jackied510's Journal, 20 August 2013

Sometimes there are things we eat or drink that retain weight for a few days. If you weight yourself while that is still in effect, you don't get the true reading. This is what happens to me if I drink wine on the weekend. By Tuesday the effect has worn off and I'm back to the correct weight. I have also found that in a rush to capture my food consumption, I underestimate the quantities I eat or their caloric values. This almost happened to me yesterday with my afternoon snack, dried cherries and almonds. I just grabbed a handful thinking there weren't many calories. Then I decided to use a measuring cup. The original amount that I grabbed turned out to be twice as many calories as I thought I was getting. Losing weight is so tricky. 

That was an awesome post WD.. I don't know how many times I cursed the "science" of dieting by eating less but not losing.. only to realize later than I was eating quite a bit more than I had estimated - both in terms of quantity and in terms of high calorie food. So-called "little" cheats that were forgotten about or ignored.. I finally decided to be brutally honest about what and how much I was eating, and, AMAZINGLY, I lost weight. I shoot for one to two lbs per week.. slow and steady.. and some weeks I'm up a pound, but I put faith in the science.. hold to the plan.. and since May, I'm down 28.5 lbs.. don't despair Jackie, be honest and ruthless in measuring and tracking consumption, and don't worry about how fast you lose weight, have faith that slow and steady will win your race ultimately :) 

Thanks - I think you're both absolutely right. I try to track everything but I have to guess sometimes and there's always that temptation to underestimate the number. But the fact is that I did lose 1.2 lbs this past week AND I started weight training with a personal trainer. LOL - I guess I should be happy about that. My trainer said the weight lifting may slow or even stall my weight loss. Roblaw - 28.5 lbs since May is awesome! Congratulations!! (and thanks, WD, for your always insightful comments) 

I wouldn't be surprised at all if your increased muscle mass is hiding the fat loss. You are doing an incredible amount of exercise. If this is the case, your measurements would show the improvement. However, this is all a lot of discussion for a slower weight loss than expected. As you said, at least it's going in the right direction. So, it's just a matter of time before you hit your target and your next weigh-in may show more loss than you expected. We know the body doesn't function in a linear manner. You seem pretty dedicated, so I'm sure this was just an aberrant data point.