Not Losing Weight!

J

Jon Clark

New member
Hi Everyone,

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. I am a 41 year old male, 5'8, weigh 196 pounds (about 30 pounds overweight right now). I am taking in about 1300 calories per day, while walking an average of 5 to 7 miles per day. I've been stuck at roughly 196 pounds for two weeks now and its driving me crazy - I was easily losing 2 pounds a week prior this.

For example - yesterday I walked 9.5 miles, took in 1200 calories, but I gained 2/10ths of a pound! I must be doing something wrong, and any advice as to how to start losing the weight again would be very much appreciated. Thank you!
 
Hello Jon and welcome to the forum.

The quick and easy answer to the questions you’ve presented is that you’re simply not eating enough on a daily basis.

When your journey began, 1300Kcal may have been sufficient, as your body was able to utilise energy stored in excess fat to meet demand. Now that you don’t possess the level of fat (excess energy) that you once did, the body is now beginning to hold on to that which remains, since it recognises it’s becoming under-nourished.

Currently, upon an intake of 1300Kcal, not only is it insufficient to meet BMR, it’s also too low an amount to support your level of activity, so it’s unsurprising to hear that weight loss has slowed.

In order to get around this, you need to increase calorie consumption sufficiently to meet BMR at the very least. Since you’ve provided your measurements (age/weight/height), your BMR (basal metabolic rate) equates to 1564Kcal.

If you’ve not researched BMR, it essentially means the amount of daily calories needed by the body to maintain existence in its resting state. When losing weight, provided you’re satisfying BMR, it encourages the body to burn excess energy (stored in fat) to meet daily demand (TDEE), allowing weight to be lost.

Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is roughly how many calories the body requires to maintain weight. When attempting to lose weight, it’s important to create a daily calorie deficit from TDEE, so, by consuming sufficient calories to satisfy BMR, that deficit is created.

Depending upon the size of the deficit introduced, provided it doesn’t take you beneath your BMR, you could lose up to 3lbs per week, particularly if exercise is undertaken alongside.

As for gaining weight, I wouldn’t read too much into the slight gain, since body weight will fluctuate throughout the day. Don’t obsess over the scales, either, since basic scales simply record overall weight and fail to take into account the weight muscle mass, internal organs and bone density, for example.

Instead, allow your clothes to be the greatest indicator.
 
Ah...the curse of the stuck scales.Know it well. I go by my clothes these days, a little snug.. cut down on illicit snacks. Nice and lose Polly is happy;)
 
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