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How is this possible??

Okay, I've finally decided to lose the weight after being unhappy with what I read on the scale last week (ugh, 247), so I've been eating healthier foods and counting calories (I'm trying to stay anywhere within 1550 to 1650 a day, I'm not sure I should modify this?). I haven't really started with an exercise program yet, but I'm considering doing it very soon. This Monday I went to weigh myself after a week from starting, and saw it read 243 - probably fluid, but of course I was happy about any sort of loss.

So I continued all week and tried my best to stick to my calorie limit, drank lots of water, no cheating or splurging, etc. I decided to weigh myself today two days earlier since I was curious, and now I'm right back to where I started!!

I seriously want to cry right now. I did have my breakfast before I weighed in (which I probably shouldn't have done) and not exercise as much as I should, but other than that, I can't think of what I've done wrong. I know that body weight can fluctuate and all, but this just seems too excess...I was feeling so positive about this weight loss plan during the week, but now I'm right back to thinking I'm one of those people who just can't lose no matter what they do. :(

:hug: Sorry you are discouraged!

Where are you in your cycle? I have seen fluctuations of as much as 10 pounds due to where I was at in my cycle!

Keep on staying on plan...it WILL pay off!

The problem with my cycles is that they're never predictable and I've never been very regular. :o Though for the past few months, they have been coming at around the end of the month, so it would be pretty logical if the gain were related to it. Though, like I said, it's unpredictable, so I'm not really sure if I can chalk it up to cycles just yet. :(

I will definitely keep trying though, gotta keep reminding myself that these things happen. Thank you. :)

:wel3fc: AMESTRIS . . . you have definitely come to the right place for lots and lots of support as you travel down the long (and often bumpy) road to better health and fitness. So glad to have you joining us.

What you see on the scale is just a number . . . take measurements too . . . over time both the scale numbers and the tape numbers will start to get lower. Unfortunately, our bodies do not always work on the same timetable as our minds do. Many, many things make the weight flutuate. Try not to become obsessive about it and just keep on doing the best you can, as much as you can -- the rewards will eventually come your way, Chickie.

Don't stop!! It sounds like you are off to a great start. You'll be doing even better once you add in some walking or other exercise, even a few days a week. You just have to be patient with the scale, and remember, it is very normal to have weight fluctuations like that, and then, all the sudden one day you'll find you are down a few pounds. It could have been due to your cycle, eating salty food one day, or who knows... maybe a full moon!

Maybe you could make a small, short term goal for yourself, and make a ticker for it -- like 10 lbs. in one month -- and see if that helps motivate you. But don't give up... you are are to a great start! The scale will move soon!

Try not to get down on yourself. We are all here for support, this is a tough journey, but we can do it! Even if you don't show a loss right away, keep at it!

It will come off. I know this weight did not show up on my booty overnight and it won't leave that way either, but it is going to have to go because I AM SICK OF IT.

I am worth it and so are you. Let's do this. :cheer2:

Hey amestris!

You CAN do this. Don't think for a minute that you can't! :cheer2:

I don't believe that there are people who "can't" lose weight. I believe there are people who are impatient, though--and who don't stick to their program as strictly as they should! ;)

Many things could be at work. For instance, how are you tracking your calories? Do you use FitDay? A calorie book? How precise do you get? Do you measure the amounts of your foods? Do you know what a "serving" is for the various foods you eat?

It could also be that your calories are too high at this point. Try dropping by 100 calories and see if that makes a difference--in other words, say, don't go above 1500.

You will probably want to add exercise--but think of it as "physical activity" if that's a better term. Going for a walk for half an hour is a really good beginning exercise that most people can do.

Hang in there! Don't give up!

Jay

Also, don't weigh yourself after eating!!! Food in your tummy counts as weight on the scale. So does water and coffee, btw. Ignore the blip and weigh yourself on an empty stomach on your regular weigh in day.

Hi AMestris!

The same thing happened to me when I first started. I was about to quit as usual. My weight fluctuates terribly even though I had a hysterectomy when I was 35 years old and it isn't monthly. I do hold water badly and for that reason I only weigh on the 15th and 30th of every month. This has worked out well for me because I am such a perfectionist that I am always ready to quit if the scale doesn't reflect what I think it should.

We work hard at this diet/healthy eating thing and the scale SHOULD refect it, but a lot of times it doesn't. Just keep doing what you are doing. i can't exercise the way I should because of extreme arthritis (I'm 52) and a bad knee, but I do what I can. It'll come off - maybe not on your time schedule or my time schedule but it WILL come off!
Glad you are here!
Lori

When I first started to lose weight, I had a post that sounded almost the same as yours!! Everyone said the samething don't give up. I didn't and now over time I have lost over 70lbs. You can do this! Even on your perfect weeks that scale is not always going to be nice to you! Trust me I know! Keep pluggin along the lbs will come off. I have 2 - 2 1/2 weeks were I am perfectly on plan and exercise and lose nothing, then the next week I lose 3 lbs! My plan is always the same, week after week, after week. But my results are not always the same. But after 10 months over 70 lbs has come off. It works. You can do this!! Jelly

Don't give up! I have days like that too. I weigh lighter one day and then a few days later I weigh different, then a couple days later it's back again. :hug:

Some people don't fluctuate much, but many people's weight's swing wildly. If you're a swinger (well, you know what I mean), there are two theories on getting on the scale.

1. Do it less often - maybe once a month or even less if you don't have much to lose. This way you won't see the short-term fluctuations that drive you to tears.

2. Weigh every day to become intimately aquainted with how your body works. "Learn to take the sting out of the swing."

I personally follow the second path. If you decide to, I would recommend two tools to go along with it. Keep a record of your weight (I made a little chart for every week with 8 boxes. One for every day of the week, plus my weigh-in at my TOPS club meeting). My scale at home is actually more accurate (according to the doctor's office anyway), so I only count my Monday morning weigh-in (TOPS is monday evening). The second tool is a food journal. Keep track of everything you eat, and you will be able to see if there are any diet-related patterns (such as gaining after eating chinese or other salty foods).

This morning I was surprised to see a 4 lb gain from yesterday. It wasn't TOM gain (usually about 10 lbs, but I've seen even higher), so I looked back at my food diary for the past four days and found it - chinese and other high sodium food choices. Great news! Because my calories had been good, I knew it was water weight, and I'm drinking a little extra water today to try to flush out the excess. Because I weigh daily, and know my body, tomorrow when I weigh-in, I know I might weigh the same or even a bit more, but by Sunday I should see a big loss of all that water.

One of the most important thing to remember is that one week just isn't long enough to make diet decisions by. So you shouldn't yet assume that your calorie level is too high.

Hang in there, you'll be fine.

Awww, amestris - first off, :wel3fc: :D

I had something like that happen at the beginning of my weight loss, though instead of losing a couple pounds then "gaining" them back, I just busted my *** with exercise, ate VERY healthily (hardly anything but fruits, veggies, beans, and tofu!), and lost NO WEIGHT for almost two weeks! This discouraged me. I had a breakdown, ate ice cream, pretzels, chips, pasta, and cake. I almost said, "Screw this!" UNTIL I stepped on the scale a couple days later and saw a 6 pound loss! Then, I started following a more sensible diet plan and continued to drop the pounds. I was incredibly frustrated at how much I had to do just to lose a few pounds, but now? I lost 30 pounds and gained a completely different attitude - not just towards weight loss but towards life. If *I* can do it, anybody can! Including you! :)

As the former posters have mentioned, things like TOM, sodium, and even water retention from exercise can make the scale number appear larger than it should be. Don't sweat it too much. If you treat your body well, it will eventually show you what you want to see - how can someone who eats healthily and exercises regularly remain fat forever? They can't.

Welcome to 3FC, Amestris. :)

First rule of the Fit Club: never weight after having eaten something. Nah, seriously, it can cause weird fluctuations, and not necessarily in proportion to the eaten quantity (like, gaining 2 lbs. when you know you haven't eaten 2 lbs of food!). And then there's all the rest, as the others said. I can weigh on Monday and be *three* lbs. heavier than the following day, or the contrary, when my food intake/exercise hasn't changed. I honestly think there's no way to understand precisely how all of this works, so just pick a specific weigh-in day and don't think about what the scales might say on another day. It's just too discouraging.

Apart from this, that's a great start! Don't stop now! :)

Your right it isnt possible!! So chin up darlin and read on :D

Quote:

Why the Scales Lie

We’ve been told over an over again that daily weighing is unnecessary, yet many of us can’t resist peeking at that number every morning. If you just can’t bring yourself to toss the scale in the trash, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that influence it’s readings. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. They are not indicators of your success or failure. Once you understand how these mechanisms work, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale.

Water makes up about 60% of total body mass. Normal fluctuations in the body’s water content can send scale-watchers into a tailspin if they don’t understand what’s happening. Two factors influencing water retention are water consumption and salt intake. Strange as it sounds, the less water you drink, the more of it your body retains. If you are even slightly dehydrated your body will hang onto it’s water supplies with a vengeance, possibly causing the number on the scale to inch upward. The solution is to drink plenty of water.

Excess salt (sodium) can also play a big role in water retention. A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 mg of sodium. Generally, we should only eat between 1,000 and 3,000 mg of sodium a day, so it’s easy to go overboard. Sodium is a sneaky substance. You would expect it to be most highly concentrated in salty chips, nuts, and crackers. However, a food doesn’t have to taste salty to be loaded with sodium. A half cup of instant pudding actually contains nearly four times as much sodium as an ounce of salted nuts, 460 mg in the pudding versus 123 mg in the nuts. The more highly processed a food is, the more likely it is to have a high sodium content. That’s why, when it comes to eating, it’s wise to stick mainly to the basics: fruits, vegetables, lean meat, beans, and whole grains. Be sure to read the labels on canned foods, boxed mixes, and frozen dinners.

Women may also retain several pounds of water prior to menstruation. This is very common and the weight will likely disappear as quickly as it arrives. Pre-menstrual water-weight gain can be minimized by drinking plenty of water, maintaining an exercise program, and keeping high-sodium processed foods to a minimum.

Another factor that can influence the scale is glycogen. Think of glycogen as a fuel tank full of stored carbohydrate. Some glycogen is stored in the liver and some is stored the muscles themselves. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound and it’s packaged with 3-4 pounds of water when it’s stored. Your glycogen supply will shrink during the day if you fail to take in enough carbohydrates. As the glycogen supply shrinks you will experience a small imperceptible increase in appetite and your body will restore this fuel reserve along with it’s associated water. It’s normal to experience glycogen and water weight shifts of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level. These fluctuations have nothing to do with fat loss, although they can make for some unnecessarily dramatic weigh-ins if you’re prone to obsessing over the number on the scale.

Otherwise rational people also tend to forget about the actual weight of the food they eat. For this reason, it’s wise to weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you’ve had anything to eat or drink. Swallowing a bunch of food before you step on the scale is no different than putting a bunch of rocks in your pocket. The 5 pounds that you gain right after a huge dinner is not fat. It’s the actual weight of everything you’ve had to eat and drink. The added weight of the meal will be gone several hours later when you’ve finished digesting it.

Exercise physiologists tell us that in order to store one pound of fat, you need to eat 3,500 calories more than your body is able to burn. In other words, to actually store the above dinner as 5 pounds of fat, it would have to contain a whopping 17,500 calories. This is not likely, in fact it’s not humanly possible. So when the scale goes up 3 or 4 pounds overnight, rest easy, it’s likely to be water, glycogen, and the weight of your dinner. Keep in mind that the 3,500 calorie rule works in reverse also. In order to lose one pound of fat you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in. Generally, it’s only possible to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. When you follow a very low calorie diet that causes your weight to drop 10 pounds in 7 days, it’s physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you’re really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle.

This brings us to the scale’s sneakiest attribute. It doesn’t just weigh fat. It weighs muscle, bone, water, internal organs and all. When you lose "weight," that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve lost fat. In fact, the scale has no way of telling you what you’ve lost (or gained). Losing muscle is nothing to celebrate. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns, even when you’re just sitting around. That’s one reason why a fit, active person is able to eat considerably more food than the dieter who is unwittingly destroying muscle tissue.

Robin Landis, author of "Body Fueling," compares fat and muscles to feathers and gold. One pound of fat is like a big fluffy, lumpy bunch of feathers, and one pound of muscle is small and valuable like a piece of gold. Obviously, you want to lose the dumpy, bulky feathers and keep the sleek beautiful gold. The problem with the scale is that it doesn’t differentiate between the two. It can’t tell you how much of your total body weight is lean tissue and how much is fat. There are several other measuring techniques that can accomplish this, although they vary in convenience, accuracy, and cost. Skin-fold calipers pinch and measure fat folds at various locations on the body, hydrostatic (or underwater) weighing involves exhaling all of the air from your lungs before being lowered into a tank of water, and bioelectrical impedance measures the degree to which your body fat impedes a mild electrical current.

If the thought of being pinched, dunked, or gently zapped just doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry. The best measurement tool of all turns out to be your very own eyes. How do you look? How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Are your rings looser? Do your muscles feel firmer? These are the true measurements of success. If you are exercising and eating right, don’t be discouraged by a small gain on the scale. Fluctuations are perfectly normal. Expect them to happen and take them in stride. It’s a matter of mind over scale.