Ten days - lost 0.2 lbs - advice please

[NorthernDancer]

Where am I going wrong? I have about 2 stone to lose. This is my regime:

Walk 4.5 miles a day - minimum
Weekly Pilates class
Varied diet - good portion control
No snacking
No alcohol
No added sugar
No caffeine
5 a day - minimum
12 - 14 hour fast in every 24 hours

My GP is unhappy with my weight, although the dietitian attached to the surgery has no issues with what it how much I am eating, so I started this on New Year's Day, basically tightening up how I live anyway.

My starting weight was 157 lbs. This morning, ten days later, I weighed in at 156.8 lbs.

Where am I going wrong? Any advice would be welcome.

What dues ‘cleaned up my diet’ mean? Are you weighing and measuring everything? Being sure to include calories from cooking oil, butter, sauces?
I weight loss guru put it this way: if you were left in the woods and collected a month later do you think you’d weigh the same? Of course not.
You are still eating too much. Exercise is great, but you win the war in the kitchen.

I’m also 2 stone overweight and have lost 8 lbs since January 1st. It’s all down to less calories as I’m a lazy sod and hardly exercise apart from dog walking. My diet is excellent but I’ve just been eating too much. I know it’s more difficult to lose this weight compared to when I did it ten years ago. So you just need fewer calories I think

Can you tell the GP to back off if they are likely to harangue you? Is there a pre-existing health condition that they need you to lose weight to improve, or are they just giving you grief about your weight alone?

If you have been doing 1500 cals a day for a few weeks and no weight loss, then likely you are eating at maintenance, despite what the TDEE calculator estimate says. So, you could try dropping 250 cals to 1250 a day, and seeing if you can increase your walking/exercise to burn another 250 cals a day, to increase your overall deficit to 500 cals.

You don't seem keen to count calories OP, which is understandable, but it's the ONLY way to be sure you are in a deficit.

You don't need to count them for weeks on end. Most people trying to lose weight eat similar things. So just do weighing and counting for a week initially, and this will cover most of the meals and drinks you normally eat. You'll get a much better idea of portion size from one week alone. Plus you will know that one small tupperware scoop of oats for your porridge is eg 150cals, and a tupperware of milk is 120cals, or whatever. You then never have to weigh your porridge again!

It's a pain to start, but gets very easy very quickly. You ideally need a digital food scale which measures to the nearest gram, then one of the tracking apps is useful, as you can add "my porridge" to it with the correct cals and then just tap it each day.

Don't be tempted to 'eat back' your exercise cals. You'd need to be doing a lot more exercise before you can safely eat back some of them.

Good luck!

As others have said, if you are not carefully tracking your calories you honestly have no idea how much you are actually eating. And if you havent lost any weight you are not in a deficit. Spend a few days accurately tracking absolutely everything you eat and drink. You need to drop at least a few 100 calories a day to start to see a shift
You can eat 'clean' but not be in a deficit

Oh and if you are doing alot of cardio it can be detrimental to losing weight due to increased appetite (as you have found out). Its common for marathon runners to put on weight in training.
Focus on lifting weights and walking, not intense cardio. But really its all in the food

So, I have been monitoring my intake much more closely. I'm generally running at between 12 and 1300 calories a day intake, and sometimes significantly less, so below my TDEE.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't think I have the room to drop 500 calories. That would pretty much take me to one meal a day.

The good news is that since I cut out as much upf as I could, I am much less bloated, so I think that was worth doing.

The bad news is that, although I had managed to lose 3.2 lbs at one point and I thought things were finally going in the right direction, it's all gone back on and this morning I weigh a whole 0.4lbs less than I did on 1 January.

DH is away next week, so I.will mostly be eating fish and veg.

I will report back

Completely agree with this and this is what I found with me too. If I eat more than about 1400 I simply do not lose, any more than - I gain.

@NorthernDancer
I am having the same issue.

Unless I eat under 1,000 calories consistently for a week I don't lose anything, and if I eat more than 1,200 I put weight on. I've been the same weight now for the past month, gaining and losing the same kg.

I don't move as much as you, which is an issue in and of itself, but it also means I don't need as many calories.

I religiously track, I weigh everything. Nothing gets ignored. So unless the app is wrong, then I don't know where I'm going wrong.
I haven't eaten more than 1400 calories a day since January, except for one day when I had too many crisps after a stressful (& ultimately badly performed) interview.

He whole 2000 cals for the average woman is not working but it’s ingrained. If you’re 5ft 4 and inactive thats way too much.

Another update. I honestly feel like crying.

I had to give up my porridge in the morning because it upset my stomach too much. I have dropped down from large to medium eggs and because the porridge has gone, 160ml of Almond milk has also gone.

I'm still doing everything else. I've upped my walking speed from 21 minutes to 18 minutes per mile.

With the upset stomach I was going to the toilet anything up to 10 times a day and had several episodes of severe diarrhoea. That was over a period of three weeks and did not affect my weight at all.

I have weighed myself this morning. I am 2lbs above my starting weight and 3lbs above my weight 5 days ago.

I am now completely out of ideas.

Then something is wrong somewhere op.

what we consume, be it food or drink fuels our bodies.
if we eat in a defecit, our bodies have to burn fat or muscle to fuel the energy thay we use that is not fueled by the cals we consume.
this in turn makes our bodies lighter, because the fat or muscle was burned to fuel our energy expenditure throughout the day, as we didn’t consume enough cals to do this.
pur bodies cannot fuel themselves through anything else, ie air.
it is impossible for our bodies to fuel itself through nothing.

there are only two options here.

1/ you need to see a doctor urgently, you are eating in a defecit and burning fat or muscle, making your body lighter, but are deeply unwell and thay loss is being hidden by fluid retention. To the exact same level yoire burning off.

2/ you’re consuming a lot more than think and are not in a defecit.

What's the medical issue that you need to see the GP and the dietician about with these regular appointments @NorthernDancer ? Is there something going on with your digestive system, as porridge upsetting your stomach too much sounds unusual.

I would take a detailed food and exercise diary to your next GP appointment, or make an appointment sooner if it's too far away, because if you are tracking accurately then there is something else going on. To be consistently in a calorie deficit and not lose any weight over the space of several weeks means that there must be something else affecting your system.

Yes this is valid, why are you seeing the doctor and a dietician, 157 pounds is not that heavy to be haranguaed by a doctor and have to see a dietician, even if very short indeed. Wanting you to lose 2 stone seems a lot, although I do assume you’re petite of stature,

could whatever health issues you have going on be the cause of severe inflammation and water retention?

Don't beat yourself up. People don't know this if they don't work in the food industry but a warning. Calories in prepared foods can be as much as 20% wrong (either way) and it wouldn't get pulled. Hell, even if it was above 20% it normally wouldn't. Also natural ingredients, there's no let off as this will vary a lot by season, how much sun there is, how long the ingredient (e.g. fruit) has been stored.

I think you'd said you'd already increased your exercise. I'd definitely do that and include strength as well as aerobic exercise.

From the reading I've done, I've adopted a once a week fast for 24 hours because of the autophagy / inflammation and insulin resistance potential benefits. But if the time restricted eating is working for you, I'd stick with what's working if I'm honest. If not, then I tried something different till I settled on what worked for me (e.g. some people swear by 5/2, that never worked for me.)

Likewise I don't drink and I've been really surprised how little benefit that gave. That said, since I gave it up, it's been supportive to my sleep and I've maybe lost 3-4 lbs just because of that so not nothing.

Did I miss what age you are? I'm late 40s and stuff that GPs advise just doesn't work for me anymore. I could have eaten as I do now (similar to you) with the exercise I do (5-7 days a week) without the fast in my 30s and dropped weight like a stone. I need to do more than that now and I believe any insulin resistance makes it harder.

Also worth a check, I found out (today actually) I'm slightly low in B12 so starting supplementation (with an oral spray that's better absorbed apparently) but I also pushed for iron and thyroid checks as well as HbA1c which was almost prediabetic. All other levels were ok but it's worth ruling out.

Also I should say, I'm not sure if you're short but I weigh a lot more than you and while no GP has been at all helpful, I wouldn't say I'd ever been harangued. That's not constructive.

People are not shamed into losing weight, they're far more likely to love themselves into losing weight.

Drink water. Shitloads. Me drinking not enough water, doing all the stuff: 0 lost. Me drinking enough water, doing all the other stuff: 4 lbs lost the first week and then a pretty steady 0.5 pounds a week after that. I do not recommend weighing daily, but instead weekly, and expect to gain up to a KILO right before your period - it will go away again. But it sounds like you essentially haven’t lost much of anything yet so something’s wrong. And you don’t mention your height. For most heights, that would still be in a healthy weight range, or just at the very top. Are you shorter than 5’2”? Also, how old are you? Some women over 35 find when they do low carb, the pounds just drop off.

And like @Lemonthyme I also weigh A LOT more than you and am not being “harangued” by my doctor. Your GP really said this? At a weight of 157???? This post is right that shaming someone into losing weight doesn’t work at all, or everyone who feels ashamed of being overweight would be thin.

You’re still eating too much OP. That’s the diffict truth.

2 lts water a day minimum, for the first week or so you’ll be back and forth to the toilet 3 hundred times a day (yay step count) but it settles down.

As much sleep as you can get.

weigh and measure food and track your calories, it is very easy to eat over your allowance without realising, especially with things like nuts where a portion is 5 or less walnuts/brazils, or not counting a drizzle of oil which ends up being over 100 calories a couple of times a day.

Honestly. It’s impossible to tell unless you are measuring literally everything you eat. It’s likely you are eating maintenance calories and hence not losing.

I lose weight at 1,200 or 1,400 with a cardio exercise eg a 5km run. Walking 4.5 miles isn’t much (my average is around 11km. Caffeine won’t impact weight loss either way and neither will 12-14 fast unless you eat less.

How many grams of protein? How much fibre.

i suggest moving to circa 33% of each of Protein get and carbs - with mostly of the carbs from fruit and veg and see if that helps.

How can 157Ibs be 2 stone overweight, what’s your height?

I'm going through your posts again and I'm not sure you've posted what you eat. I know that there are loads on MN who are very focused on calories in and calories out but whether or not you do that, having a lot of vegetables with meals means that you feel more satiated on a lower calorie count. Personally I'd rather go with how hungry I feel than calories but it's the same idea. If I eat a lot of veg, I don't feel hungry. I think too when people hear "fibre" they think they have to eat oats or all bran but all fruits and veg contain loads of fibre as do pulses.

It's interesting the impact porridge had. There are a few reasons why that might be happening. I'll suggest a few but it's worth talking with your GP.

Are you eating a generally low fibre diet otherwise and was the porridge a sudden change? Introducing high fibre foods suddenly can result in bowel changes. These can settle down after a while but it might be best to introduce them more gradually.

Have you had similar reactions before to oats? Or to wheat? Unless you have gluten free oats, oats often contain cross contamination from wheat (walk through a wheat field and you see it happens at field level). Also the proteins in oats are similar to wheat. It might be that you have an intolerance to wheat, oats or the almond milk.

When you change your diet, your gut microbiome changes quite quickly. But this can (short term) result in changes to your bowel habits as well. I wouldn't say diarrhoea is normal though, but loose stools can happen.

All worth mentioning to your GP and if you've been off colour you might not lose weight.

Also worth checking things like TSH, B12, iron etc. I'm not sure how much you're exercising too but if you're low in B12 or iron that can make it hard work.

On diet stuff, not all the time but I've been tending to prioritise protein at breakfast recently and I'd say it's helping me feel fuller throughout the day. Things I'm going for are chicken chipolatas (Lidl) cooked in an air fryer. Mushrooms fried in spray oil or (don't judge me) my home made sauerkraut which I love. Or (don't judge me again) black pudding is surprisingly low in calories (not like the fatty stuff you used to get in the 80s) so I often have that, especially as I have been low in iron in the past which I've turned around with diet and I'm low in B12 (but having to supplement that).

im 5ft 8 and my ideal weight according to the calculators is 141lb which puts me at about 23bmi so right in the middle of the healthy range. At 157lb, if the OP is a couple of inches shorter than me then 2 stone loss wouldn’t be an unreasonably low target.