I think you can bump it up to 1700 - 1900 for your weight and still manage to lose a lb a week or keep losing actually. It's possible that you were too low and that worked in the beginning as a shock for your body, but eventually it's going to think you're starving it and hold on to the weight as long as it can.

Just a warning - tweaking calories might result in 0.5 - 1 lb gain in the first few days, then it goes down and keeps going down. If you continue to see a gain for more than 3-4 days, then decrease your range by 100. I don't go by lbs per week, I just go by the overall trend. I found the lbs/week thing confusing and difficult to get an exact number for. The method I'm following now is better, IMO. :)

Your exercise could also be the cause of the gain. If it was intense and very frequent that can put your muscles in "repair" mode for longer (water retention to help fix the muscles). Are you extemely sore after working out and for days after? That could be your body's way of telling you to slow down with the exercise.

Sigh, this weight loss thing is just confounding cause there's so many diff reasons. Exercise/calories/TOM everything. :dizzy: Hope it resolves itself! :hug:

wow awesome! well done you!! thats brilliant!! superstar you! :bravo:

Sunni has given great advice!!

i will just add my two pennies worth. like Sunni said, it could be your muscles repairing itself. i heard jillian talk about electroylyte imbalance when you workout hard. and she said in the past she would give the contestants electrolyte fluid replacement thingamigs. but last season she wasnt allowed to do that. so thats why we saw alot of gains in the weigh ins, even though they kept their calories constant and low and exercised hard.

keep working out, but making sure you rest once or twice a week.

jillian also says like Sunni rightly said, to increase or decrease calorie slowly. like 100 calories per week.

my question is. are you feeling hungry?

try eating slowly but eating when you're hungry and see if that helps. that helps me. everytime you are hungry. eat something, but eat it slowly and stop when you're no longer hungry and just satisfied. if you get hungry again a few hours later eat again. see if that helps

ps i over ate yesterday as it was a special family dinner. and i gained a pound over night!! haha luckily my weigh in was yesterday and not today!

so yah its normal to fluctuate up and down. dont panic. it will come down soon enough. your body is just recalibrating and getting used to the new low weight you will see a loss soon enough. just keep eating healthy and within your calorie intake and exercising. you might not see the changes on the scale, but the changes are happening in your body!

Thanks!! I feel like a weight has been lifted off me. The paper was done 4 months ago, but it got rejected (twice, :() so I had to add everything else and make it a really long, but with a stronger point, paper. It's all that meshing together that got me. It doesn't matter if it gets rejected again, because I can resubmit without doing much. This is the worst part, writing it all up and getting it to a point where it can be submitted. :)

Seems counter-intuitive huh? When I first started the whole weight loss for-reals-this-time stage a couple of years ago, I thought I was going to have to starve to get myself down to size. I just recently tried calorie counting and found that I'm eating a good amount that satisfies me and I'm still managing to lose weight, so I'm happy. Another trick is to input your stats but put your goal weight. Most calculators have a "for maintenance" number and you can use that as your lowest limit. Mine's 1600-something, so I know I'm not going to dip much below that and my final range will be 15-1700. :)

herbal tea
coffee with creamer
gluten free snack bar

water, water, water

1 cup low fat cottage cheese with 1tsp cinnamon and sugar
1/2 cup greens beans

a plateful of carrot and celery sticks
2 tbsp reduced fat ranch
banana
herbal iced tea

I am way under my calories for the day but I am still not feeling well and I just don't really want to eat. I am nauseous and the herbal tea is helping. Made it to work today and walked a bit on my break.

Hydra - sorry to hear you're not feeling well. Nausea doesn't sound good. Feel better! :hug:

awww sorry Hydra :hug: hope you feel better soon. yep if you're not hungry then no point in forcing yourself to eat.

that;s awesome!!! :bravo: sounds like you're on the right path!

1600-1900 sounds like a good range to me. especially now that you've added exercise!

Excellent! I'm glad you're seeing a decrease so soon. That's a good sign. My weight also went down by 0.2 lbs here and 0.3 lbs there initially. Since then, it's been really gradual. I looked at my weight chart yesterday without the weight goal part so just how much I've changed since I started and it looks like a flat line pretty much just a leeeetttle bit downward-facing. I feel like I've lost a lot more, but you know what it's good to lose it slowly. I think Echo said that if you lose it slowly, it will stay off longer? If she didn't say it, I read it somewhere on this forum. I really think that's true. Anyway, ramble aside - YAY! :)

Just got up 20 minutes ago. I'm addicted to this forum. I feel SO good about today. Yesterday, I finished one paper, today's goal is to finish the second one and send it to my prof for editing/review. I have a good feeling about today just based on yesterday's lack of procrastination. Woohoo! :D

I lost out on my usual treadmill exercise all last week because of the reappearance of an old knee injury. I started out with the best of intentions to still do my free weights, but with family here and Rosh Hashanah over the weekend, I bailed. Still did well with eating, tweaking my holiday menus to make everything pretty healthy. I sent all the leftover desserts (except for the fruit salad!) to my husband's office yesterday to get them out of the house. I got the doc's OK to begin exercising again, so was able to do 1/2 an hour on the treadmill this morning. Knee isn't complaining, so far so good!

Yesterday:
Breakfast--1 cup plain nonfat yogurt sweetened with Stevia, 1 cup raspberries, coffee, water
Lunch--Homemade chicken soup with chicken and veggies, 1/2 matzoh ball, water
Snack--1 cup raw veggies, 2 Tbs. hummus
Dinner--1 Veggie Masala burger, 1 Joseph's pita, grilled eggplant and zucchini, big salad with chevre and walnuts, 1 piece gefilte fish, 2 figs, water

Exercise--20 minutes free weights

Teach - happy new year!! :)

Where is everybody? *drums fingers on keyboard* Well, I guess I'll confess anyway...

Breffix - 1 cup skim milk + 1 tbsp cocoa powder, instant oatmeal (290)

Snack - Banana (100)

Lunch - Healthy Choice Chicken and veggies with roasted tomato basil sauce (290)

Frozen pizza (500 cals) I was SOOO hungry after my walk that I was dying to eat something.

Snack - 2 cups grapes (200), 5 olives (25)

Dinner - Chicken biryani (1 cup rice + 1 chicken leg) (400)

Total for today: 1805 My fitday comes out to 1840 so I'm missing some cals somewhere, but in any case, I went over by 40 cals.

Exercise: Thought it would be a good idea to walk to the grocery store and back (it wasn't). It was hot and humid outside and I was pretty much a puddle by the time I got to the store. I carried my pedometer and it took me 1.5 hours for the whole trip including time at the store (and I made sure to enjoy the AC!). Total distance: 4.75 miles. When I entered my development, I was ready to fall on the road and wait for someone to drag me to my apt...and feed me. :p Felt good, but I was exhausted so I took a nap, which means I have to stay up and finish what I wanted to finish earlier today.

I'm kinda sorta kicking myself over having that pizza. I should've eaten my grapes and waited to feel hungry again, but oh well, can't do anything about it now. Tomorrow's another day. :)

teeheee yep that was me! i read it from countless resources.
awesome on the paper writing! you rock!!

i got a meeting with my supervisor on thursday. im so dreading it!! as they end up leaving me with absolutely no confidence. instead of feeling positive, i always end up feeling pessimistic and negative. but they apparently want to see me, to offer advice. ha! more like scare me senseless. im soo dreading it, id rather have my viva then meet my sups!! hahaha. gonna try and meet a friend for coffee afterwards. but gonna go for the skinny version! hehe well i hope i do ! lol