ERRR I cant lose weight

jennilydg

New member
Ok...here is my story!

08/16/09 I quit smoking cold Turkey. 08/24/09 started going to the gym. Started with 20-30 min on the bike 4-5 days a week. At the same time I started taking the diet pill Alli and somewhat watching what I eat. I soon added 10-20 min on the elliptical with the bike. I never could lose even a pound. So I took it up a notch and completley changed the way I eat. Starting on 09/17/09 I have been under 1,500 calories a day, watching my carbs, protein, fat, and all that stuff and on the elliptical 7 days a week for the minimum of 45 min. I am even trying to do the interval training by raising and lowering my heart rate during my workout. I am 40 yrs old 5'5 and 228lbs. Anyone with any ideas, I am completley fustrated:ack2:
 
Well there are a lot of factors here. :) I'll mention just a few.

Food: 1500 calories or under is probably too little for you, especially combined with the amount of exercising you're doing. You might have shocked your body into not losing weight. Also nutrients are important - you don't say how you're balancing your nutrients or how you're tracking them - having that information would help. :)

Exercise: I think you're over exercising, to be honest, and not doing the right kinds of exercise either. More about that later.

Age: I'm 42 and let me tell you that losing weight in your 40s is a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME. It sucks - to be blunt. :) You have to work harder at it and be more committed than when you were 20 and could drop weight just by skipping dessert a few times a week. :)

Smoking: Quitting smoking, depending on how long you've smoked and how heavy a smoker you were is a HUGE change for your body and it could be another factor here. Nicotine not only suppresses appetite, but it does raise your metabolism to a degree. When you quit smoking you've lost that rush that helps burn calories.

Other factors: Sometimes even though your weight on the scale doesn't change, you're still losing fat. But there are so many things that affect what the scale says. You can retain fluid from exercising, retain fluid from sodium intake, retain fluid from too little water. It could be that time of month for you, or you could be ovulating. Heck, the barometric pressure could be changing. My weight can fluctuate up to 10 lbs over the course of a month from all of those things. :) Also I've found that a lot of people don't lose weight at a steady pace. I"m one of those people who loses in fits and starts - I'll hold the same weight for 2 or 3 weeks and then WHAM - the scale will show 6 lbs gone. It's not that I lost it all in that week, but that my body just has to have time to readjust.

Bottom line is that your body is probably reeling from all the changes you've put through it and there are a lot of things that could be going on that are changing in your body but not showing up on the scale.

Here is what I'd suggest:

Ditch the Alli. It doesn't do anything for you except force you to do what you should be doing already out of fear of the side effects. And it doesn't help with retaining nutrients.

Food: Eat 1800-2000 calories a day and make sure you get at least 120g a day of protein. Make sure you're avoiding all simple carbs and eating complex carbs (should be around 40% of your calories) - things like whole grains, oats, and so forth. Make sure that at least 20% of your diet is healthy fats from things like olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocados, etc. Register with someplace like fitday.com or thedailyplate.com to make sure you're accurately tracking calories and nutrients.

Exercise: Scale back on the cardio. Look into the weight lifting threads sticky posted at the top here. Especially read the one about weight lifting for women. Do a good, intense round of weight lifting and/or body weight exercises 2x-3x a week and then fill in around that with cardio for 30-45 mins a day. You can mix up interval training with regular ss-cardio - whatever works for you. Be SURE to take a full day off each week to give your body time to recover and be sure to leave at least a full 48 hours between your weight lifting / bodyweight exercises.

Make sure you're drinking plenty of water - the American Sports Medicine Institute recommends as a starting guideline that you drink 1 oz of water for every 2 lbs of body weight - so for you, around 110 oz per day is a good figure to shoot for.

And mostly, give it time. Try taking measurements (bust, waist, hip, thigh) as well as measuring on the scale. Sometimes the measurements are more telling than the scale. :)
 
Thanks Kara..
Can you post a sample diet for a typical day. Here is what I eat

A package of Oatmeal for breakfast and maybe a tablespoon of peanutbutter

A grilled chicken sandwich with mustard and 3 oz chicken on wheat, maybe a handful of pretzels and some veggies for lunch

Dinner is some beans, cottage cheese, veggies, stuff like that.
 
Definitely not enough food. :) Here's what I ate today ... and this is fairly typical for me.

Breakfast: Fage greek yogurt and frozen blueberries (210 calories)
Snack: Apple and 1 oz sharp cheddar cheese (200 calories)
Lunch: Tuna sandwich (1 slice whole grain bread, tuna packed in water, mayo, dijon mustard, pickle slices), mixed raw veggies (carrots, celery, broccoli), 1/2 bag of salt and vinegar potato chips (my weakness) (355 cals)
Snack: boiled egg and a can of low sodium V8 (150 cals)
Post workout: 1 scoop syntrax protein powder in water (90 cals)
Dinner: 4 oz grilled salmon w/ an olive oil mustard glaze, roasted broccoli sprinkled with parm cheese (400 cals)

That's 1405 calories and about 130g protein. Depending on how hungry I am, I might cook myself a little brown rice to go with dinner. Either that or I'll have a glass of wine with dinner. I'm leaning towards the wine, myself! :)

My breakfast and lunch tends to stay pretty much the same throughout the week. Breakfast is almost ALWAYS Fage yogurt and blueberries. Sometimes in the winter I have steel cut oats and blueberries instead, but I love the yogurt and it's so full of protein.

For lunch I sometimes have a tuna sandwich, sometimes a chicken salad sandwich, sometimes turkey or whatever meat I have leftover from the night before. I try to limit the tuna to 2x a week - just because I already eat a lot of other seafood and while I'm not really concerned about mercury content, better safe than sorry. My sandwich is always ONE piece of whole grain bread, folded over whatever filling. Never two pieces. And I always have raw veg with lunch. AS the weather gets colder, I'll probably start eating soups rather than sandwiches - I have a butternut soup that's really good, and homemade turkey chili is a standby at my house. :)

Snacks are almost always the same, sometimes I switch out the cheese and apple for peanut butter and apple, sometimes a pear instead. Sometimes instead of a boiled egg, I eat string cheese and the V8 or tomato juice. Or I'll bring homemade pickled okra (which I'm eating by the ton lately).

Dinner is the big variation for me. I love to cook and I'm always looking for something different and interesting to make for dinner. But I also have a few standbys that I can turn to when I'm busy or tired. Omelets and frittatas are my favorites for quick meals. I also always keep a bag of shrimp in the freezer and can throw a handful of shrimp into pasta water and have some kind of whole grain pasta and shrimp and canned tomatoes in less than 15 mins. When I have time, though, I like to experiment and play. :)

If you notice every single meal and snack I eat includes some type of protein - whether the cheese, the meat, the yogurt, the powder, whatever. It's really important to me to make sure that I get a good amount of protein in per day. I aim for 120 g a day and if I get more than that, bonus. :)

Hope that helps you some! :)
 
I had the exact same problem when I quit smoking 5 years ago. Don't give up. Your body is trying to heal itself and find a "balance". I did the exact same thing you did. I quit smoking, joined a gym, got a trainer, and watched what I ate and the scale never moved. I increased my workout time. I changed trainers. No movement. I ended up quitting and gained all the wieght I am trying to lose now. When I look back I realize that I probably sent my body into shock (like Kara said earlier) and it just stored everything it could in case another "change" came. I am not a doctor, but I think what happened is that when I quit smoking, my body began trying to heal itself from the years of abuse it had been through. This takes energy. Then I started working out. This takes more energy. Then I dealt with the mood swings and anxiety that quitting any addiction brings, more energy used. Now I cut the amount of energy (calories) my body is used to getting. I just told my body that it is going to work 3 times as hard with 1/2 the energy. Of course it held on to everybit of food, fat, and calorie I gave it. It was in "survival" mode. If I could go back, I never would have given up because I have twice the weight to lose now. I would have been patient with myself and allowed a couple months of letting my body get healthy before I demanded the wieght loss results.
Don't give up. Give your body a chance to find its way in this new life you have started. It will be so worth it.
By the way, CONGRATULATIONS on quitting smoking!!!!!! It is a huge accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself!!!!
 
Yes, after quitting smoking the body usually goes back to its normal mode. Its trying to rejuvenate itself hence the extra weight you've encountered. Don't give up and be patient. Give it a couple of months for it to normalize.
 
Mmm, I would advise against taking things in leaps and bounds... do too much in too little time and you'll lose hope and quit.

You'll only notice your results if you're tracking them, because you sure as hell won't lose all your desired weight in one month. Buy a tape measure and write down all your measurements every 2 weeks. Measure yourself at the same time of day each time, and make sure it doesn't coincide with trippy things, such as your period.

I'd say ditch the scale readings altogether, they've been nothing but misleading to me throughout my ordeal (losing 100 lbs).

In short, take things slow... keep it steady... you're not going on a 'diet' until you're thin. You're changing your life, and you're changing your habits... and you won't do that overnight. Work on one bad habit at a time, and best of luck.
 
There's no secret, I did exactly what you're doing- trial and error.

You take everyone's advice, find what works for you, and make it work. Apply it with consistency, continue to learn about the body and apply your knowledge.

Losing weight is like doing a math equation and taking care of a baby at the same time. It can be unstable, unpredictable, and sometimes hard to manage, but if you keep chipping away at it you eventually make progress. Which you should track for inspiration!
 
Losing weight is like doing a math equation and taking care of a baby at the same time. It can be unstable, unpredictable, and sometimes hard to manage, but if you keep chipping away at it you eventually make progress. Which you should track for inspiration!
Hahaha. I love that. It's true. :)
 
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