It has been about 7 weeks since I began my Cut after reset, so it was time for a weight loss update, no matter how ugly it is.

I took measurements today and these are the changes since April. This was about the time I began EM2WL.

Waist (at navel) up .3 inches
Natural waist – (from August) down 1 inch
Hips – up 2 inches
Thighs – down 1 inch
Arms – down .5 inch
Chest – up .5 inch
Forearm – 0 change
Calf – (from May) down 1 inch

While I am happy with a few of them going down, overall since April, I have only lost .7 inches. To top it off because my hips and my weight have gone up slightly, there is a 1%BF INCREASE. Definitely not the direction that is supposed to go. I’m frustrated, upset, angry, pissed off, you name it, that I am almost 6 months into this journey and I am at a standstill with weight loss on the scale and my measurements.

HOWEVER, I will focus on the positives right now to remind me that even though things aren’t changing like I had hoped and anticipated, I do have changes.  I started running in January with the C25K program. I ran my first 5k in April, and I ran my first 10k in August. I have one more 10k in two weeks. Even at 240ish pounds, I have proven I can run.

I started lifting in May.  Something I never really considered or had a drive to do.  Now I enjoy it and I like seeing the weights get heavier.

I am eating about 1000 MORE calories now than I did at the beginning of my journey. So even though the numbers aren’t reflecting change yet, I am NOT STARVING myself to at least maintain my weight.  I will NEVER eat VLC again.  There is no reason to ever eat less than my BMR again.

So yes, its an incredibly frustrating and upsetting journey for me overall, but I would rather be here than where I was 6 months ago, eating so very little, being so very tired and still frustrated that the scale hasn’t budged. (At least here I can eat more and wallow in pity:))  I will not give up.  And I am hopeful that things will change and trend downwards for me soon.  It has to, right?

I spent the better part of the morning having a love/hate relationship with my results today and while it sounds like I’m OK with things, I’m really not. I love that I can eat more and I love that I’m feeling better and healthier and such, but at 240ish pounds, I’m NOT OK with a gain in  BF% and I’m NOT OK with no change on the scale.  I’ve worked really hard for everything I have done in the past 6 months, and it damn near kills me that I’m still in the same position I was before, only eating more.

However, I have been wearing a FitBit for the past 3 weeks and I just ran a calorie burn over the 21 days, and found out that my TDEE from this is about 130 calories LOWER than the online calculators have given me (2865 on Scooby, compared to 2730 from the FitBit). So this translates instead of a cut of 15% taking me to 2440 from the online calculator, I should be at 2321. so that’s a difference of 120 cals..

At 2440 Daily cals, my Cut was barely 10%.

Now I cant say 100% this is the reason why the scale isn’t budging, but it has given me pause and I am going to adjust my cals to reflect it. I have been working on cleaning up my diet more, getting rid of the junk, concentrating on keeping the carbs down and protein up. So I have hope that doing these small changes might start to show some results for me.

I guess we’ll see in another 6 weeks

ETA:  I’m going to take a TDEE break before resuming at a lower number..