Hi all. I am so, so depressed over my weight GAIN! Yes, you hear me correct I am now gaining weight daily. I have no idea what I am doing wrong or what I can do to fix this. I am at a loss. I started my diet on december 29th, 07. my starting weight was 227. By last sunday morning I was down to 214! So you can imagine how happy and excited I was! 13 pounds lost and still so eagar and happy to keep the pounds rolling off!

Well, I had a bout of insomnia sunday until around wednesday so I didn't go to the gym for my 45 min to 1 hour walk. I have been eating LESS then 1200 calories a day. Yesterday I raked in a whooping 1158 calories that was the highest I've been all week. Wednesday I got on the scale and found my weight to be 216. Well, it must just be fluid I thought.... Thursday I was around 217. By friday (yesterday) I was hanging around 217-218. So I get on the scale this morning and find a gigantic 220 lbs!!!!!

As of now I have been eating around 675-1200 calories a day. Drinking at least 60 ounces of water and getting exercise through running after 2 young boys and keeping house. Yesterday I managed to even make it back to the gym but left after 25 minutes because my heart rate seemed extra slow for my usual fast heart rate. (mostly from being a hypocondriac) So now I am at a loss. I have no idea what I am doing wrong, what I should do to stop this maddness and in general what to think.

This is what I ate yesteday that seems to me to be PLENTY of food. This is how I've been eating pretty much everyday. No idea why it comes to so little calories when I feel that it is plenty of food. Maybe it is hidden calories in my food choices or something?

Breakfast

8 ounces of Strawberry Yogurt Cheerios 120 calories
2% Reduced Fat Milk (8 oz) 130 calories
5-6 bites of Banana Creme Yogurt 30 calories (guessing, it tasted awful!)

Lunch I had a BIG lunch in my opinion

2 slices bread 120 calories
1 slice american cheese 60 calories
6 slices thin sliced turkey 90 calories
2 medium slices tomatoe 8 calories
3 medium sized leafs of lettuce 6 calories
1/2 tbsp. Diet Mayo 20 calories

four 8 ounce servings lettuce 32 calories
11" stalk celery 9 calories
2 medium slices tomatoe cut up 8 calories
5 slices cucumber 5 calories
4 baby carrots cut up 6 calories
5 cauliflower flowerets 15 calories
4 tbsp. fat free italian dressing 130 calories

ALSO for lunch as extra's*

1 slice extra cheese for saled 60 calories
extra celery 9 calories
extra dressing 30 calories


Dinner

Chicken & Rice Dinner from Healthy Choice 210 calories


Snack
bite size bag pretzels 10 pretzels maybe 60 calories


1 can 0 calorie diet dr.pepper

60 ounces water


I got most of these calorie counts from calorieking.com I got the rest from the foods packaging. Please tell me what you think I am doing wrong to GAIN 6 pounds in 1 week!

Hello,

Let me preface my remarks and say that I am NOT a physician or nutritional expert. I have attended Weight Watchers for over 5 years now and am familiar with what are considered "good eating habits", etc.

My humble guess is that you may be requiring more calories per day. If the body perceives that it is being starved, it will try hard to retain weight. It is important to lose weight relatively slowly. The rule of thumb that WW uses is a daily target based on:

1. Female Score 2
Male Score 8
Nursing Mom Score 12

2. How old are you?
17-26 Score 4
27-37 Score 3
38-47 Score 2
48-58 Score 1

3. What do you weigh? Enter the first 2 digits of your weight in pounds.


4. How tall are you?
Under 5'1" Score 0
5'1" to 5'10" Score 1
Over 5'10" Score 2

5. Do you spend most of your day:
Sitting down? Score 0
Occasionally sitting, but mainly standing? Score 2
Walking most of the time? Score 4
Doing physically hard work most of time? Score 8

ADD each score and total is up.

The total is your daily POINTS target

My guess is based on the weight you mentioned, that your daily target is somewhere between 1500-1800, unless you are nursing.

I hope this helps a little! Don't give up, it sounds as though you are nicely motivated and are working hard.

Take care and good luck.

I'm no expert and I'm sure the ladies who have a lot more experience will come soon....but...I don't think your eating enough. It also seems like you take in a lot of sodium through the cheese, deli meat, FF dressing, and packaged diet dinners.

Here's my typical day:

Breakfast
1/4 cup steel cut oats (dry before cooking)
coffee with FF milk

Mid morning snack
1 cup FF yogurt
1 cup blueberries
1 teaspoon honey

Lunch
Large salad with tons of veggies
1/2 can tuna
1 tablespoon olive oil/1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Mid afternoon snack
apple or small sweet potato

Dinner
4 oz. lean meat (either turkey or chicken)
veggies

Evening snack:
Plain air popped popcorn
6 almonds

I drink herbal teas throughout the day and drink water too.


I am NEVER hungry and I've been losing 1-2 lbs. a week for 3 months without excercising. I just started exercising and I stalled in my wt. loss for about 2 weeks. Now I am seeing the scale move downwards again. The advice I was given on this forum has shown me that to lose weight, you have to eat! I used to eat less that 1200 calories to lose weight and I would always fail. Now I eat anywhere from 1400 to 1600 calories a day with exercise.

Our weights are pretty similar, so maybe you just need to eat more of the right things. I have cut bread out of my life completely and I eat whole grains like steel cut oats and bulgar wheat instead. I don't eat any packaged foods either and that cuts down the sodium too. I rarely eat cheese because I like yogurt better and again, there is less sodium. I think eating more whole foods has made the difference for me this time, I feel so energetic and healthy.

Sorry to ramble, but I know how frustrating this whole weight loss thing can be. Let me know how you make out okay?

I'd also say you may not be eating enough. 1200 is already hard enough as it is for me (at my height of 5'1" or 2" and current weight), in terms of getting enough nutrients and not feeling like I'm starving, so I'd assume that regardless, at 5'7", you'd anyway need more than that. When it doesn't get enough food, the body will try to preserve what it has stored (old survival reflex from when we still depended on what the hunters and gatherers would bring in the cave at the end of the day), which would explain why you're not losing anymore. And maybe the sodium is also the culprit in making you gain some water weight?

Unfortunately, I wouldn't be sure of how many calories exactly you'd need. These things are really different from one individual to the other. In the end, it's mostly a process of trial and error. But I sure hope you'll find what suits you in that regard, and that your loss will resume again.

hi, I have lots of experience with weight loss and calories
Firstly, I agree that at your weight you don't need to go as low as 1200. Your calorie counts look reasonably accurate to me - though I would question 120 for 2 pcs bread - unless it's diet bread, of course.
However, I doubt that over-restriction for a week would cause you to gain 6lbs. In order to gain one pound of fat, you have to eat an extra 3500 calories. Conversely, in order to lose 1lb, you must create a 3500 cal defecit. It is not scientifically possible, on what you have eaten, that you have gained that in actual body fat.
Therefore, you must be retaining water. Is your period due any time soon? Some people easily retain 6lb before their period, of menstrual fluids and water combined. Other culprits include sodium, as another poster has said - if I were you I would attempt to eat less processed foods, which contain a LOT of sodium. Some people also retain after eating white flour and artificial sweeteners, but triggers can be quite personal. If I eat rice or custard, I can be more or less guarranteed the scale will be up the next day.
Finally, try to keep the science in your head and not be ruled by the scale. Weighing every day might not be the best bet if it affects yoru mood a lot. I do twice weekly myself.
Take care

Hey Dawnsky,

Something is off in your list--things don't make sense in how you've listed them.

What is "8 ounces" of cheerios? A serving is 3/4 cup (1.1 ounces). Did you mean the milk was 8 ounces?

Why would you eat "4 8-ounce servings of lettuce"? That's 32 ounces of lettuce! 2 pounds? You ate 2 pounds of lettuce? I don't think so.

Anyway, I assume these are typing errors.

As other posters said, you should be eating more. You don't have much nutrition in there! You definitely need more protein than 7 slices of turkey and the chicken in a frozen dinner, plus whatever amount is in the milk products.

The idea isn't to cut calories until you lose weight. It's to eat a good balance of nutrients while omitting maybe 500 calories a day from your metabolic burn rate. Tools like FitDay and The Daily Plate can help you to estimate what your burn rate is. For example, for someone my age:

Daily calories burned: 1800 (based on age, weight, activity level, etc.)
Restriction to lose a pound a week: 500
Target calories to eat: 1300

Please re-evaluate your plan--if you eat too little, you can actually slow down your metabolism as your body tries to conserve what it has.

Jay

P.S. nanprint, you've left out the conversion from points to calories... ?? Also, if I use roughly 50 cals per point, I end up being able to eat 900 cals a day. That doesn't seem right. ??

Dawnsky -- Figuring out weight loss can make your head spin! But I think you need to take a step back and take a deep breath. Really! Don't forget to let it out, too!

You probably did not gain 6 pounds of FAT in one week. Remember that the scale measures ALL of you and not just your fat! As another poster said, water retention is a likely culprit. Check out this post for more info about why scales fluctuate: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115826


And then there's the food issue. You weigh over 200 pounds and are eating an amount of food that is more appropriate for someone who weighs a lot less! The more you weigh, the more you need energy (calories) for everything you do... Finding some more healthy options for protein especially may help, as Jay said.

Most of all, I think it will help you to just relax. Think long term, not about this past week. There are going to be fluctuations in this journey and you need to be able to handle them. Eat healthy, exercise and the weight should take care of itself!

You do not have to starve yourself on this journey. Sometimes when people start out, they take drastic measures, which is unfortunate, cause it is hard to live on such a restricted intake.

Eat a balanced diet of real foods in appropriate portions.
Move more than you have been (if you have been chasing toddlers, then that is not additional exercise for your body).

My advice is to check out the daily menus listed by folks in the 100lb club and the maintenance thread. See what 1600 or 1800 or 2000 calories of real food in a day looks like. Missingmyerica gave you a really nice example as well.

I know you can lose weight in a healthy manner!

Hold on now... Aha! Dawnsky, I think I see what you mean about the 8 ounces. You were using a liquid measuring cup? Because in liquids, 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces. But when weighing solid foods, like Cheerios or lettuce, you would use a scale to measure ounces.

Using a dry measuring cup would be better for the "dry" foods. It's the same kind of cup you use for flour, sugar, etc.

OK, so 1 cup of Cheerios weighs only 1.1 ounces, say, and 4 cups of lettuce isn't 2 pounds. Whew!

Jay

Jay Ell!!- 2lbs of lettuce is an awful lot!

Dawnsky- Don't lose heart! This whole journey seems to take so so long! There are times I've fretted over having too many calories in a day or too much junkfood, but a day or a week or a pound here or there is very little compared to the big picture of changing your whole lifestyle. A few measly pounds won't "undo" the progress you've made, nor can it take away the stuff you've learned since you started on your journey towards a healthier life.

Thank you all so much for the wonderful advice. I must keep reminding myself and getting reminders that this shouldn't and isn't a "race" but a lifestyle change. I will have to take it slow and try differant things to see the results. (((hugs)))

JayEll I just about had a heart attack right here and now when I read your post and thought maybe I had been eating lettuce, cereals and my foods by the POUND!! (LOL!!) I called my mom and told her I had ate 2 pounds of lettuce yesterday!!! (LOL!) I still believed that I really had ate 2 lbs. of lettuce and then started thinking about all of the other foods I have been pigging on. You are correct, I have been measuring by 8 fl. ounces. I honestly thought 1 cup was 8 ounces, fluid ounces. lol I added it up and decided that I should have 2 tablespoons of cereal for breakfast if the lettuce was 2 pounds! (LOL!!) Wow! That really cheered me up! That is funny! I am very s-l-o-w and totally didn't even remember of the measuring cups and how much 1 serving was of lettuce. hehe~

Thank you all so much again! Indeed I am learning alot everyday! I will just keep trying and trying until I lose it. To not lose the weight is not an option so there is only one way for my weight to go and that is down!

Thank you all so much again!

Ok, a couple of other thoughts.

You said between Dec 29 and Jan 13 you dropped 13lbs? That's 7 lbs a week and is an INSANE amount of weight to lose. It's not healthy at all. I'm not even sure it's really possible ... part of me thinks that your scale must be wrong.

However, it's entirely possible that if you drastically changed your diet, you lost a ton of water weight at first (maybe - although I still think it's highly unlikely to lose that much water weight in 2 weeks). So when you started eating again ,you gained it back.

Next you said you sometimes eat as little as 650 calories??????

Honey you are putting your body in STARVATION mode. When you deprive your body of needed energy and nutrition, it fights back by hoarding what little you give it and drastically dropping your metabolism to conserve. If you are seriously eating 600-800 calories a day, you're guaranteed to mess up your body and your metabolism badly. (Might have something to do with why your heart rate was messed up at the gym as well.)

I would suggest putting together a few meal plans that give you 350-400 calories per meal. If you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that would be 1200 calories and then maybe play with another 250-300 for snacks for a grand total of 1500 a day.

Try to fit in lots of protein and veggies and maybe add in some healthy fats like almonds, sunflower seeds, olive oil on your salad, etc.

When you start out heavier you might be able to lose 3 ish lbs a week healthily. As you lose more, you'll probably average out at 1-2 lbs a week, and some weeks not even that. (On me it tends to come off in chunks - some weeks I won't notice any loss and then suddenly I'll be down 4 lbs.)

Good luck to you!!!

Entirely possible. I've been at this since jan 07, fell off wagon in november, got back on again end of december and dropped 13lbs in two weeks. I'm guessing water weight a lot of it yes but it hasn't returned so