I get weighed once each month. That is all I can handle. The scale numbers mess with my mind so dropping to once per month works for me. If I stay on the path of healthy eating and moving most days I am guaranteed some sort of win on the first day of each month.
Weight loss is all mental, for me, and my mental game is not always strong. Our weight naturally fluctuates and I can’t handle those daily ups and downs that seem to happen for no good reason other than to mess with my mind and throw me off my game.
You aren’t losing weight just to lose weight. You are improving your health - and that isn’t only measured by one variable. You are losing fat and adding muscle. You are strengthening your core, improving your posture, and lessening the impact on your joints. You are improving your resting heart rate. You are lowering your bad cholesterol. You are more rested, more focused, and more balanced.
So while the scale may not always be giving you the daily feedback you want (and ten pounds is a very healthy feedback in one month!), check in with yourself on all of these other aspects. How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? How much easier is any given exertion now? What other goals have you set for yourself that are now more attainable?
Honestly, it’s so cliche but what always sticks with me is the weight didn’t add on overnight…so it’s a long game and a lifestyle change and a process and in 6 months from now and you are looking at photos from March you are going to be inspired by your transformation! Keep at it! Forward is a pace :)
Continue weighing yourself daily. It helps you see trends. Make sure you weigh yourself at the same time every day, I do it right when I wake up.
10 pounds in a month is good. Plus if you’re weight lifting you’re adding muscle.
Please please give yourself some credit.
10lbs and that kind of discipline is amazing.However it sounds like your expectations are unrealistic.
Also, you may be overtaxing your system which is why you are presently “stuck”.
Be gentle with yourself.
Consistency is far more important than “going hard” all the time.
You can do this. Keep going, but gently! 🍀
I agree that it can be discouraging, for sure. No matter how many times you hear that your weight loss will stall/plateau, or that you’ll lose a pound only to gain two back the next day even when you’re doing everything “right,” it’s still super discouraging when you see a steady 20 or 30 pound weight loss in your first couple of months, and then suddenly it just slows or stalls.
I have learned not to put so much stock in the numbers. I mean, I take the wins when I see them, don’t get me wrong. But although I weigh daily it’s more to keep the habit and to make sure I stay on track - psychologically I am more likely to make better choices that day if I’m “unhappy” with the number on the scale.
I also don’t go nuts trying to change things up if I’m losing the same 2 or 3 pounds over the course of even a couple of weeks. As a woman, I understand that hormones (especially estrogen and progesterone) impact our metabolism more than our male counterparts. I’m slowly working on learning and understanding my cycles better so I can better work with them, and not against them.
It also helps me to think of all the OTHER reasons I fast. Yes, weight loss is definitely important to me. I’ve been obese almost my entire adult life, so weight loss is the most “acute” (and obvious) problem I’m trying to fix. But I have other (obviously intertwined, yet distinct) reasons for fasting, like: increased autophagy, saving money, food security (I’m not some doomsday type, just generally nervous at the fact that I’m digging out of some financial holes and I frankly have no idea in this economy what tomorrow will bring, but the idea of restricted/no income is much less daunting when I know that if it ever hit the fan for me personally I could survive on $20 or $30 a week, which is much less daunting that trying to come up with 2 or 3 times that.) And just generally remembering that I’m building long-lasting habits that will keep paying health dividends for the rest of my life. I have a lifetime of bad habits I need to unlearn, and I won’t do that if I keep giving up when I don’t see the progress I want. (We all know we didn’t get this way in a matter of weeks/months, we’re not going to undo it in weeks/months, either.)
If you’re building muscle while losing fat, the scale might not be the whole picture of your body composition changes. I like to focus on non scale victories like how i feel, how clothes fit, workout gains, and progress on finding a sustainable set of habits
10lbs in 35 days? That’s amazing! Remember, the weight didn’t come on in a short time, it won’t come off fast either.
Highlight to yourself just how amazingly you’ve done and will continue to do by finding something that weighs 10lbs. Just hold it for a minute, walk around with it, walk up some stairs with it. Really focus on the fact that your body was carrying this ALL THE TIME before you took this action. When you put it down that weight is gone, just like it is from your body.
You are an absolute champion and I believe in you! Trust the process, remember that it is for the long haul and your body will thank you. Discipline is the ultimate form of self love. Love yourself by continuing your discipline ☺️
If you know daily weigh ins frustrate you, and you know that frustration is “dumb”, do something differently.
Maybe use a tape measure rather than a scale. Pay attention to how clothes fit. Use a body mass composition scale.
Gauge how you feel after a workout compared to day one.
That’s amazing progress in my eyes. Keep in mind you may be putting on a lot more muscle than you realize. Especially if you’re new to resistance training. That will slow down the scale but I bet you look WAY better than you did when you started. Body fat percentage is a better indicator of weight loss when you’re lifting. It’s just hard to get an accurate reading unless you’re doing DEXA scans. Keep putting in the work! Remember this is a marathon and takes years of hard work.
10lbs in a month is awesome. Remember that the common “slow and steady” amount is 2lbs/week, so by that measure, you’re losing at a 125% pace!
Lifting five days a week is also going to make for a killer recomp, meaning you won’t lose as much on the scale (muscle is heavy) but you’re going to look a lot more fit at whatever weight you reach.
You also just can’t trust daily weigh-ins. Depending on your diet, you’re going to be holding onto more or less water on different days or have more food you haven’t moved through your system, or any number of other random factors. This is why the “whoosh” is so common–that is, seeing a plateau of several days followed by a sudden significant loss.
If the daily weigh-ins are really discouraging you, I’d recommend picking a day of the week and weighing in then, first thing in the morning, after using the bathroom.
if you’re going to the gym you’re replacing fat with muscle. does your scale measure body composition? You can get one that does on amazon for <$20. I stopped looking at weight and started paying attention to body fat % and skeletal muscle measurements, which seem to show my IF progress much more clearly.
Losing 2 pounds per week is the high end of healthy weight loss, you are right in that range and should be encouraged by your progress. I’ve never bought into daily weigh ins, once a week works best for me.
Don’t forget that your weight can vary by ~5lbs daily depending on when and what you’ve eaten/drank. You’re doing fine, trust the process. Daily weigh ins aren’t going to tell you much anyway, try doing weekly ones with consistent intake in the ~12 hours leading up to it.
Op Do you have a menstrual cycle? In addition to basically what everyone else is saying here and in addition to the whooshing effect which people sometimes talk about on the sub, for those who menstruate keep in mind that you have different levels of hormones every week of the month which can contribute to weird behavior of your weight even if you’re doing everything else “right”. (For example, these hormonal changes can contribute to more water retention at certain times which would definitely impact number on the scale).
For menstruating folks I think we do not actually see a reliable trend of what our weight is doing on a weekly basis we have to look at a month- long (or longer) sample of data.
You’ve done amazing so far don’t give up!
The weight you’ve lost in one month is awesome and when you’re working out, fat is being replaced by muscle - especially if you’re lifting weights. I’d pay more attention to how your clothes are fitting. It’s easy to get discouraged when weighing daily, but you’ve done an awesome job so far! 👏🏾
Stop doing daily weight checks. This leads to control issues and either burn out or weight related mental health disorders. There is literally nothing to gain from doing it otherwise.
You should not be weighing yourself more than weekly if even that often. Once a month is a much better frequency.
Otherwise your focus is on a number instead of the process. So long as that number is going down every month, how fast it’s going down is FAR less relevant. This is not a sprint. You didn’t get to your current weight in a few months so expecting to lose it that fast is beyond unrealistic.
Revise your goals and stop making yourself miserable for not hitting your previously unrealistic goals.
Bruh. This shit is a marathon. You’ve taken 10 steps out of 1000s. We all have peaks and valleys, setbacks and goals reached. Don’t get discouraged. Just look around here. People have been doing this shit for YEARS. Keep on, keeping on.
Do a bod pod. It sounds like you’re losing fat and gaining lean muscle. In 35 days I went from 203 to 211. I lost 7 lbs of fat and gained 15 lbs of lean muscle.
The scale isn’t your friend when you’re working out. The scale tells you how much weight you’ve lost, not how much fat you’ve lost.
I had some good advice - a little ‘cheat’ meal or foods in your eating window one day may help nudge the scale …. someone called it the WOOSH effect… Worked for me! I ate some cereal, a Kind bar and a cookie - refined carbs which are NOT a part of my regular daily diet- went back to my usual protein veggie very little fruit low carb diet the next day and lost a pound…
I’m reading a book over audible called The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung, MD and it has been incredibly helpful in guiding my understanding of how fasting works and why some approaches aren’t working. He really breaks down the science and makes it digestible for the everyday person. I can’t suggest this book enough if you want to understand the mechanics and get the most from your fast.
At first you loose fat so scale shows some number then after a month you will start to develop musscle and loose less fat so you may see more number in your scale .the thing is to develop more muscle and less fat and not the small no on the scale
Too much delta in a daily weigh in. Weigh loss is not linear. Its more of step function.
Also - 10 lbs in a month is the north end of realistic. So nice job and enjoy your win.
Your plan seems solid so just keep at it.
Hey, I’ve been in that same situation as you. Progress may feel slow, but over time it will happen. For me personally, I didn’t feel (or look) different until maybe after 8 weeks of IF.
My advice: don’t attach yourself to the scale. Sometimes it helps not too think about it too much. I weigh myself once every couple of weeks.
Chill the F out and carry on is the number one instruction.
Weightloss is a marathon not a sprint if you want it to stick. If you are expecting to lose everyday or lose 10 pounds a month long term, you are quite likely going to push yourself to burnout.
You need to not care what the scale says day to day, and look at the trend over weeks months years
Plateaus are fairly common. Having said that, the change in body composition might be a better indicator of progress: considering the 5 workouts a week there might have been a muscle gain and perhaps some fat loss, which is great news
You are doing amazing! Be proud to be out of the 230’s and work toward the end of the 220’s! Small and attainable goals to reach a larger and longed for goal! You’ve got this! I replaced a lot of fat with muscle but I have a ways to go!
Maybe take measurements. Neck, shoulders, chest/bust, waist, hips, thighs, calves, arms… And pictures. Pick a stretchy pair of shorts or your favorite underwear and snap a front back and L/R profiles. There are victories other than the scale. But 10 lbs is awesome for a month!
One thing that might help which helped me is instead of the scale take measurements of your body and check out the progress there. Within 3 weeks of IF, I lost 0 lbs but I was also lifting weights so I put on muscle. But I did lose 2 inches off my waist and that’s what really mattered to me. Also take progress photos. You’ll be able to see a difference! If u want to see more weight loss I’d suggest cardio rather than lifting so you can solely focus on calories burnt rather than build muscle
Hey. It took me more than that to lose my pregnancy weight that I gained over 3 months. Also, if you are working out, your body is focusing on gaining muscle mass, so you will lose with a shape, not with a sag. I wouldn’t do daily scales if I were you and do biweekly size measurement.
I suggest you get the app called happy scale! It takes your daily weigh ins and turns them into a beautiful graph that gives you a real sense of progress. For android there is an equivalent app called Libra.