WHY am I not losing weight?

[slatternlymother]

My diet is really good; protein shake with handful of oats for breakfast, salad for lunch, grilled chicken and veg for dinner, snacking only on fruit.

I'm working out 5 days a week currently to maximum effort; either a 3 mile run or an hour in the gym doing 30-40 minutes of intensive cardio followed by floor routine and weights.

I have not lost an ounce. Some mornings I've even put on a pound or two!

What am I doing wrong? I want to lose 3-5kg and although I'm toning up and my waist is a healthy 32 inches, my weight is not moving. And it's massively frustrating.

Muscle weighs more than fat.

Muscle weighs more than fat. how long have you been keeping up this regime? Because I think it's fairly usual to plateau in any diet and exercise routine, the trend is that you use loads at first and then it tapers off til you pretty much just maintain your weight? Body shape has always been more important to me that what the scales say....how do you feel?

Sorry, 2 yr old 'helping'

I am feeling good; I have been doing this for several weeks, but I've upped the gym recently in an attempt to boost weight loss.

It's just irritating!

Go by how you feel + look are your clothes looser?

If you are feelbg better concentrate on that+ stop weighing yourself every day, once a week will give you a more accurate reading.

You sound like you are amazingly healthy which is fab, ignore the numbers!

Try to avoid fruit for a couple of days. Snacking on fruit (how much and which fruit? bananas and raisins are very high on sugar) is very healthy, but could sabotage your diet. When you feel hungry, have a 0% yoghurt or an hard egg (only the white).

I snack on berries and apples mainly; no more than one portion of each as I only get hungry in the afternoons when I'm twiddling my thumbs a bit! I hate bananas and raisins oddly! I don't eat dried fruit either.

DH says he thinks the intensive cardio is to blame and to cool it a bit because my body is just grabbing all the calories?

I would stop weighing and go for inch loss. Scales are so frustrating . You are eating healthily and getting fitter look what in the mirror and how your clothes feel. Ditch the scales !!!

Muscle does not weigh more than fat, why does that get repeated so often on here? Muscle is denser than fat, but a kilo of it weighs the same as a kilo of fat. It is also very, very difficult to gain muscle while restricting calorie intake and impossible without intensive weight training.

What you are doing sounds great..except for weighing yourself every day. Take a load of measurements, maybe even a photo of yourself in underwear, today, then focus on how great you are feeling. Weigh yourself no more than once a week and compare measurements and photos once a month.

Try tracking your calorie intake and exercise on my fitness pal or similar to check you are getting the right level of calories, too few are not good! Tweak your diet if necessary, maybe more veg, less fruit, more protein possibly and almost certainly more good fat - some nuts, avocados, oily fish, olive oil.

Change the exercise plan a bit too. Extended cardio can actually make your body hang on to reserves because it creates stress hormones. It can also burn muscle when what you want to do is to burn fat and build muscle which makes you look slimmer and increases your metabolism. So do more weight training with weights that really challenge you and introduce interval training for cardio, this should leave you absolutely exhausted after 12, max 20 minutes but will blast fat and keep your metabolism raised for a longer period afterwards than steady state cardio. Enjoy it!

Read Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It

Then eat a cheeseburger (no bun). Melt butter over some green beans. Or whatever you like that has no sugar in it. Fruit is full of sugar. Oats are carby. Etc. Exercise for fun and pleasure, but not weight loss.

My DP lost 11 inches from his waist low carbing (mainly cheeseburgers tbh) and he is paralysed from the neck down. Exercise is not the answer. Insulin makes you fat. Lower your insulin to solve the problem.

Oh and You might find this picture helpful. Scales are not really useful.

sleep, I stand corrected. Op thought greatist.com/fitness/does-muscle-weigh-more-than-fat/ this was interesting...