitness pal) or my plate (from Livestrong.com) they both have apps that help you figure out how much you should be eating - you need to recalculate every 2 weeks to 1 month as well because as you loose weight you will need to adjust for the new weight that your eating for
this should be your goal to eat to... its okay to be a small amount over or under but not all the time say 3 times a week....

if the answer is yes - how much fresh fruit and veg are you eating as once you have that number divide by 3 (this one can be magic) -

try this
one third just for fruit .. one third for Protein (lean meats eggs nuts ) and veg (savoury fruit such as tomato and avocado count as veg ).... and one for everything else diary and other foods such as cake or chocolate ...

make sure the protein you are eating is mostly lean meats such as chicken fish eggs and turkey- you can have these every main meal if you want ... then some red meat 3 -4 times a week but just once in a day

if your still hungry make fruit your go to choice along with carrot sticks or celery


or

alternative - make the calories goal half
track everything on paper - fruit and "green" veg - only count the calories that you want to ... meats dairy and carbs such as pasta baked goods and starchy veg such as potato yams parsnips sweet potato
find a Weight Watchers (WW) site and browse the program see if you can find a list of 0 points food sometimes there accessible to get people to sign up as they can eat whatever they like of these foods to try get them healthier... (yes I am doing WW) - a combination of tracking food - stay accountable - 10 days in a lifeboat section here and WW connect -with walking as exercise has seen me loose 40 kg or a total of 88 pounds from Feb to December

Christmas/December has been off track and seen a gain come in which has been 1.5 kg or 3.3 pounds in the Christmas week - now to hopeful get rid of it by being very focused on my plan - I also teach swimming or swim when not working as its great low impact exercise even back stroke!


weight loss should be slow and manageable and think of this not as a diet but a lifestyle change

your range you should be loosing ideally up to 2 kg a week at very most or 4.4 pounds
this may sound like not much but think about how long it took to gain and how long it will take to loose

you have made a great start by tracking everything
but please make sure you using a decent amount of fruit n veg
and joining 3 fat chicks

my journey will probably take me 2 years ... I signed up to a year on WW and will probably sign up for 1 more
I am an online only option member so I only have me to be accountable to I hated the idea of meetings where I live
so it was a brilliant option - I may look at meetings when I get to 90 kg or 200 pounds (90.7) as that will be the lightest I have been in my adult life - since 16....


sorry about the long winded blah blah blah ...



so I started WW at 150.5 kg or 330 pounds in February this year - needed guidance as couldn't do this my self
I had previously tried going it on my own with a tracker and this site but didn't have the rest of the knowledge to do so
even when tracking didn't use enough fresh food calories - this is where WW has 0 points
then starchy ones have very low points

to maintain loosing weight