Okay, I'm about ready to sling my scale across the room. A week ago, I weighed 203 pounds. Today, I weigh 206 pounds. I've weighed every day within that week and watched my weight go UP despite doing nothing at all different from the week before.
Here is what I have done in the past week:
- Eaten my usual 1500-calorie allotment.
- Gone for my usual walks of a mile and a half to two miles.
- Slept normally.
- Ended my period (so weight should go DOWN, right? )
- Written down my foods.
Here is what I have NOT done:
- "Cheated"
- Lifted weights, which would account for water weight
- Sleep-walked (I actually checked this with a dusting of baby powder on the floor)
- Changed the preponderance of my diet to a different macronutrient
- Added more salt to foods
- Eaten anything significantly different than what I was eating before
The thing that really troubles me is that the 203 pounds came after a week of great worry and stress during which I ate sporadically. I still recorded all my food and on some days, I didn't even reach four digits. BUT! My weight loss was good. That's dangerous, because now I'm thinking, "Okay, clearly 1500 pounds is way too much food because I've gained three pounds in a week just by eating it! I need to cut down. WAY down!"
I'm smart enough to know that missing meals and eating six hundred calories a day is unhealthy and unsustainable. But the temptation is there--even after all these months of doing this the safe, healthy, enjoyable way--to endure a punishing and restrictive diet by choice because it was damnably effective when I did it by accident during stress.
I don't usually post for help or write "wah, I'm depressed" screeds on here and I'm embarrassed to do so now, but I'm so angry I could cry about getting three pounds from my goal and then gaining back--NOT by going off my plan, but by going BACK to it! Do I need to analyze my plan? Am I going to have to drop calories already despite still being over 200 pounds and eating 1500 a day? How far do I have to cut, because I know 600-calorie days don't work in the long term...but I sure liked the effect of them in the short term.
I don't know what to do at this point and would welcome any advice at all. I'm so furious that I just want to yell and punch holes in walls. Should I just resign myself to living over 200 pounds? I can do that, but I'd rather not.
What foods are you actually eating. If its 1500 calories mainly carbs, that could be your problem. Your body needs a healthy balance of all food groups. Also, what you do may not show up on the scale the next day or even the next week. It may then suddenly show up. Walking is not enough. You really need to add some strength training 3 days a week. Toning bands can be purchased at Walmart for less than $10, as well as hand weights.
I haven't weighed under 200lbs in over 4 years. I'm at a mini plateau right now, and I almost let it discourage me... But this is my LIFE and well being that we're talking about, so I'm not gonna let a week of no weight loss discourage me.
1500 calories is okay, but it really depends on WHAT you're eating, not necessarily how many calories. I can eat 1500 calories worth of Nutella (and I have, before. A whole jar in one sitting), or eat 1500 calories of oatmeal, sprouted grain bread, grilled chicken breast, broccoli, sweet potatoes, bananas, grapefruit, all the yummy healthy nutrient-rich foods that I LOVE.
Food is fuel, you need calories that are nutrient rich, that will give you better energy. I would actually suggest maybe upping to 1600 (is 100 calories really gonna make you gain? NO!) and adding in more exercise. Cardio alone won't do it, you should add some strength training a few times a week into your routine, then follow it up with a brisk walk/run/elliptical training to get some cardio at the end.
I used to do strength training, but have slacked in the past couple of weeks, admittedly; that's one thing I've slacked on. I didn't think it was three pounds of regained fat worth of slack, but maybe it was. Thank you, I hadn't considered that lack.
As for my diet, it's the same as it has been--my calories are about a 40/30/30 split between carbs, protein, and fat, respectively. This is the same type of stuff I've been eating since November and have had good success with thus far. The past three weeks haven't contained a single new food, just variations on the old ones (turkey instead of chicken on my wraps, this flavor of Laughing Cow instead of that one, and so on).
Logically I know that the weight gain is unlikely to be fat. I don't know that it's physiologically possible for someone to gain three pounds of fat on 1500 calories a day unless she's sedentary to the point of being tied to the bed. But I have never yet suffered an uptick like this for a week solid and it's making me question myself more than I'd expected I would.
I thought I was prepared for fluctuations and plateaus, but apparently that flies out the window when the fluctuation is too large or lasts too long.
Thank you for your reply. It's got me thinking more about the exercise side of the equation.
Edited to add: Thanks to others for chiming in, too. I see some questions about what I eat, so I'll list a typical day; this was from the day before yesterday.
Breakfast: One-egg-plus-two-whites omelet prepared with one pat (not tablespoon) of butter, one tablespoon of ground Parmesan cheese, spinach, salt, pepper, nutmeg; one four-ounce Oikos Greek yogurt cup
Lunch: Half a cup of homemade chicken/andouille gumbo (no rice), turkey and raw spinach on a Flat-Out wrap with one wedge of Laughing Cow as a spread, one orange
Dinner: One three-ounce broiled steak, a cup of broccoli drizzled with a teaspoon of melted garlic butter, and half a cup of roasted sweet potato
Snack: An apple with half an ounce of thinly sliced Tillamook cheddar
Last edited by Nola Celeste; 03-15-2011 at 12:12 PM.
It's the darn scale I tell you- they are EVIL and they want you to fail so they are LYING!
I say keep it up and try not to stress and eventually you will win! I think your diet is very balanced and healthy and not too carby. If all else fails keep chugging that water!
Maybe I'm not typical, but when my scale weight goes up, it always does so for at least 4 days before going down, and typically a week or longer. In fact I did a post here awhile back where my weight stayed the same for about 28 days. Yucky. LOL
I'm not one of those people that lose weight by 1/4 pounds and I never have. When I see people post things like "down .4 pounds today!", I am sort of envious of that trackable, linear progression. It simply does not happen for me.
You obviously know you have a good plan, and have confidence in what you are doing. It has worked so far, and there is no reason to believe that it won't work now.
You can try the normal stuff if you want to, up the water intake, add some fiber in there just to make sure you aren't 'building' things up. Add in some exercise if you want to, and definitely get back into the lifting.
I do notice that when pounds aren't changing, that typically measurements are, so your body could be in a readjustment phase.
Is it possible that when you were not eating much because of stress, you showed a three pound loss over those few days, but it wasn't a real loss? Just a lack of fluids and food in the body causing you to weigh less. If you experienced a sudden 3+ pound weight loss, perhaps all of it wasn't a real loss, and so this 3-pound weight "gain" shouldn't be viewed as a gain but rather as a fluctuation. You said you watched your weight go up despite nothing changing from the week before, but then you described the week before when you saw 203 on the scale as eating less than 1000 calores compared to eating 1500 calories this week, so that there would be the difference. I don't think 1500 is too many, or that you have to settle for weighing 200+ pounds. I think last week's 203 weight may have been a fluke just because you body had less food, liquid, and waste product in it. Keep doing what works and trust your body. It'll come off.
stress is going to interupt your weightloss. If it's outside stress or stress you are putting on yourself because of those 3 pounds. Sometimes your body is just going to do what it is going to do. And it won't keep the schedule you want it to. But at the same time eventually it will have to let go of that weight.
how long have you been eating 1500? maybe it's time to drop it down a 100
i second aimeebell and add in the possibility that by depriving your body by eating so low last week it may have sent it into a temporary hoarding or storage phase because. it is either trying to recover from last week and/or prepare for a repeat of the large deficit
well..my thought is your water weight from your period hasnt gone down yet..it takes me a couple of days to go back down..like three or 4..but about 4 days later it goes back to normal..down to where it was before.
A lot of cool responses and interesting possibilities lead me to the certain conclusion that you can't know!!
Weight loss is not linear. It's possible that your behaviors from the week before finally caught up with you, that stress played an important role or something else we haven't thought of.
I agree with beerab: scales are evil. Well, not really evil, but they cause us to give them much too much power over us. We want to know about our fat loss, and they weigh all of us.
So, resist the urge to toss the scale -- unless you want to use it in your workout!! -- and stop trying to figure out these silly fluctuations. Relax (it's good for your stress levels) and keep doing what you're doing... it'll happen. You just gotta be patient!!
I'm thinking this is just your body readjusting after a week of low calorie eating and now back to your normal and healthy 1500 calories. Your food choices sound great, I would just try to be patient, the weight will come off if you just keep at it. Don't be in a hurry to drop calories, you probably don't need to do that. I know it's hard though when you want the weight off, NOW! Keep going!!
I have weighed, measured, and written down diligently since I started. I was proud of myself for continuing to do it even while dealing with a lot of financial stress that made sleep difficult over the past week and a half...but in thinking about it more, yeah, this could be a rebound back to a "normal" weight from the weight loss I had from about four or five days of under-eating, under-consumption of water, and lack of sleep.
I stayed on plan and wrote everything down, but I wasn't eating right; there's nothing right about 500- and 600-calorie days. I just panicked because this is the first week that I've shown sustained gain. It's something I haven't had to fight with before because I hadn't deviated from my plan before--I've been on it 100% since early November. Even my (planned) extra calories for Christmas and Thanksgiving didn't slow me down, so it seemed insane to me that I would show a three-pound gain after a week of eating a grand total of about 4,000 calories followed by four days of 1500 calories a day.
After reading this thread and thinking hard about why this is happening, I think I have it figured: I was dehydrated from too little water and I hadn't consumed as much sodium (or anything else) during that week, so I saw this exciting "203" on the scale. Now I've bounced back to where I would've been if I hadn't inadvertently starved/dehydrated myself a little.
I can live with that. Thank you all for the help; it really helped me reach a better understanding of what's gone on with me.
There's no question that I'm going to keep going. My only question was whether I would commit a crime or kick holes in stuff in the process. I think it'll be okay now, though.
Furious at these three extra pounds!
) 
