Why am I not losing weight?

Question

My goal is 110 lbs. I'm down to 120 from 123. I've been doing 30 minutes of cardio and some stregnth training almost every day for about 5 1/2 weeks. i don't eat too much, and I've cut out almost all sugar. What is going on here?

My pants do fit the same, but is it possible that I'm gaining muscle faster than I'm losing fat and it's "pushing" the fat out? I've heard that before. I've also never worked out before, and started this program with just enough muscle to get around. I'll leave everyone alone after this.

I will 30 years old in December, just under 5'1.

Answer 1

Here are my recent thoughts that address your question.

On Yahoo!Answers I find certain questions being asked repeatedly which is simply a reflection of new people participating. A couple of common question amounts to "How do I lose weight," or more specifically, "How do I lose abdominal fat?" I have gotten very positive responses from my answers when I paused to reply (and now beginning to get "It works!" emails that are very gratifying. I like helping people)... so have recently decided to put a good solid answer on my Yahoo!360 Blog (September 10) that I can point people to. These are my thoughts as a physician and athlete.

Don't target losing more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.

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.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

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 work 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 2

Eating too much is in the eye of the beholder. Exactly what is it you have been eating and when? I suggest you find yourself a 1500 or 1800 calorie diet plan and follow it. 30 minutes of cardio daily doesn't sound bad, but you are not working for heart health here, you are working to lose weight.

Weight is a simple formula intake+exercise=weight gain or loss. If you are not exercising enough to burn off what you take in, it goes up, if you are exercising more than you are taking in, you lose.

You also neglect to say what your age and height is. As you get closer to the weight you should be, it will get harder to lose as well, because you are moving around less weight when you exercise and your body becomes more efficient at using the calories it takes in. So it could be you are close to an ideal weight and have worked off the water and fat in the body.

My suggestion is you increase the exercise from 30 minutes to 60 minutes and make it more endurance type exercise, walking a few miles briskly. The aerobic stuff (which is what I bet you are doing) is fine for the heart but doesn't consume enough calories in a 30 minutes.

Answer 3

Maybe you are achieving just what you wanted. YOu can't judge by the scale alone. How are your clothes fitting??? You see, muscle is heavier than fat, so it's possible you are getting the benefits of your efforts, but it doesn't show up dramatically on the scales because your fat is becoming muscle.

BUT, the body doesn't begin to burn fat until after 30 minutes of cardio !! So you are finished just when you reach that point of exponential benefit. So I have some suggestions to help you along the way. LET'S GET SERIOUS HERE - but not fanatic.

1. Drink lots of water
2. Cardio or walk for an hour every day except 1 then do stretching and upper body toning.
3. Eat fruits & vegetables.

No sugar
No sodas
No candy
No chips
No potatoes
No pasta
No pizza
no corn
no bread
no burgers
no fried foods

Good Luck

P.S. Get your tape measure and measure your waist and hips, etc. Or just feel how your clothes fit.

Answer 4

It's possible that you have. Fat weighs less than muscle, so if your cardio and strength training burned a couple pounds of fat, but built up a couple pounds of muscle, the scale would not reflect that. You may want to think of a different way to measure your progress. Such as a body fat percentage analysis, or take your measurements with a sewing measuring tape or something. It sounds like you are on the right track, though. Keep it up! ♥

Answer 5

Maybe it's what you're eating that's the prob. You say you've cut out sugar, well what about fat? There's a big difference between eating loads of 'good' foods (eg. fruits and veg) and eating loads of 'bad' foods (eg. deep fried foods). Fill up on fruits and veg and try not to eat too much bread and pasta (I try and avoid anything ''white'', so eat only wholegrain bread etc) as these are not stored as fat in your body, but still keep you feeling full throughout the day. Grilled chicken is a good source of protein!

It also sounds like you should up your cardio, your body may be used to your workout so add an extra 15 mins to it and see how that works out for you.

Good luck!

Answer 6

Muscles hun, don't worry you're not doing anything wrong, that's actually pretty good that you atleast cut part of your daily sugar intake, but still you better watch what you eat, allways check the label and ingredients on the back of a product, most 'energy' drinks contain medium-high levels of sugar/glucose/frutose/alternatives in them, believe or not even water produced by companies add atleast 5% of Sugar in their product.

Just continue what you're doing you'll achieve what you want.

Answer 7

How tall are you? Don't cut back on your eating. Actually, eat 6 meals a day, and keep doing your cardio. Other than Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper, you need to eat 3 more SMALL meals like healthy snacks. This is how your schedule should be:
Morning-Breakfast
MidMorning-Snack
Afternoon-Lunch
MidAfternoon-Snack
Evening-Supper
Late Evening-Snack

Your snacks need to be fruits or vegetables. Keep doing your cardio though. You're only going to make yourself sick if you cut back on your eating.

Answer 8

How about measurements? Any difference there? Remember that muscle weighs more than fat. You may be getting more fit, replacing fat with muscle, which could explain why your weight isn't changing as much as you'd expect.

Answer 9

Try 2 things....

eat more often....4-5 times a day....small meals

up your cardio to 45 min a day.

Your body gets accustomed to whatever you do so you have to do something different.

Answer 10

Pumpkin, 120lbs is small enough, unless you're 4ft tall. Don't get too caught up in what the scale says, you'll hurt yourself that way.

Remember to get lots of rest, and drink plenty of water.