Hi guys,
I am really struggling at the moment. I’ve had various ups and downs with my weight in the past but I have been consistently pretty active for the past few years and was a 5 x a week gym-goer before lockdown. When lockdown started I did online workouts, running and long walks to try to make up for the activity but my snacking got pretty out of control so I am coming up to 5 weeks of calorie counting and using Huel (initially once a day, now twice). My weight is just going up instead of down, and although I tried to stay calm and allow for normal fluctuations it is still heading very much in the wrong direction. What is weirder is that I had an initial drop in weight before this climb.
The day I started weighing was the day after a nasty binge, so I expected an initial water weight drop, but I can’t understand how I have now climbed to over my starting weight - and almost 5kg from the lowest it got to.
People have mentioned your muscles retaining water if you start a new regime but I haven’t really changed my activity levels, because they were already high, so this is not an adjustment period for me. Also, I am not able to lift in the gym like normal so I don’t think this can be muscle weight (if anything, I am worried I will be losing muscle mass in lockdown). I’ve checked my TDEE etc and I am being really obsessive about my calorie tracking, down to each tablespoon of milk I put in my tea.
I started taking a programme of probiotics to see if it helped, no real difference yet. I wondered if my stomach may have felt slightly flatter but to be honest it is hard to tell and with the scales showing such a fluctuation of 5kg I don’t know what to think.
I’m a 5’5 woman eating c. 1,400cals a day. My weekly activity looks like:
5 x 20-25min run
5 x 60 min HIIT/aerobics video
7 x 90 min walk
7 x 20-25 min yoga
I have started cutting my Huels down from 400 calories each to 350 with a view to going down to 300 if that doesn’t work, to aim for 1,200 or 1,300, but I already get fatigued and I want to have enough energy to stay active.
I am really at a loss here. Do you think I need to stick with it longer than a month? I am starting to get quite worried by the fact that I haven’t just plateaued, I have gained.
Sorry for the whinge, I am just really demotivated and upset by this.