Kathy Vanish's Journal, 12 November 2013

Did you just start exercising? Exercise causes the muscles to tear and they retain water to help them heal. This can show on the scale as a temporary gain, no loss or smaller loss than usual. Google "why the scale lies" for insight in to water weight. If you ate too much sodium the night before weigh-in, the scale can go up. If it's that time of the month, the scale can go up. Stress, sickness, lack of sleep, too many carbs etc. and many other factors effect the scale. Are your clothes more loose this week? Sometimes the water weight fluctuations hide our loss, but we see it with fat loss in our clothes. Did you lose the first week? Weight loss isn't linear. It looks more like a roller coaster with ups and downs. Sometimes the scale owes us and sometimes we owe the scale. As you keep going, the exercise will start to kick in with losses on the scale. But it takes time. You might wake up one day and drop 4 pounds (seeming overnight). If the exercise is new, than that is what is causing the scale to up. Make sure you are staying hydrated. So many WW people have started out with stinky losses and went on to lose 50 or 100 pounds. It takes time and patience. Time is going to pass anyway, you might as well stick with it and the weight loss will follow. You are doing great things for our health and body. Also, you can have ice cream and chips on WW. It's about moderation not deprivation. You want the diet to be sustainable for life. Because honestly, we will have to watch what we eat for the rest of our lives. Once I got that in my mindset, everything fell in to place.  

I lost 2 pounds last week. No! I have been exercising for about a year! I did have my period last week. I stopped eating ice cream because it makes me feel terrible because I think that I am becoming slightly lactose intolerant as I get older. I just hate the bloated gas feeling 30 minutes after I eat it. The rest I don't want to waste my points on and chocolate can be my downfall. I don't always stop at one. I find right now that eating none is far safer than trying to eat one and failing. I am going to have a piece of fudge today though as it is the first successful batch I have ever made. 

This is just my 2 cents worth but I really think it is your body going into stubborn mode with WW. Even though you have been watching what you eat I am betting WW is different than what you were doing before. When I have done WW I too gained weight or lost nothing even though I felt I was starving. After the first couple of weeks it started coming off. Hang in there you are doing awesome! I think there is a lot of merit in the fact we put too much into the numbers on the scale. It is our society. I can tell I have gained just by how my clothes are fitting, ick. Hence why I said ENOUGH!!!!  

With that much exercise it's probably muscle mass. Do you have one of those scales that measures all the mambo jumbo? They are a little scary, but can help, not only physically but mentally as well, like when you see your weight hasn't gone down but your fat % has. I try to steer away from my scale, that is good and bad. Good because you just go on how you feel bad cause things can get out of control and before you know it, you've put on 20kg...e hem! Losing weight is not for the weak, some people just get it right, others will always struggle. I'm insulin resistant, most websites I see say I might never lose weight, but to not give up! Easier said then done. It's not impossible for me, but I have to be on such a strict diet I might as well ingest nutrients through a tube in nose :) things we would normally think is a healthy choice is a huge no no, so I just try to make the right choices as best I can. Good luck! And we're here for chit chat if you just need to vent.  

Thanks guys! I will keep trying at least for a little longer.