I'm not losing weight and according to Reddit it isn't body recomposition

[Onlyrainbows]

I have an average calorie deficit of 500cals (that includes cheat days), workout regularly and in the past month I think I've lost 100g (if that). I know I look fit/toned and I'm losing inches here and there, but considering I don't lift it's not like I'm gaining muscle. I don't think I can reduce my calorie intake much more , I already feel fairly tired due to my iron deficiency. Shall I just do full cardio for that hour and try to see how that goes?

The doctors I've spoken to have been very much yeah yeah whatever about the weightloss. They have mentioned though that my exercise is what keeps my body working as best as it can and it shows in all the different tests I had done.

The hummus thing for example.. I know a tub has 500cals but I eat it over a week. It's more or less the same with the Skyr. I don't go and buy more if I've eaten my weekly allowance, that's it, I've eaten it and just wait until I do the weekly shop.

The mystery to solve is - when I wasn't so careful about my diet I lost 3kg, but now that I definitely am, haven't lost any!

Over the last month I've lost inches, so why doesn't it show on the scales?

I think you're on the cusp of failure here too - largely because your diet is so restricted and boring on the non cheat days. Eat more veg, especially leafy green veg and try to include with every meal. You're assuming the calorie content of the steak and chicken you're eating. To be sure you're in a calorie deficit you need to weigh and measure everything you consume accurately. It's not hard and becomes routine. If the calories on your diet days aren't accurate then they're not going to be accurate on your cheat days.

I've eaten this for ages! So I won't get bored. I don't like pasta and I can live with or without bread / sweet treats and crisps. And I'm following the same calorie counting system that made me lose 30kg the only real difference is the running, so I do think that at least in my case, exercise plays a major role. Even last year I lost 10kg with exactly the same system (but I was running).

It doesn't show on the scales because you've managed to lose fat and build muscle as suggested on Reddit? When you lost 3kg where were you in your menstrual cycle? How much water had you drunk that week or even day? Maybe you are retaining fluid? Are your scales accurate?

If you have a healthy BMI and no health issues which being overweight can be a contributory factor for then your doctor won't advise you to lose weight.

Without accurately counting your calories you can't identify why your weight loss efforts aren't working. That's the top and bottom of it.

I think I just simply need to come to terms with the fact that a) I do rock a decent body (just not a runner's body) b) I'll get "tighter" over the months and it's just a matter to sticking to it c) accept that until they don't sort out my infusions I might as well enjoy life a tiny bit more (ie mid week drink / ice cream).

It's something I need to learn to live with as there's no cure for it! I'm a size 8/10 and I would rather be a size 6/8 but I think it's unrealistic to achieve that for now.

No, Reddit said the opposite, that given the workouts that I tend to do, they didn't expect that I would have developed any muscle. They did expect it should show on the scales so called it a plateau instead.

I weight myself daily, so I know more or less the relation between my cycle and weight. About 5 days before I'll weight 1-2kg.more, it will gradually go away and I'm back to normal on day 3-4. Bloat /constipation is a lot harder to calculate but I think when it gets really bad it's about 2kg.

Like today it's absolutely awful (the pressure is horrendous) and I woke up at 66.7kg. My best guesstimate is that once that goes away, I'll.be 66kg.

Stop measuring your success by what the scale is. Stop judging your health and body composition by BMI.

You've lost inches, your looking toned and fit, and once your iron levels are sorted out I'm sure you'll be feeling much more energised and positive.

When your anaemic you can burn a lot less calories than normal In general, your systems are sluggish and your general activity level is reduced even if you are continuing to exercise (and your exercise performance will also be effected).

As much as muscle does weigh more than fat, the more muscle mass you have the more calories your body burns (including at rest). So if your muscles mass has reduced you may be overestimating how many calories you need.

It sounds like there is a lot of room for error in your measuring and recording of calories in and out, however I really think that this plateau will resolve itself once your anaemia is resolved.

Some people lose weight when their anemic due to a reduced appetite, however I've always gained weight when anaemic because I'm usually a busy on the go person and burn a lot of calories by accident/ through incidental exercise. Eg. At home I Clean, do DIY, dance around, play actively with my kids, always take the stairs not the lift, walk a lot, and I also work a semi manual job. When I was severely anaemic I couldn't be bothered to do half of that because I felt so rubbish and had no energy. I can walk 8+ miles a day and not think anything of it, because I'm busy running errands and I walk for pleasure as well, but when I was anaemic I couldn't walk 8 metres without getting puffed out, and all those 'extra' ways I burn calories disappeared.

Anaemia is known for effecting weight, and this effect can be positive or negative. But if your anaemic and suffering from a plateau, I would always start there.

Do you take any vitamins or supplements also? Because you may find you are not getting enough of lots of other vitamins and nutrients as well. For me what works is supplementing vitamin D3, k2, magnesium, Sometimes c and zinc if I'm suffering from poor wound healing or general malaise. And I spatone the week of my period which has helped protect my iron reserves although my iron can sometimes dip even then as I have very heavy periods, even with tranexamic acid. Do you know if there is an underlying cause for your anaemia? It looks like you may not be eating enough iron rich foods, so that's worth looking into even if it won't make a marked effect it will get you into good habits and hopefully prevent your anaemia getting so bad again

Estimates of calories burned are normally WAY over the top. If you believe them, I reckon that's where you're going wrong.

Rolling my eyes here - you've an answer for everything apart from why you're not losing weight! I can tell you that you will lose weight in a calorie deficit. Ergo you are not in deficit. Don't weight yourself every day. The water levels in our bodies fluctuate all the time. To see a downward trend, weigh once a week at the same day and time. You sound obsessive the more you post and that isn't healthy. Any weight bearing exercise can build muscle over time so you don't need to lift actual weights.

You don't need to be a size 6/8. Concentrate on being healthy rather a specific dress size (which varies wherever you buy from anyway!).

I would stop daily weighing as well, we all have natural fluctuations in weight and it can become a very negative habit, where you wake up feeling slim and toned, but the scale says your heavy and When you do the BMI calculation it says your overweight, and you stop trusting your own eyes and other senses, and when you look in the mirror you don't see yourself in the same way as you would if you looked exactly the same but the scale said as different number. IMO it's a recipe for creating body dysmorphia and the first thing you should be getting rid of if you're unhappy with your body is daily weigh ins. Can you have one set day instead?

That's what I have which means no matter what multivitamins etc... I take I will absorb them. Iron rich food cause my bloat (which I think it's the worse thing of my syndrome).

The last two doctors I saw explained to me that I have a fairly defective gut, but I was born with it and it is what it is. HOWEVER exercise does make my body more efficient and that's what keeps able to live a fairly normal life. All of my levels are fine (apart from iron).

The problem that I see with weekly weight ins is that there's no real pattern of when I would see any difference.

I don't trust these exercise tools, fitbits etc. I think they massively over estimate calorie burn. When I had a break from logging exercise and food intake and just ate less/kept my exercise up, I lost much more weight.

How tall are you?

They're the least accurate things in this world, but I would say give you a good ballpark figure. Just my DH yesterday said that if he selected he was running but would tell h.he was running twice as many calories and showed a much higher HR (as opposed to just tracking). However, Garmin is way more conservative than a Fitbit.

I'm shortish 1.59 / 5'3ft

It’s taken me a couple of years to get into good habits and to my desired weight. In my experience of weight loss, eating and exercise, it’s really easy to over estimate and you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Trackers, apps and calorie counting are all a bit variable and your body may respond differently someone else’s body. If you’re not losing weight, you’re not burning enough calories and so need to eat less, or up the exercise.

I don’t use a Garmin, so can’t speak for its accuracy. I use an Apple Watch. If I do a HIIT session of an hour with an average HR of 130bpm, my watch tells me I have burned about 300cals. A 5km run which takes about 25-30mins will burn a bit more, my HR usually averages 144bpm during a run. I walk a lot of miles to get places, but my HR doesn’t get very high; My watch does track those calories as ‘active’, but I don’t count them as calories which will have an effect on my weight loss, because in my experience, they don’t affect my body.

For me, different exercise affects me differently. HIIT doesn’t really shed weight for me, it makes me more toned (over weeks and months) whilst if I do cardio daily (again, over weeks and months) and get my HR really high, the weight falls off of me.

I also think you need to weigh food. My version of three spoonfuls of hummus would be more than double your 75 cals. If I ate grapes, yoghurt and a carrot, followed by meat and salad every day, I’d go off the edge with boredom and would be looking for tasty snacks. For healthy eating to be sustainable long term, it needs to be tasty. I cook with lots of flavour and spice and I include grains or pulses like bulger wheat, quinoa, cous cous, pearl barley, freekah, black beans and lentils. Carbs are not your enemy, you need them for energy. I look for recipes with lots of different veggies and flavours just to keep it interesting. I keep treats I like and have them little and often (for me, it’s a weighed out bowl of crisps or a weighed scoop of ice cream). I think having tasty food daily and keeping balanced is better than blow out days.

DH and I usually have a full day’s hike or bike ride at a weekend and so we’ll save a meal out or takeaway for the evening after we’ve completed it. Even then, you have to be mindful that it’s really easy to undo the hard work. We cycled 100km yesterday and my watch declared that to be 1800calories…. We had breakfast (200cals) then needed to fuel throughout the ride (prob around 600cals), then the pizza I had in the evening was easily 1400 cals.

I've never been a "snacker" and I appreciate that some people might find that boring but I don't. I tried to do weekly calculations/allowances as that's a lot easier to manage. It does t matter if I eat a tub of Skyr over 7 days or 4 as longs as it's just that tub and u dont replace it with anything else.

This is probably going to be my final post on this thread. You either aren't listening or don't understand: you should not weigh yourself every day because body fluid levels fluctuate - you probably weigh more after your intense HIIT session, for example.

YOU ARE NOT LOSING WEIGHT BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT IN A CALORIE DEFICIT.

Apologies for shouting, but it's that simple. Keep up the exercise and stop obsessing over how svelte/toned you are/what dress size you can get in. Just stop the negative searching for some weird explanation that suits your narrative whilst ignoring the facts and accept you either do as suggested to achieve what you want or accept yourself as you are and concentrate on your health.

Calorie counting doesn't work. And you're proof of that.

Have a read of Why We Eat (Too Much) by Andrew Jenkinson

Exercise is very good for you and your general health, but you have to do A LOT of it to see weight loss.

I do agree that different types of exercise have different effects. Which I'd why this week in experimenting with extra cardio (and see if it does any real difference).

God so much obsession! You're size 8 yet wish to be size 6. Sounds like you border on an eating disorder to me.

And as you're shorter than me, weigh less than me and take a smaller dress size than me you must have a smaller frame and more muscle.

As your a shortie (like me) I think it's just too many calories tbh.

I always find/think exercise calories burned are over estimated. I would never include walking the dog, also say I put in an 30 minutes exercise class if you analyse it will probably only be 20 mins of actual exercise.