Surely I cant build muscle with this type of exercise?

[whydoesitalwaysrainonme82]

For the last 6 weeks I've been doing 4X 7min workouts with Lucy Wyndam Reed on YouTube. Think Star jumps, jogging, lots of stand up crunches etc AND I've walked everyday. I'm reaching about 15,000 steps a day, I would say I use to do about 8,000 a day. My clothes fit better, I can just do up a pair of shorts that I couldnt do you before...and I've weighed and im now 11st 8, was 11st 5 to start. Surely I should be losing weight with exercise like this??

It honestly the amount of calories what you eat. You still might be eating too much to have a calorie deficit even with the exercise

Yes, I agree with Carlottacoffee. You are clearly getting more toned from the exercise but may need to address your diet too. I've been overweight for years, despite doing a lot of exercise - I'd convinced myself I was "fit and fat" and that was just the way things are. But I have really tackled my diet this year and lost 2 stone so far. As I've had some health issues I've been unable to exercise as much as normal, and in fact now my activity has gone up, my weight loss has slowed a bit, but inch loss has improved. Its all about balance really. Don't focus on the scales entirely.

If you look at Team RH on facebook they talk very sensibly about all of this type of stuff. If on top of all that you are counting calories and sticking to them, then possibly there is some inflammation in the muscles where youve suddenly upped the exercise. However if you arent watching the food, then Id suggest maybe you are eating back some of the calories youve burned, and a bit extra. I find when I walk a lot I can lose weight, but if I run I get a lot more hungry so end up eating more and I never lose weight when I run!

I'm eating about the same as before, sensibly but not denying myself anything. But I assumed that If I plateaued at 11st 5 and now I'm burning that many more calories but my diet hasn't changed then I should lose weight?

If you genuinely are eating about the right amount of calories for a sedentary lifestyle and have now increased exercise to be lightly active, you should lose weight over time, yes, but depending on how many calories you eat a day, how much you exercise and your age/weight/height it might be quite a slow rate of loss. It's easy to overestimate how many calories are burnt through exercise, for me the difference between sedentary and lightly active is only a few hundred calories extra a day, not enough even to account for a daily small chocolate bar really, so it can feel 'not worth it' although it definitely is in terms of other health benefits. I think the 'be active and you can whatever eat what you want' mantra just isn't true, I mean maybe it is for lean young things in their 20s who maybe don't have that big an appetite anyway, but certainly not once you get past a certain age!

I wouldn't worry about your 3lb 'gain', that could easily be accounted for by water retention, time of the month, constipation etc. our weight does naturally fluctuate by a couple of lbs over the course of a day so it may well be that depending on when you weighed your body was just still digesting its last meal or had a bit of extra water slooshing around, it;s unlikely its 3lbs of extra fat anyway - although you say it's unlikely it's 3lbs of muscle either unfortunately

I would carry on as you have been doing, maybe weigh once a week (try and stick to same time of day roughly e.g. first thing in the morning) and so long as the trend is stable/slowly downwards you know you are doing fine - but if you want quicker weight loss you may need to make some dietary adjustments as well...

Just to illustrate the slow rate of loss example, if you are burning say 250 cals a day extra through exercise, and not eating back any of that, you have created a deficit of 1750 cals p/week. In general (although different metabolic rates affect this) it's said you need a deficit of 3000 cals p/week to lose 1lb. So you should probably lose 2lbs a month on your plan - but only if you really do strictly stick to your pre-exercise TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and don't go over with any 'treats' - I could super easily eat 1000 cals extra on a night out or similar - a handful of crisps, a restaurant pudding or bowl of ice cream plus a bottle of wine would do it - so it's not hard if you say went out for a meal with friends on a Friday and to a family party on a Sunday to have blown your week's calorie deficit without even really feeling like you've overindulged, and that's still fine so long as you aren't trying to lose weight quickly. But when you think of it like that its easy to see why some weeks you might stay the same or even gain a little whilst still on a downward trajectory, it's important to treat it as an overall lifestyle change rather than only caring about what the scales say...