To think I’ll be stuck at 16 stone forever

[justmeandthedogs]

I’m in the process of losing weight and since the start of the year I’ve lost about 13lbs.

But I seem to be in a loop. I’ll hit 16 stone 0.3 on the scales and then go back up to 16 stone 4, then go back down, then back up. It’s like an annoying cycle.

I eat well:

breakfast - yoghurt with berries and sometimes a drizzle of honey. On low protein days I’ll add some skyr.

lunch - something from home. Usually soup, a salad or a bit of meat with some veg.

dinner - again something prepped. Can be another big salad, cottage pie, pasta bake.

I eat 1550 calories a day, which is a deficit for my height and weight. I go to the gym twice a week (under the direction of a PT, to lift weights), try to run 3 times a week but I’m waiting on some new running shoes, and the other two days a week I’ll walk 10k steps minimum. I try to drink 4 litres of water a day at least.

my clothes fit better but the scale just won’t change 😥 do I just accept I’m stuck here?

Sorry I meant to say that also if any of my 1300 calories are carbs that will stop me from losing!

This sounds like a prescription for bowel cancer! Not to mention heart problems. My goodness. Eat some veggies!!! Aim for 30 plant points a week.

This honestly scares me that people could advise eating like this. Your gut must be a mess.

Another snarky message because I can’t be weighing my food, right? I’m a liar!

This thread sums up the mixed messages.
Some telling her to change to skimmed milk. Some saying great whole milk natural full fat is better. Some saying cut the milk completely.
But then someone will say she’s not had enough calcium or protein….
If Op likes whole milk and it fits in calories drinking 75 cals of milk isn’t stalling her weight loss.
Nutracheck is much better more accurate than my fitness pal.

OP, I believe you are eating what you say you are. Sadly I think you either have to eat less or do more exercise 😟 Those TDEE calculators are worked out for the "average person", so your TDEE could be lower than what it says, up to 20% lower (I found an academic study which looked at this). As someone else mentioned, you can go to a lab to get it actually tested. It really is as simple as you're eating too many calories for your energy expenditure.

I would also ignore any "calories" you burn from exercise. There's no way of really knowing how much you truly burn, and as you get fitter, you then start burning less anyway 🥲🥲. At 14 stone, 5ft 8, and in my thirties, I only started to lose weight at 1500 calories a day, a minimum of 10k steps a day, and either an hour's Hyrox/weightlifting or spin class every day as well. This was weighing all food and tracking on Nutracheck, only drinking water.

This thread is crazy. And of no help to the op.

op, people are agreeing with you, you’re in a defecit but turning into 16 stone of pure muscle. Keep going. You are achieving super human results.

Ultimately on the basis you are correctly measuring and it’s been more than 4 weeks, either you have to cut calories or increase exercise and movement. I would personally try and first switch some of the carbs for more protein as protein has a TEF of 40% (your body uses up 40% of it in processing).

Is what you are doing working? Is it? No. So you need to make changes, not just whinge at every suggestion.

Your portions must be tiny to get three meals as described into 1550 every day.

But if your clothes fit better then you are changing your body, so something is working....

If I need to lose weight I up my target to 15k a day. My April goal is 15k every day and my weight is coming off, it's also how I lost my difficult last couple of kg of pregnancy weight. Some of that is running, if not running I go for walks to get to the target.
For me 10k steps a day is ok for maintaining but not for losing weight.

Have you tried intermittent fasting? Might be better than just calorie monitoring.

Never ask a diet-related question on Mumsnet!

This has happened to me loads of times when I've been on a weight loss regimen, and I usually get a big drop after a few weeks of plateau, so if you're doing everything right, I wouldn't worry about it.

@justmeandthedogs I have only read your posts rather than everyone's responses. Do you know what you waist measurement is? Your waist should measure half your height or less and this is a better indicator of good health outcomes than BMI (so weight). You say your clothes fit better which suggests that you are losing inches. Checking in on your waist measurement rather than weight might help you to see progress and feel better about it.

Yes of course if you don't eat you will die. That still doesn't mean that calories in calories out is useful weight loss advice because it implies that exercising burns fat. But you don't burn fat stores when you exercise (unless maybe you are an elite athlete). So in terms of weight loss, it is nonsense.

I agree 100%

I can't think of anything more boring and unhealthy than measuring/ weighing everything you eat.

It must become obsessive.

Ironically, the best way to lose weight is to become totally disinterested in food and just eat the basics ^^ as above in small to medium amounts.

A chicken breast, a salmon fillet, sea bass fillet, 3 egg omelette, a lamb chop, small portion of spag bol with a tiny portion of wholewheat pasta, a stir fry, etc.

Fill your plate with green veg, salads, eat apples, berries, frozen berries, a few nuts, mixed seeds and some full fat yogurt.

No need to weigh anything.

Keep busy, avoid snacks and artificial sweeteners.

You burn calories when you exercise, aka energy. It comes from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to, body fat, which has been converted to fatty acids via lipolysis for the purpose of being used as energy.

If you have glucose stored in your muscles from eating carbs or sugar, you will burn that first, but if your overall energy intake is lower than your energy expenditure, including what you expend via exercise, you will lose weight.

It's basic physics, people. We don't need to complicate it any more than that unless we are athletes, which OP is not.

You have about 3000 calories stored as glycogen in your liver and muscle that you would burn through before you get to the fat. Most of us will not expend that much energy in the gym so you don't get to your fat stores. That's why exercise is not that useful for weight loss. So it's not as simple as calories in vs calories out. I thought this was widely understood by now but clearly not!

Damned if you do damned if you don’t

It's not rocket science. If you aren't losing weight then your energy intake isn't lower than your energy consumption. As your clothes are fitting better and your fitness is improving, you're gaining muscle, which is metabolically more active than adipose tissue, so good. I'd avoid ditching the strength training, because that is what will be responsible for your gains in muscle mass.

Sustainable weight loss requires a change in lifestyle and from that perspective, slower is better. You're not so much trying to lose weight as establish the lifestyle (exercise and eating habits) of a person who maintains a healthy weight with little or no effort.

I would try not to worry about the scales. Trust your nutrition app unless you have good reason not to and concentrate on your fitness and on finding an enjoyable routine that fits with your work and social commitments.

Eventually -months or even years, depending on how long you've been overweight - you should get better at regulating your food intake by appetite provided you avoid refined carbohydrates, particularly in highh-fat foods AND follow an active lifestyle.

Honestly, keep going. I'm lucky that I've never needed to lose weight. When I use weights to make an exercise I'm doing harder I'm always struck my how much harder even an extra couple of kilos makes it - you're working so much harder to run than I am and it feels hard enough to me at my healthy weight. You're doing all the right things, you've got medical and physical supervision, your hard work will pay off.

OP, you must be either lazy or greedy or just simply not intelligent enough to figure out how to do this weight loss malarkey - right? Or you're just in denial about what you're eating and you're so consumed by this denial that you've missed something when calculating your intake. BOLLOCKS!

Infuriating isn't it OP when the "just do this, just do that" brigade simply will not accept that they might be wrong. If only it really was as simple as the calories in/calories out bullshit that we've been fed (pun intended) for decades. My diet is very similar to yours and I also struggle. I know, from using a calorie logging app, that if I go a calorie over 1800 per day I will gain and as for losing, pfft, a distant memory. I am neither lazy nor greedy nor thick nor in denial but what I definitely, definitely am is of an age at which it is well known that weight loss can be incredibly difficult. Add in lifelong hormonal issues and I have the perfect storm. I know exactly how to lose weight, I've done it before, 5st in a year but that was almost a decade ago. I eat less now than I did then but nothing is shifting.

Ultimately OP, what you're doing sounds like a pretty health eating regime so I hope that you do start to see results again soon BUT some of the latest research suggests that people react differently to foods, ie. some people can eat a load of grapes and have little to no insulin response whereas others will see a huge spike. It is this insulin response that acts as the primary driver for storing excess calories as fat while inhibiting fat breakdown so perhaps try switching things up. I know what you're saying about carbs not being seen as bad and you're right, in and of themselves they're not and they are a necessary part of our diet, however, you may respond to different forms of them in a whole other way than most people so maybe try different ones, eg. I steer clear of rice and pasta but I do have potatoes once or twice a week as they don't seem to have the same adverse effect on my blood sugars. I'm no expert but I think trial and error might be the way to go. Sadly, I think this will probably mean you have quite a long and winding road ahead of you.

Best of luck (and ignore the smart arses!) 😘

It’s completely normal to plateau.
Changing your diet can help switch things up a notch, so not eating less, just different . Hormones, peri / meno can impact metabolism too so be aware of that

Came here to say that. It's diseased adipose tissue not fat cells and the ONLY way to get rid of it is with surgery. NOT calories in calories out etc.

https://lipoedema.co.uk/about-lipoedema/symptoms/

That sounds way too high, do you have a source? I've always read it's closer to 1800-2000, which the body likes to keep hold of, so if you start burning it off while running, the body will start burning other fuel sources to replace it.

What it burns depends on the intensity of the activity. Steady cardio is more likely to burn fat, as it is a more stable source of energy, hence why we store it in the first pace. Higher intensity exercise such as running will burn more muscle as it's a faster source of fuel.

Yes, calories in/calories out is a very simple way to look at a very complicated process but unless we are athletes it is all we need. Once OP starts running Ultra Marathons then she will need to start considering where she is getting her calories and when and how she should be eating them. Until then CICO will work just fine.

I think @LillyoftheValleys might be on to something there. It's do able long term.

SW, what can I say? It was the sheer stupidity of it that I couldn't handle.

Not everyone would advise calorie counting, so your comment isn't right. Prof Tim Spector has a book out on diet and it's all about NOT counting calories. He's an epidemiologist.

This way of eating works well for me, I'm middle aged and the same weight as I was in my 20s (just under 8 st.) I was once fatter in my early teens so know how that feels and have found what works for me. I have to be ruthless with what I eat as I put on weight very easily.

All anyone here is doing is to try to offer you some ideas.

You're losing a pound-ish a week. That's good. slow and steady is better than yo-yoing.

Not sure of your age, hormonal status, job, daily exercise etc, but although it's normal to plateau increasing by 4 lbs means you have hit a set point.
Look up set point and see what the good old web says.