I exercise daily but my weight is not decreasing

Question

I am a 25 year old female and my weight is 141 lbs (63 kg) and my height 5.3 feet (1.63 m).

I want to lose 20 lbs (9 kg).

My current traning and eating: I do yoga for one hour in the morning daily and 30 min aerobics in the evening. I also walk for 30 minutes.

I drink 12 glasses of water each day. I eat one chapati (Indian flat bread made of wheat) in the morning at 9am, then a half cup of tea at 10:30am, two chapatis at 1pm, another half cup of tea at 3:30 pm and two chapatis at 6pm with low oil vegetables.

but my weight is not decreasing. What should I change in my training and eating?

Answer 1

The biggest thing I see going on here is your diet is very unbalanced. That is going to cause health problems if you don't make changes, soon. One of the basics of nutrition is that your body has essential nutrients that it must consume from food and cannot make itself. Unfortunately, carbohydrates don't qualify as essential.

• There are 9 essential amino acids. They are readily present in all meats (including fish). If you are a vegetarian, you'll need a mix of protein sources to get them all.
• There are 14 essential vitamins and 15 essential minerals. If you do not have a varied diet, you must supplement with a multivitamin to get them.
• Drink plenty of water. At least 8 cups a day.

Your body needs enough protein to protect its muscle mass, particularly when you are trying to lose fat. You do not have a proper source of protein in your diet. Your lean mass, particularly your muscle mass, is what is going to burn the most calories.

• Protein: at least 0.5g per pound of lean body mass (i.e. how much you weigh without fat). If you don't know your lean mass, just use your total body mass.
• Fat: Make sure you get some quality Omega-3s in your diet. If you eat fish, you are OK.
• Carbohydrates: as much as you need to do your exercise

As long as you meet the minimum protein target for the day, you can fill in the rest of your daily calories with the fats and carbohydrates. Remember, the focus shouldn't be so much on your weight as it is how much fat you have. If you look in the mirror and like what you see, chances are you have the proper amount of fat for your body. That is no less true if the scale never moves or even says you've gained weight.

Your exercise looks OK, but instead of a walk it would be better to have a jog.

Answer 2

@astha, first of all see the Berin's answer which is full of essential and very useful information about nutrition. If this general overview is not enough for you I would just suggest to find some fitness diet on the internet.

EDIT HERE: One question arose today and you can get some inspiration there: Any advice for improving my diet chart?

As I said in the comment, please make your breakfast bigger and more various than only one pancake. Eat some yogurt, cereals, fruit. Put another meal between your breakfast and lunch and one more between lunch and dinner. So you will end up with at least 5 meals per day! I don't know whether your diet is really strict as you mentioned but if it is you need to stop it and start feed your hungry body with essential nutritions immediately!

It's something like -- your body is speaking to itself: "Oooh, I haven't enough food... well, if I'd like to survive, I need to start store any single molecule of fat!"

Drinking a tea (green is better choice) should be boosting your metabolism. That's great, approved :)

Psychological point of view: At first, I would focus rather on balanced diet than on losing weight. You need to internally know that you are ok, fit and healthy. And you will not be like that with you current diet. Sorry, that's very simple and obvious fact.

After that you can start do some experiments or you can even workout harder because you will have more power. You will see -- better food basically give you more power. Then, you can workout harder and your body will start changing itself. As Berin said, more muscles will consume more calories so you will start to losing fat.

And consider the fact that most men don't like skinny women. They like women in a good fitness shape with a strong core and unobtrusive amount of muscles. The best way I can see here is to continue with your exercise routine and possibly go a little bit beyond your current "comfort zone". Yoga is fine for stretching. Try something "harder", for example jogging could be great as well as swimming.

I can see you are active woman, that's very good! So change your diet properly, be happy with the healthy body and do sport on your 100 % edge :)

Good luck!

Answer 3

It's a misconception that all a person has to do is regular physical activity to lose weight. The biggest tool available to you for losing weight is your diet.

A pound of fat is 3500 calories, to burn this many calories exercising you'd have to walk over 30 miles. However, if you were dieting, you'd have to cut out 500 calories a day over the course of a week.

Answer 4

Not loosing weight could mean different things. It could mean that your body fat mass isn't decreasing (and you may want to look at your diet), but it could also mean that while your fat mass is decreasing, your muscle mass is increasing. In the second scenario, you are actually doing better than loosing weight, you are changing your body weight composition to one that is much healthier, and in that case, loosing weight should no longer be your goal. I would suggest to, before changing your diet, to not look at your scale for two months or so and instead only use a measuring tape to track your progress or lack of progress. If the measuring tape sais you are getting thinner, than throw away your scale and forget about your weight. If the measuring tape doesn't say you are getting thinner, (only than) have a good look at your diet. Don't start cutting calories for lack of 'weight' loss from exercise, increased muscle weight is good and if that's what is keeping your total weight from going down, thats a good thing that you definitely wont want to counteract by somehow starving yourself.

Answer 5

Starting with the most obvious: how long have you been on this food and training regimen? If it's been less than a week, that's a short time to observe any discernable result (except for the frustrating daily up and downs). You need to give yourself ample time to see the results you deserve.

Another important problem is your diet. As others have stated, you don't seem to have given your body good nutrition to encourage weight-loss; you seem to have put it in a starvation mode, which might actually make your body conserve its fats instead of burning it up.

You need to increase your food intake. Add lean protein (eggs, nuts, legumes, lean meat such as chicken, turkey, etc) into your diet. Then, add more vegetables and fruits. You can actually increase your food consumption, but ensure they are healthy food and not junk. Don't starve yourself; your goal is to be a lean, mean powerhouse, not a malnourished person.

Your water intake is okay; you don't have to increase or reduce it (the recommended is 8-10 cups though).

Lastly, the exercise part. All Yoga exercises are not created equal. After finishing your yoga workout, does it make you sweat? Does it make you feel that you just stretched every part of your body? If you didn't feel much after the exercise, search for other yoga exercises. My favorite is P90X yoga. It's an hour and half of yoga exercises that work every part of your body. Your body will feel the glorious soreness once you're done. You can also search the web or ask others.

For the 30 min aerobics you mentioned, does it increase your heart rate? Is it high or low intensity? Is it consistent? How hard or easy is it for you to complete? Do you go at the same pace all the time or vary it? If your cardio is low intensity, you need to increase it. You should be sweating and panting by the time you're done. And increase the time, if you can; 30 minutes doesn't give you enough calories burns for a noticeable weight-loss.

Turn the 30 minutes walk into power walks or jogging. Don't just go through the motion; make your body work for it.

That being said, there are more things you can incorporate into your daily activities:

Do you take elevators? Use the stairs? Do you park closest to the stores? Park at the farthest parking lot from the stores and walk the rest. Do you sit at a desk all day? Every hour or two, get up and take a walk, run, or perform some lunges for some quick fat burn. Do you like to dance? Put in some music and burst some moves.

Losing weight doesn't have to be through programmed exercises alone. By adding activities to your regular daily routines, your metabolism will begin to rise and you'll begin to notice the changes: increased energy levels, clothes becoming bigger on you, people complimenting your size, etc. Even if the scales still stay the same, you'll know that something good is already happening.

Lastly, try to join a fitness group (or friends). The encouragement and accountability they provide will ensure you keep it up for a long time.

Good luck.

Answer 6

As per my understanding all the above comments r not complete I want to share my experience regarding weight loss . I also tried a special diet like I fully eliminated chapatis from my diet n instead concentrated on fruits, veg n protein but my weight increased to 3 kg in 3-4 days .. Than I included chapatis in my diet within only 2-3 days my weight went to its previous KGS.. No idea why it happened I don't starved but changed diet n the opposite happened. This has changed my thinking that wheat/ chapatis make u fat.. No I think the chapatis r absolute necessary.. While u shud not eat protein all d time.. V shud eat every real food in one qty.. Excess of anything is bad.. So astha try to eat 2 medium size chapatis in whole day ..r sufficient n fruits n veg ..then c...