Why Has the weight loss stopped already?

Question

Ok, so i just started my diet again 2 weeks ago. Previously a few months ago, after gaining 30 pounds, i lost 20 of them, and am now tryinhg to get rid of the last 10. So, 2 weeks ago I started and lost about 4.5 pounds in one week, then the next day i was 1/2 a pound up so after this weight loss i was 131. Then i messed up on the weekend, kinda bad cus i went camping....mistakes, but i got back up and started up again on tuesday. It is now saturday I I weigh exactly what I weighed last week, 131! i have been doing so good eating healthy, and i know i have to get to the gym too, but right now im super busy with work and i thought drastically changing my eating habits would still give me good weight loss. What is wrong and what can I do to get things going again? I don't want to have to start eating less and less every time i hit a plateau! (i eat a normal amount now, just healthier food, smaller portions)i feel like its sacrifice and hard work for nothing

Answer 1

First, lets start with the basics that I'm sure everyone has heard. Your weight is always a function of how many calories you eat versus how many calories you burn. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. Plateaus happen when the body comes to a balance between what you eat and what you burn. If you want to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you take in and I say it this way on purpose. I always prefer, for people interested in losing weight, to increase their exercise before reducing their intake, assuming they are eating healthy food.

Now to your question. I need specifics. You don't give your height or whether you are male or female but I'm guessing you are female. I tend to believe that a lot of people, women in particular, believe they should lose more weight then they actually need to. Let me ask you this, when you step on the scale, does it say that your hips look too wide or that you have a little extra roll around the waist? No? All it can give you is a very objective measurement of how much you weigh. So why does that number matter? I can take two people, both weighing 131 pounds, one with 15% body fat and the other with 35% body fat and I would guess that the person with 15% body fat will look much better than the other. The person with the lower body fat ratio will look thinner than the person with the higher ratio even though they weigh the same. This is because of the fact, stated earlier, that muscle is denser than fat.

Another very important concept to understand, not only is muscle denser than fat, it also burns more calories than fat which is basically just dead weight. In my previous example, the person with the lower body fat percentage will need to eat more than the person with the higher percentage just to keep her weight constant because she has more muscle. This means that, not only will doing exercise itself cause you to burn more calories, having extra muscle on your body will cause you to burn even more.

I know as much as anyone that finding time and energy to do exercise after a hard day at work is difficult but it is a much healthier way of finding the shape that you want instead of eating less and less. And, think of it, if you do enough exercise, you might even have to eat more and more just to keep the weight on.

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good luck

Answer 2

My ideas? Try to do 200 minutes of cardio a week. Remember fat does not turn into muscle, so you need to lose your fat while putting on muscle. Work hard, but don't over 60 minutes at a time. Do planks and other abs exercises on alternate days.

On training days, do 5-10 minutes of cardio to warm up, then do your weight training. Do 30 to 60 minutes more of cardio, then go home.

The best time to eat is just after your workout within an hour when your metabolism is raging. For your muscles, incorporate some isolated soy protein or whey protein. Whey is more potent but the soy tastes better!

Don't look at your scale as the be all and end all, but get a measuring tape to check your progress, and that will show more tangible results.

Read magazines like Shape, Womens Fitness, Fitness, etc to get tips and to stay motivated.

Good luck and stick at it. This plan has lost me 20 lbs in 12 weeks so far, just go for it!

Answer 3

This is normal when on a weight loss diet - why? I have no idea. But it happens to everyone. As suggested by another - don't keep watching the scale all the time. Weight loss takes time - it's easy to put pounds on but it's hard to lose them!

Answer 4

I lost 105 pounds in 6 months. Here is how I did it.
1. Every morning get up and walk for 45 minutes. You can start with less time, but you want to get up to 45 minutes, and it must be fast walk. You want your heart rate to go up. It must be in the morning, it kick starts your metabolism.
2. I cut out Red Meat, and fatty foods. Boneless skinnless chicken breast, baked, or grilled, rice and vegetables (steamed).
3. Eat half. Just eat half of what you normally eat. Put 1/2 on your plate, and put the rest away. Cook less. When you go to fast food, get salads only. Or grilled chicken. No fries, diet soda. Or water.

It will work, once you get into a routine, you will get hooked on the results, and you will keep the routine. It has been over a year for me.

Answer 5

pick up a 5 or 10 pound weight at the gym and visualize that weight coming off holding the weight in your hands helps bring home just how heavy even 5 pounds of extra fat can be

Answer 6

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 7

go 20 mph on your bike for 6 1 2 minutes

Answer 8

2 and 1 2 hours bowling

Answer 9

key phrase...."go to the gym".....keep in mind that you are replacing fat with muscle. Muscle is denser than fat so while you may be slimming down you might indeed not see any weight loss because you are gaining muscle. (This is, of course, based on the premise that you are keeping to your diet.)

Answer 10

fresh herbs can really zing up a healthy meal try growing some in the kitchen using a strawberry pot preserve the flavor by adding fresh herbs at the end of the cooking process