Hello!

D

Dorsetmama

New member
I'm new! I've just begun a new lifestyle change.
Had problems with fluctuating weight for years.

I've had 4 children during my twenties. I've weighed as little as 65.5kg pre kids and as much as 99kg post kids. But my youngest is now almost 8!!

January 2012 I began a healthy refime and reached 75kg which I maintained for about 2 years, but by January 2016 my weight had reached 98.4kg, as a result of an unhappy relationship. One day in January, I suddenly had a horrible gallbladder pain which hospitalised me, and was afraid to eat fat for a long time, and by the start of April 2016 I weighed 78kg. Regular walking helped massively.

This wasn't a maintainable diet though- I was gluten free due to IBS and eating less than 10g of fat a day out of fear.

I ended up weighing 80kg come October, fluctuating between that and 85kg along the way.

Since then, I've passed my driving test, so I drive everywhere, also the fear of my gallbladder has vanished as nothing else has happened, so I've not been worried about fat intake, and I got a boyfriend, and we've both enjoyed a rather indulgent year together with copious alcohol and high calorie foods.

So since January 2017 when I weighed 82.1kg I weighed 93.4kg on the 11th September 2017.
I've changed my diet and am going to the gym at least 2 times a week and swimming 3 times, if not the other way around. I've lost 0.8kg which doesn't seem like very much. This week was only 0.1kg but the last week was 0.7.

I'm eating 1,100 calories a day. I'm burning at least 200 calories a day for swim days and gym days are between 500 to 700 calories a day, plus I'm doing 10,000 steps a day.

What could be the reason for such a low loss?
 
It looks like you have a history of yoyo dieting, which has the effect of not just loosing fat but lean tissue which has a major effect on long term fat loss as it slow your metabolism making it easier to gain fat and harder to loose.

Under eating like you are will further slow your metabolism and while in the short term you will slowly loose weight you will be loosing lean mass making it easier to regain and replace that lean mass with fat when you can no longer handle eating super low calories.

Some more information would help with making some calculations to work out what you should be eating.

how tall are you ?
Age ?
What does your current diet consist of ?
What type of training are you doing at the gym in addition to the cardio you are doing with swimming and walking ?
What is your bodyfat % ?

how are you calculating your calorie usage a the gym ?
 
Thank you for replying:)

I'm 5'2" and 33. My diet consists of brown rice, potatoes, lean meats like chicken and Turkey, white fish and low fat seafood. Lots of vegetable variety - broccoli, courgettes, carrots, peas, leaves, sweet peppers, celery, salad vegetables.... And lesser fruits such as apples and kiwis.

I'm also using the strength training machines at the gym - off the top of my head these are things like shoulder press, chest press, adductor and abductor, I'm also planking.

I don't know my body fat percentage.

My calories are worked out at the gym by the cardio machines I'm using. Swimming is a rough calculation by MyFitnessPal.
 
YOUR BMR: 1576 CALORIES/DAY *Basal Metabolic Rate is calculated by the Harris-Benedict equation

Everybody requires a minimum number of calories to live. This minimum number is called the basal metabolic rate (BMR). This then gets modified by your activity level for normal activities the multiplier for a sedentary woman is 1.4 giving you a TDEE of 2206 take from this 500 calories per day for weight loss gives you 1700 roughly. If your bodyfat % was known this could be fine tuned and likely to be lower because I suspect you may have a low amount of muscle and high fat % which would change the calculations.

Calorie burn numbers on cardio machines are notoriously bad, reporting to be a lot higher than the actual calories used. It is excellent that you are doing some strength exercises to help maintain muscle mass, they should not be counted for calorie burn unless high intensity. The machines you mention will not bring your intensity up high enough for a meaningful calorie burn.

on the surface there is nothing unhealthy in your diet, however it is super easy to under estimate exactly how much you are eating. How are you tracking your food and are you weighing and measuring or are you estimating portion sizes ?

remember the minimum normal calorie intake is 1200 unless under strict medical supervision.
 
Ok that's really helpful. I had no idea that the machines weren't very accurate. So how would I estimate calories burned better without buying expensive accessories?

How would I find out my body fat percentage?

I weigh and measure everything. I enter it all into a food diary on MyFitnessPal app, and check the entry is correct against the packaging information.
 
Oh I forgot to say, I don't doubt the strength training machines as calorie burn....also what is the best cardio machine to use?
Sadly I have knee problems so machines that overwork the knees are out for any significant length of time.
 
The bike is generally ok for knees as they are not weight bearing, also the rowing machine take some pressure off the knees, however to take the knees completely out of the equation then some gyms have bikes which are operated with your arms.

A basic heart rate monitor and chest strap with a calorie counting function is not very expensive, you don't need the expense of a fitbit etc

bodyfat % can be measured a few ways, the most economical is having a trained person measure with calipers, normally at the gym. There are bodyfat scales but they are very inaccurate. More expensive but more accurate is having a DEXA scan or bodpod measurements done.
 
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