frustrated :(
 

I had a holiday party to attend on Saturday. I got a new dress for the occasion, which was two sizes smaller then i used to buy. It made me feel great. I got dressed and i felt fabulous. However, when i went to the party it was in a place that had floor to ceiling mirrors on two entire walls in the room! OMG This was devastating!! No matter how i tried i kept getting glimpses of myself. I thought i looked so great when i left my house, i felt great but when i was in that room compared to other small people i guess and all the damn mirrors i just wanted to cry. i felt like big fat pig and i was so miserable!!

I have been working so hard. Absolutley love southbeach. But i have really stepped up my workout plan to, doing the p90x, gym, ellipitical just a mixture of everything every day. But i feel its not coming off as quick as it should now, down to maybe 1/2 pound a week.

I used to use fitday but have stopped because i didnt see the need for it. But i logged onto fitday today because i wanted to check my calorie intake and punched in my entire menu for the day which isnt anything unusual and I came up with about 1300 calories! I was really surpirsed cause i have been eating about this and not feeling hungry. Meanwhile my BMR is 1700! Plus I am exercising an hour to two hours a day. Can i get any thoughts on if this may be slowing down the weight loss still at this point. It just seems so illogical and i cant get my head around it. I know the whole thing about your body going into starvation mode etc, but is it possible with the above calorie intake and activity? On advise from my previous post about what to eat after working out i am adding on another grain today - so i will have oatmeal for lunch and then 1/2 cup of brown rice with my salmon for dinner. Maybe this will help. I am just not getting this, i should be looking a lot better than i do for all the work i have put into completely changing my lifestyle ...im just getting so disgusted.

Any thoughts? If any of you log your calories and have sucess at a certainl level can you let me know? Im not sure what to do. I am greatful i have lost what i have....just feeling sorry for myself i guess after Saturday :( ughh

Hi there,

First of all - those mirrors are horrible! They distort more so than your own eyes do!!!

IMHO - and this is from someone who is at a stall and needs to amp up exercise (and by amp, I mean ADD), but I think your calorie intake is WAY TOO low to be working out that hard. Your body might be holding on to what little it has because it's not getting what it needs. Maybe spice it up - every other day take in 1600 cals? My body does best when I am ebbing and flowing on caloric intake and when I'm working out.

hope that helps. Don't let this discourage you or get you down!

Thanks for your input, i appreciate it! :) Im going to continue to log on fitday and maybe alternate 1600 and then 1300 and see how this works for a couple of weeks with the exercise. It makes sense to change it up to.

Good luck getting your exercise in!!

I would suggest never going below your BMR. BMR is how much you burn doing nothing, lying in bed all day. If you are eating 1300, it is no wonder you are not losing weight... I did that with 1500 calories (and my BMR is around the same- 1550). My weight loss slowed. I was confused as I was exercising soo much! I increased to 1700-1800 and boom, I lost a lot more weight. So if you are 100% sure your BMR is 1700 and you are exercising, eat 2100-2200 calories at least and you'll lose a lot more :) And trust me, it's easy to add those calories- eat an extra serving of nuts, cook in coconut oil instead of the cooking spray and little changes so you aren't pigging out either. :) Also, the more you lose, the less you will be able to eat so enjoy the extra calories while it lasts :)

I will chime in and agree that your calorie intake is way too low. When I did SB back in 2004, I lost about 25 lbs and then my weight loss stalled. I calculated my calories for a few days (thinking I was eating too much) and found that I was regularly getting under 1000 per day. I wasn't exercising, but still, I should have been at least getting 1200-1300. I don't know for sure, but I think I messed up my metabolism when I did this and that's why my loss stalled.

So, my advice is to try to get your calorie intake up to at least 1500 every day. Once you do that, try moving up until you are closer to your 1700 or even more with all that exercising you are doing. I know it's hard to rationalize that eating more will help you lose, but I really believe it will! Good luck!!

I agree that your intake may be too low and may have slowed down your metabolism. I think the calorie cycling is a great idea! Another thing I've been hearing about lately is "carb cycling" where you have higher carb (but still "good" carbs!) days and alternate with much lower carb days. Dr. Oz had a recent segment on it. I haven't tried it myself. But I definitely have found that sometimes I can get off a plateau with the varying off food intake.

For me, the math doesn't work. Last spring I was tracking my calories in and out and should have been consistently losing and wasn't. It went on for weeks and drove me crazy!