Need advice - in a month I lost ZERO!

[Qc101]

Hi, okay first i am a male in my mid 40s. Here what happen and what I did / do.

From my 20s to 38 I trained daily at a gym and was in good shape. Then I had an accident and had to stop. About 2 yrs ago I was okay to take training back but did not really seriously until a month ago. I weight 188 lbs, 5'10. (My normal weight is about 160-65). For many years until a month ago, I drank A LOT of beers and eat chips and stuff.

30 days ago today, I stop everything. I start doing cardio 30-45 min daily. I weight myself on the gym scale on day 1, 188lbs.

Breakfast - 1 slice of breed with peanut butter + 1 small coffee every day before work.
Lunch - half a hamb sandwish (1 slice cut in 2), a yogourt, an apple and water (yes same thing every lunch)
Supper - A various meal from a burger, to a steak to a soup .. depend I vary a lot but the portion is normal.
At night - nothing
Sleep 7 to 9 hours nightly.

I stop drinking ALL form of alcohol exactly a month ago I took nothing since. No sodas, no special breuverage, no nothing other then water and sometimes a glass of milk.
I used to drink every night, 3-6 beers..

I weight myself today at the gym after 30 days of this routine (remember, I stop all alcohol, I train daily, eat okay, take multivitamins and sleep well): 188 lbs! My jeans fits me like it fit 30 days ago. My tommy feels the same, my legs etc etc. Iv done some weight lifting but nothing major to build muscle.

I DON'T GET IT! Not a single pound! Why!? How? I drop more then 1000 calories a day just with the alcohol alone and I spend more calories a day with my cardio and I lost NOTHING.

Help!? It's very discouraging.

 

[PLB]

I'm sorry to hear that you are discouraged right now. Even if you haven't lost weight, just know that you are doing a lot of good for your health by exercising regularly, not drinking alcohol, and improving your daily diet.

As for not losing weight, do you know what your caloric intake is each day? How are you tracking this? Estimating, measuring, using an app... It sounds like you must have been gaining weight leading up to all of the changes you made, and maybe you are not at a caloric deficit right now (even with all the changes!). But I can't really say for sure without more information. Many people underestimate their food calories taken in and overestimate their exercise calories burned, which can lead to a lot of frustration.

I would really encourage you not to stop, but maybe you need to be a bit more detailed with respect to calories in/out. I also would really encourage you to add in some resistance training, as this can have a very positive effect on body composition as well as increasing your overall daily calories burned.

 

[overlandflyer]

two things come to mind. hysteresis and your BMI class. hysteresis is the delayed effect brought about after a change. the shortest day of the year is Dec 20th, but the coldest time of the year is typically February. things not only do not change immediately, but it takes some time to put on the brakes and make that 180° turn. my guess is that you probably kept gaining some weight through your first 10 days, made a dent in that after 20 and really just started to get on a downward trend maybe a week ago. add that to generally your weight can change as much as 4-5 lbs over the course of a single day and what you saw wasn't that surprising.

the other thing i see is that you aren't that overweight. you have about 25 lbs to lose. people who are truly obese, say 100 lbs over their healthy BMI will have a lot less trouble dropping 25 lbs than you will.

one other thing i can see from your listed diet... check the amount of sugar, both natural and added. if you want to lose at a faster rate, it's not easy, but cut your sugar way down. when i was dropping weight, i tried to keep it less than 10 gm/day and typically i got it down to 3-5 gm/ day. now that i am more in maintenance mode, i break that some days, but not very often.

 

[Frank M]

Hi - Two things I'd mention to you right off the bat.
1. You'd be surprised where calories can hide in things like soups and salad dressings and all that... so because you're not actually tracking what you're eating, and because you're not starting from a point where you have a large amount of weight to lose, it's very possible you're exceeding the calorie intake you need each day unintentionally just with a few unfortunate choices you're making. So I'd highly recommend you start tracking you food for a few weeks. It'll help you immensely get a handle on things and see where you're actually at.
2. The bigger question I wanted to ask you, though, was this - up until a month ago you "drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of chips" every day it seems. And then you completely stopped both of those things and wiped them out of your life. I mean, good for you... except, have you decided that you're now going to avoid them for the rest of your life? Because if not? If you're just going into this temporary deprivation mode so you can lose some weight... please understand that once you STOP depriving yourself of those things, the weight will come right back.
Any weight lost through deprivation is pretty much always temporary. So you might be better off making peace with those things... deciding how much beer is reasonable for you to live with going forward. A few every Friday night? Whatever. Something that you can integrate into your life and feel like it's not some temporary change but a "new normal."
If you can accomplish that, and get a handle on your calories, I think you'll nail this.
Good luck!!!