Why oh why am I not losing weight ?? I should be a size zero by now 🙄 😒 😭

[TheThreeCheesesOfTheApocalypse44]

Fair enough it's only been a month in which time I've lost around 4ib.

I work a very physical job, according to my fitbit I walked 20000 steps today and spent 6 hours in a higher heart rate zone burning around 5000 calories.......this was actually a shorter day. I usually do between 8 and 10 hours.

Typical food day is 2 weetabix for breakfast. Or bowl of porridge. Sometimes have eggs.

Lunch is either homemade soup, usually vegetable and some sort of lentil or bean. Or a ham/chicken salad filled pitta bread. And a banana

Dinner I've been upping the veg and just having lower fat meats, less cheese and pasta etc. Tonight we had jambalaya, last night was chicken, New potatoes and veg. Normal stuff. Tomorrow we're having fritata and veg.

Don't really eat loads of fruit, have a handful of berries in my porridge sometimes or an apple. And have a low calorie (( under 100 cals )) most nights. Usually snack a Jack's or something.

Have around 4 mugs of tea a day with a splash of milk and half a teaspoon of sugar. Don't drink sugary drinks, mainly boiling water other than tea.

I know it's a story as old as time and asked on here a million times a week but where the hell am I going wrong ??

Portion size probably.
Use a small plate and bowl.

What on earth sort of job are you doing?
Olympic swimmers burn about 5000 calories a day (and have to eat accordingly).
Are you sure you've entered your work out zones correctly?

But a pound a week is sustainable and healthy. It is more likely to stay off once it's lost.

You are not burning 5000 calories a day, running a marathon is only approx 2600 your way off with calculations. I do 2 hours in the gym some days and burn approximately 600-700 cals.

Look at portion sizes. I am losing weight and lost 1 stone and 1lb over 9 weeks. I was hoping for more but will take that. I am looking at this weight loss journey as a life style change. I went into diets before and got to my target by following plans to the letter or cutting out food. Or not going out for dinner or alcohol.

i realised it wasn’t sustainable as when I introduced my lifestyles back again or went out for dinner. Therefore I am now following slimming world but not denying myself my treats or dinners out. Took me 40 years to realise if I want to eat out or drink someone I need to watch my calories throughout the week and reduce the calories

I was eating lots of fruit in place of chocolate. That was my issue as the sugar count was still high.

Cut the sugar out of your tea.

Cut the carbs out of your breakfast.

Honestly, when you have serious weight to lose I've always found that to kick start it you really need to limit what you eat for a few weeks.

I'm now 3 stone down post partum and have found intermittent fasting is the best thing for a consistent 2lb a week loss that stays off. Currently my day looks like-

Black tea in the morning
2l of water before lunch
Greek yoghurt and fruit for lunch
Banana and cereal bar for a snack
Normal balanced dinner early evening

Sorry but (a detail) the Fitbit is highly unreliable as a step counter. I cooked in the kitchen chopping etc for two hours and I was 4000 steps higher than my very reliable phone app. I now have bought a step counter that I can put in a pocket (a pain, but at least no arm movement…) and it’s exactly like my app.

btw, better than the calorie counter everyone mentions is MyNetDiary app (it’s free)

Maybe you aren't actually eating enough OP, that's a massive amount of calories that you are burning each day from just going about your business.

I highly recommend Team RH, they will work out your TDEE calories and set your daily macros. Have a look at their Facebook / website

If you are wanting to look at calories etc then you really do need to weigh your food as it is very easy to eat more than you think you are .

I used to do this and steadily lost weight. However, I’ve recently been looking into what someone said upthread about research showing calories not being as straight forward as that now and it’s more about the types of food you’re eating. I focus on lower carbs (avoid carbs for breakfast and lunch and have normal dinner) and full fat higher protein. I’m still losing weight but not calorie counting and it’s a lot more enjoyable!
Also, the exercise probably won’t really have an impact of your weight loss but obviously good for your health to do it. Food is way more important for losing weight.

This thread is hilarious for it's bad advice. A teaspoon of sugar is about 16 calories, so 4 sugary teas is about 100 calories tops, so barely worth mentioning.

Either you've forgotten to mention some of what you've eaten, which would make you a candidate for 'Secret Eaters' an old Channel 4 programme that's still available on youtube I believe, where people would insist that they ate the sort of food you describe but when the 'secret' cameras followed them around it showed them 'forgetting' that they'd been in Greggs every time they walked past in their job as a high street traffic warden etc. Or your your dinner portions are massive (after all 2 weetabix is 2 weetabix).

Or it could be that, weight loss not being linear, you need to give it a bit more time, plus maybe drink more water. But definitely weigh and measure everything that you consume and accurately count the calories (be careful if you use My Fitness Pal, because data is user entered and not always accurate). Also measure yourself or keep trying on clothes that you can't currently get into to see if this shows any decrease in size.

But one thing I do remember from Slimming World is that people with several stone to lose who've made the sort of diet change you have would reliably lose at least half a stone in the first week and around a stone in the first month, so something's off from your situation I'd say.

I think you are being overly dismissive of other people’s advice actually.
The advice re sugar for women NOT trying to lose weight is six teaspoons a day. So if she’s having four just in her teas that is worth flagging.

Are you drinking enough water or flavoured water? You need to drink plenty when trying to lose weight.

Rather than track your calories, track your macros. There's loads of calculators online to work out the ratios you should be having for weight loss/ building muscle (which burns fat quicker). Working out your BMR( basal metabolic rate) and then adding your exercise etc. it helped me working out the science of how your body works and gave me a better understanding of weight loss/ fat storing and motivated me more. My metabolism slowed right down once I got closer to forty and I was able to give it a kick up the bum!

@Bjorkdidit interesting how you dismiss 100 calories as not worth mentioning but then reference Secret Eaters- where the whole point is about hidden calories such as the "not worth mentioning" 100 cals.

I think Slimming world is hilarious for its advice but different things work for different people I guess!

I completely agree - when I've lost weight I've felt hungry and can almost feel my body eating itself! Quite a motivating feeling once you're used to it

As others have said there's just no way you're burning 5k calories, that's Tour de France cyclist territory. What does the tracker on your phone say? Mine would probably say about 800 cals burned.

But really you're losing well, a pound a week is steady and sustainable.

You can’t out exercise a bad diet and the fitness trackers really over estimate calories burned, so I wouldn’t rely on that

I would agree with this as well, I have only ever managed to lose significant weight by being hungry almost all the time. It's shit, but you get used to it eventually and it is motivating when you're really determined. I find I have to be in the right place to do it though, so mentally stable, feeling well, getting enough sleep, not too stressed etc. I find doing a lot of walking the best exercise for weight loss, but that's difficult to almost impossible to fit into a working mum's day.

I am overweight and find hunger very painful. It makes me feel almost crazy, like a panic that I need to eat. Clearly I don't, I have about five stone spare to live off, but in that moment I'm desperate.

The only exception was when I did Atkins in the early 2000s. I wasn't hungry, but I felt sick and headachey all the time and my breath stank (side effect of ketosis).

OP do you want to lose weight sustainably by making changes to your lifestyle which will result in you developing a better relationship with food and leading to being healthier and happier?

If that's the case, ignore all this nonsense about a bit of sugar in your tea and weighing every single thing you put in your mouth. That is the first step towards an eating disorder.

Weight loss takes time. If you steadily lose 4lb a month for a year that's basically 50lb = nearly 3.5 stone. Keep doing what you're doing and in less than 2 years you'll be at your target weight. Or, keep restricting more and more, which will inevitably lead to bingeing, then lead to yo-yoing and you feeling more and more frustrated.

You need to make changes that you can maintain for the rest of your life. And if you want to spend the rest of your life in a whirl of anxiety because you had an extra slice of ham or a bit of sugar in your tea then be my guest.

I have sat at many dinner parties with people loudly (and breathily) extolling the virtues of Keto as they pompously pass the bread basket along and and always tempted to say you don’t need to tell me you do Keto: you only had to breeeeeathe in my direction.

Sometimes mid meal I’m tempted to shove a bread roll in their mouth in the hope of flicking them out of their stinking Ketosis until I can escape .

Regardless of whether OP is burning that many calories or not, she's still doing a lot of exercise and in my opinion, not over eating.

Maybe the issue is she's not eating enough - you have to fuel the fire and all that.

I do 20/22k steps a day ony wprk days, on my feet and walking a lot and my fit bit says i burn around 2300/2500 kcal and i think this is overestimate already so maybe yours is faulty?

I lost about 1)2 a stone on a 3 week holiday where we were walking about 25k steps a day but were eating Japanese style. Small portions, mostly fish, soup and rice, bit of fruit, and no crap at all.