Why did I stop losing weight?!?

Question

So I've been eating carefully and exercising pretty well for the last two weeks. I've been trying to eat about 1300 calories a day, and run for at-least 20 mins a day, while throwing in a little bit of resistance training (noting too drastic that would make me gain a ton of muscle) The first week I lost about 5 lbs, but so far in the second week i haven't lost anything... not even 1 pound... I'm still doing the work out, and eating correctly... I just don't understand what is going on... and it's starting to frustrate me... I am 5'7"-5'8" and at first weight in at 170 and now I'm down to 165, my goal weight is 150-145... What do i have to do to start losing weight again... SAFELY! thanks!

Answer 1

just keep doing the same thing, i know it feels like your going nowhere but its just you muscle gain.... just stick to it and try not to worry, the mirror is a better friend than the scale.... and your clothes too.  

Answer 2

Your weight is a function of energy in vs. energy out.

While you can control energy in through what you eat (calories), you only have partial control over how much energy goes out.  

In fact, if your body decides it's running short on energy sources (because you don't take in many calories) it will pull every trick in the book to reduce the energy output and to keep as much energy stored in fat as possible.

This is the basic mechanism to cause the vast majority of weight loss diets to fail.

You could try taking in a few more calories and upping your exercise, but that only might work. It depends on the person. You could try taking on a lot more exercise to increase muscle mass and your resting calorie burn rate, but this is hard and the results vary dramatically from person to person.

This is why life sucks.

I would try to ignore the weight thing. It is a distraction from a far more realizable goal. You can keep upping regular exercise and get fitter and fitter. If you goal is to improve your blood pressure stats, your HRRT, the length of time or distance you can run, etc. then regular exercise will deliver far more consistent improvements than you can achieve when you are tracking weight.

If someone gets and maintains a sufficient fitness, the weight will have to follow sooner or later. But usually not to their level of expectations.

Being fit is better than being light.

Answer 3

When you've lost weight and continue on the path routine and diet, your body will adjust and make you "stable". So, you need to tweak your diet or make your routine a bit more intense to allow even more resistance to enable you to burn more.

-If you eat less calories than you burn, you'll lose weight;

-If you eat and burn the same amount, you'll stay the same (balanced).

-If you eat more than you burn, you'll gain weight.

Experts say a healthy weight loss is 2 pounds per week.

The misconception is that if you barely eat anything AND work out, you'll lose weight. It's might be true, BUT very dangerous/harmful to the body system because if you don't have enough energy to do the work out, then you're going to wear your body out and pretty soon, you may end up in a hospital bed. Because you don't eat, your body will go into minimum metabolism rate, where it will burn as LITTLE fat as possible to retain fuel sources. So by eating lesser, your body will retain that you eat longer and you won't achieve any weight loss long-term.

Check this site out to see if you should be concerned with losing weight: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/. It's your BMI (ratio of your HEIGHT to your WEIGHT), set by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to the standards for males and females. Healthy weight is not set using age and weight.

What you should do is change your eating habit to a healthier one and start exercising (people tell you this over and over because it WORKS!). Even if you're not overweight, if you have a bit of flab in unwanted places, you may want to do some exercise to tone your body. Even if you don't have any flabs, you'd still want to exercise because it's a great habit for a healthy life.

Disclaimer: I don't recommend any diet to you or anyone, but I just wanted to share my experience. You should talk to your nutritionist/doctor before making any drastic changes to your body.

What I did was I went on an "eating-only-corn-flakes" diet. xD I lost the weight really quickly (~25 lbs). After a 2-3 weeks of eating only corn flakes with regular milk for breakfast/lunch/dinner (NO snacks whatsoever). (You can try it with skim, 1%, or 2% milk to lose even more weight.) I went off the diet and started eating normal, and healthy foods, with A LOT of water and tons of fruits. I'm able to keep off the weight I've lost for ~6 years now. At summer camp, I've also went on a cereal-salad-and-skim milk "diet". For breakfast, I would only eat grain cereal with skim milk and drink another glass. For lunch and dinner each day, I had only a salad and two glasses of skim milk per meal. Camp was only 5 days, but I lost a considerable amount of weight for my father to notice my weight loss. xD

Currently, I've been exercising on my "air-stepper" at home, and I get on it for 15 minutes each day to get my cardio workout. I take my pulse at 5 min. intervals for 15 minutes to see if I'm improving. ^_^ Then, I get on my Total Gym and start working on my arms and legs (pulling, pushing, etc.). To tone my abs, I do 200 crunches (I lay on my Total Gym at an incline, so it's VERY easy and no back strain!); they are much easier than sit-ups. ^_^ Lastly, I do 100 of those "standing-up" crunches. I don't know what to call them, but I saw it on Hip-Hop Abs. You can see a sample of it here: http://www.beachbody.com/product/fitness...

The lay down crunches and the standing up crunches that I do gave me the flat stomach I have now. ^____^ Very happy with the results. You can do as many as your body can tolerate for ONE day and feel your stomach flatter immediately afterwards (at least for me)! It's incredible!

If you do not have gym equipment, just jumping around and running place for 15-30 minutes will get you your cardio workout. Eat yogurt, fruits, and other health foods. Drink tons of water and your daily dosage of milk. ^_^

Good luck! :D

Answer 4

don't worry!

what's happening is that you're burning a lot of fat, but eventually you start building muscle too. muscle is way heavier than fat so  you might not lose weight for a while, yet still lose fat.

make sense? try measuring around your tummy or thighs or whatever area you're working on, and then continue with your routine and see. :)

Answer 5

Well the problem is that the less you weigh the less calories you'll burn while your excersising because you don't have as much weight to carry as you did before. I would try making the calorie intake just a little bit less, like 1200 and run 30 mintues instead of 20. That'll improve your weight loss for awhile, and if you lose 5 or so more pounds and this happens again then just up the running to 45 minutes and that should definately get you to your weight goal. No matter what be healthy and love your body! Hope I helped!=)