Isn’t the start supposed to be the easy part? Isn’t the war of ounces supposed to start in a couple of months?
I weighed in today at WW.
I gained.
I am extremely discouraged.
Now, admittedly, I only gained 0.4lb, so theoretically it could be noise, or water retention (although I am not “retaining water” right now, if you know what I mean). But it would take a heck of a lot of noise to turn a loss into a gain.
People get frustrated with maintaining weight loss? I’m getting frustrated trying to make it happen.
I’ve been following the program. I have. Working out 5-6 days a week, lifting, running, ellipticalling. Watching what I eat. Measuring everything, dammit. I’ve drunk a gallon of water the past two days. Today I cut way back—to only about 8 glasses of water—because, after all, what’s the point?
The weigh-in woman at WW suggested that maybe I’m working out too hard and I should cut back. My muscles could be retaining water while they rebuild. (Um, okay.) She recommended two things: I take measurements (true, I haven’t checked to see what my current measurements are, but my pants still feel pretty much the same as always) and I eat a little bit of protein in the morning with my oatmeal—a hardboiled egg, say.
Okay, I’ll try it. As I write this, I am boiling some eggs to have on hand.
But that little voice is whispering to me: I told you this wouldn’t work.
Intellectually I understand that 3500 calories is a pound of fat and weight loss is not about specific gimmicks but about eating less and doing more.
Emotionally, however, I’ve always been a bit dubious that it would work. Don’t ask me why. I’ve noticed I have a tendency to be a bit dubious about anything I’ve never done before until I actually do it. Don’t know why that is, you’d think I’d have noticed a pattern my actually accomplishing things, I’m sure some therapist could have a field day with this. But I’ve always suspected that doing something simple and non-drastic like exercising more and eating less wouldn’t work. And voila:
I don’t work out, I eat like a pig, I get huge.
I do work out, I watch what I eat, I stay huge.
Like I’ve said in the past, I’ve never gone about trying to lose weight except for the liquid diet. At my most frustrated today (which was probably the drive from WW to the Y, where I went ahead and did my workout anyhow), I wondered if I could possibly do the liquid diet again, maybe just do shakes during the day and eat dinners with the family at night.
It was a low moment. I’ve since snapped out of it.
I didn’t go nuts today, although I definitely had an inner voice telling me, So what’s the point? Go have a mocha already! I want to stick with this program. Maybe I’ll try eating under my given points or something and see if that gets me going.
If this helps, I’ve had exactly the same thing happen every time I either restart exercise or up the amount. Water retention while the muscles rebuild themselves. It just happened last week at my weigh-in. I’d maintained through the entire gluttonous holiday, and then gained the week I got back into my regimen. Hardly seems fair, does it?
The good news is that if it’s that, you’ll see the scale go down in a week. Two, tops.
How frustrating! I wish I had some advice for you. I’ve been on the Carbohydrate Addicts diet and it’s taken me a whole year to lose 42 lbs. Doesn’t sound that bad until I tack on the fact that I have at least 110 more to go LOL. well hey…maybe in another three years. {{{HUGS}}} and pats on the back for working out and eating so well!
1) muscle is far heavier than fat
2) muscle helps your body metabolize food better and makes you burn calories instead of storing them
3) the idea that you should stop building muscle because you’ll show illusory gains while you’re working out is lunatic – your goal isn’t just less weight, it’s a better muscle/fat ratio
As bonafides, I can only offer that I’ve lost between seventy five and eighty pounds this past year.
>1) muscle is far heavier than fat
Yes, I know.
>2) muscle helps your body metabolize food better and
>makes you burn calories instead of storing them
Yes, I know. I’m wondering when this is going to happen.
>3) the idea that you should stop building muscle because
>you’ll show illusory gains while you’re working out is
>lunatic
Errr, did I say this?
What people said about muscle is very true, but it also burns fat better than other fat, so keep up your exercise. I would not cut down on my points because your body will start to hold fat thinking it’s being starved. I haven’t done WW since they added the flex points, but there was a school of thought that varying the points you eat in a day is good because it tricks the body into burning more fat.
Thanks for sharing this, and Tamar and Mo…you’re all inspiring me to get back on track!
remember… you didn’t put the weight on in a week, it took time. you won’t take it off in a week. it takes time. constant weighing is discouraging. i don’t know what weight watchers recommends, but my doctor suggests not weighing yourself more than once a week. –brendan
I don’t weigh constantly, actually. Never been in the habit of weighing myself a lot. I pretty much stick to the WW weigh-in (which happens once a week).
What they fail to tell you at WW is that weightloss isn’t an entirely linear process. You go week after week and expect to lose weight. But, in truth, everyone DOES go up occasionally. That’s life. It’s frustrating that WW doesn’t warn you. If you stick to the plan, the end result is a net loss. Honest. I miss having you in LA, Diane. I could tell you to quit being so hard on yourself on a more regular basis. 🙂
I know that fewer calories in, more calories out turns out not to be an exact equation. I just thought it would be *less* inexact at the beginning.
Sigh.
Well I’ve been bingeing on diet blogs lately (including many of the ones you have linked) and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen ‘Oh I’ve been so good this week and I excercised and I still maintained/gained a little at this week’s way-in.’ And then the next week they lose two or three pounds. I bet that’s what will happen to you!
I think the calories in/calories out equations do work (I’ve lost fifteen pounds in the last few months loggin my food on FitDay and working out), but maybe your body just doesn’t know it’s supposed to react within a week! The weekly weigh-in thing is fairly arbitrary when you think about it. But I feel your frustration, it’s so hard to do all that work without the encouragement of visible results. But hang in there, they’ll come!
And if advice from random strangers is worth anything, I wouldn’t drop your points. Give it a little more time, you don’t want to send your body into starvation/hang on to the fat mode.
Don’t forget, you could try and have a “cheat night” to keep your metabolism from slowing down. Someone in my comments talked about “refeeding” and “leptin” and I googled it and found some interesting results that I can no longer exactly remember, but the upshot was that I was doing something right with my “use the Flex Points all at once” technique.
I lose the most weight when I have one night where I eat all my FlexPoints and just go whole hog, and then stick to the program rigidly the rest of the week.
Also, you are probably losing fat and building muscle! Take those measurements!
I hope this helps. The most important thing is not to let yourself be discouraged. Give it a couple more weeks. You’ll see the payoff!
And thanks, nice people, for mentioning me in the comments!
Don’t forget, you could try and have a “cheat night” to keep your metabolism from slowing down. Someone in my comments talked about “refeeding” and “leptin” and I googled it and found some interesting results that I can no longer exactly remember, but the upshot was that I was doing something right with my “use the Flex Points all at once” technique.
I lose the most weight when I have one night where I eat all my FlexPoints and just go whole hog, and then stick to the program rigidly the rest of the week.
Also, you are probably losing fat and building muscle! Take those measurements!
I hope this helps. The most important thing is not to let yourself be discouraged. Give it a couple more weeks. You’ll see the payoff!
And thanks, nice people, for mentioning me in the comments!
Errr, did I say this?
Not that I know of 😉
I was resp0nding to this:
The weigh-in woman at WW suggested that maybe I’m working out too hard and I should cut back. My muscles could be retaining water while they rebuild.
It seems like irresponsible advice for a professional to be giving on the basis of a fraction of one pound.
It seems like irresponsible advice for a professional to be giving on the basis of a fraction of one pound.
Well, the reason they say things like that is to keep people from just giving up and quitting. It’s sure hard to stay motivated when not only are you not losing weight but it seems that there’s nothing you can do about it, either. Some people see more consistent weight loss on a little less exercise, so they’ll suggest you try that to keep you trying something.