Good morning all!
Do you ever feel like your weight loss journey is a carousel that is going around and around without getting anywhere?
You can get back to making real progress thanks to some tips from my friends at sparkpeople.com
The Top 5 Reasons You're Not Losing Weight
You're Lazy
The most common "lazy" behavior of struggling dieters is a failure to measure and track what they eat. Many studies have shown that people tend to grossly underestimate how many calories they eat, and overestimate how "healthy" their diets actually are, too. While you may think you're making sweeping changes to your diet or that your portion sizes line up with what a nutrition facts label tells you a single serving really is, chances are greater that your eyeballing skills probably aren't so trust worthy.
The fix: Measure, write down and track everything you eat like it's your job. Get out your measuring cups and spoons, invest in an inexpensive kitchen scale and use a food tracking website or app like SparkPeople. Yes, it will be time consuming and kind of annoying at first, but it does get easier and you will learn to trust your own eyes to do the job soon enough.
You're a Cheater
There are a lot of diet plans and diet "gurus" that advocate a regular cheat meal or cheat day or cheat week, meaning that you eat "on plan" for a certain number of meals or days, then can eat anything on your "this makes you fat" list with reckless abandonas long as it's only one hour/meal/day/etc., as if that magical length of time means those calories don't really make a difference. Even if you're following your own diet plan, perhaps you notice that you can only stick to a diet for so long before you mess up or give in and "cheat" on your diet. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this kind of cheating can completely undo the progress you made in the many days beforeessentially setting you right back to where you started. For any diet to work, you have to be really consistent.
It is VERY hard to eat fewer calories to create the caloric deficit for weight loss, but it is extremely easy to overeat.
The fix: My best advice for any diet is to ask yourself this: Can I eat this way forever? If the diet is very restrictive, puts tons of foods on a "bad" list that you can't have (even though you love them) or is so low in calories that you can barely function, you are bound to cheat. Very few people have the willpower to stick to such painful and depriving eating plans. Be skeptical of anything that lets you "cheat" as part of the rules, as that usually means the diet is too restrictive and you're not really learning to eat for life.
You're ExercisingBut That's It
It's not your fault that you believe exercise is the key to weight loss and the ultimate body. We are bombarded with marketing messages that tell us fitness is what makes you slim, attractive, buff and healthy. Just look at all the before and after photos used to market gyms, DVDs, fitness plans and gizmos. Do they ever talk about diet? Hardly. But is diet essential to getting the weight-loss and body-sculpting results you see? Yesprobably even more than the exercise! If you can change nothing about your lifestyle other than adding some exerciseand still lose weight consistentlyconsider yourself a genetic marvel. Some people can do it, but it is very rare. The vast majority of the rest of us need more than exercise to lose weight: We also need to change our diets to eat fewer calories.
The fix: You can't out-exercise a bad diet. It takes a ton of effort and energy to burn even just a couple hundred calories, but it doesn't take much more than a little willpower to choose not to have that 200-calorie latte. For best weight-loss results, you need both: calorie reduction from your diet and calorie burning from exercise.
You Think You're a Calorie-Burning Machine
Here's the cold-hard truth: You are not burning as many calories as you think you are. It'd be awesome if that hour on the treadmill truly did burn 1,000 calories, or if your hardcore weight-lifting session was the calorie-burning equivalent of a 6-mile run, or if sweating a lot was an indication of a hard workout (sorry, but it's not). Truth is, most exercise trackers, cardio machine consoles, heart rate monitors and fitness apps are merely guessing at how many calories you burnand doing a pretty bad job of it at that. These tools can overestimate calorie burn by 40 percent or more, and the heavier you are, the more inaccurate these read-outs will be. When you think you've burning a boatload of calories, you may eat a little more, treat yourself to that extra helping at dinner or feel the need to "fuel" your workouts with more foodbut all of these actions often undo the work you just achieved in the gym.
The fix: Take these numbers with a grain of salt. Yes, keep exercising, but don't let the fact that you exercised trick you into eating back the calories you burned. Be conservative; assume that you burned maybe half of whatever the calorie-tracking tool reports, and you'll keep yourself in check.
Your Scale is Lying
Here's the good news.
If you truly are exercising regularly, measuring and tracking your foods, sticking to a reduced calorie diet without going off on major detours and avoiding a lot of the common problems listed above, your body is very likely in the process of losing weightit's just that you aren't being patient enough. We expect results quicklyalmost instantaneously! We weigh in daily, multiple times throughout the day, even right after a workout, expecting that we've suddenly lost fat within the last few hours. But it simply doesn't work that way. It will take diligence and time for the scale to catch up to your efforts. And often, your body composition (amount of body fat and lean muscle mass) can change significantly even if the scale doesn't.
The fix: Weigh-in no more than every other week, under consistent conditions (clothing, time of day, etc.) and look for overall trends. Sometimes even a static weight is a good thingit means you're not sliding in the wrong direction. Remember to be patient and to look for other signs of progress: looser clothing or more muscle definition. These are signs that no matter what the scale says, you are making progress!
Here is a link to the entire article if you are interested
http://weight-loss.top5.com/sparkpeople’s-nicole-nichols-top-5-reasons-youre-not-losing-weight/
QOTD Thursday March 6, 2014: Do you think that any of these ideas might help you to make real progress toward your health goals?
BBL with replies and my own answer.
DS is running again too, but it will only be his second.
I hope to be there with you next year!!Here is my info in hopes I can participate!
I'm loving all these new faces this month! 
One of the best things about being young is that you have so many choices and so few responsibilities -- I know you will find your niche and some adventures before 
It's an adventure! 
Since I'm sick of not being able to throw off these last 10 pounds, I decided to do something positive and get back to where I feel the most weight-hating love! 
I haven't stepped on the scale in a few weeks, so as soon as I can handle THAT bad newsflash, I'll join in. It feels so good to be back!!
Then I learned the important lesson of how much tires and getting a car fixed costs!
today is I am going to meet with a personal trainer at 5:30 a.m. this morning at my community center to get a strength training program -- something that has been missing from my workout regime. He is a little intimidating but I can do this! 
But like any good thrill ride, hopefully the highs exceed the lows so today we celebrate those "woo hoo" moments we've had as we start a new challenge. 
that was pirate night, and I just love my DH shirt, I got it on ebay it's pirate and tropical and Mickey! LOL 
so I must now change that thinking to motivation to get some kind of a workout this morning!!
grrrrrrr!!!! I'm up today and really up from last week!! ugh I hate water retention!! I know that I did not eat the calories I would've had to in order to truly gain what the scale said but UGH so frustrating!! I will have to use this WI to motivate me to be extra super good the coming week and flush the fluff back out, or I will never make my march goal!! 
