What do you mean?? You lost half a pound! That’s a good, safe, sustainable weight loss. Slow and steady is the way to lose it. You done good. 
If you think you’re going to lose 2 pounds a week, every week, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Small losses are good. You WILL have weeks where you gain, even if you did everything right. Just keep on keeping on and the pounds WILL come off. Maybe slowly, but better slowly than not at all!
As with weightloss, you build up to it gradually. Don’t go right from 20 minutes of running to 60 minutes, that’s just asking for injuries and it’s de-motivating. At least for running the general recommendation is to not increase your distance by more than about 10% per week, so if you do 20 minutes three times this week, go out and do just a little more next week, 22 minutes or so. If you’re running on a track and you did, say, 2 miles last week, just add one extra quarter mile lap this week and make that your “standard distance”.
This is something I’ve pointed out to folks at my WW meetings - those small incremental gains don’t feel like much if you just look at them week to week but you have to take a long view and realize that they make a huge difference over the course of a year. Losing a half pound in a week might seem slow, but that’s 26 lbs /year which is fantastic.
If you could literally keep adding 10% time to your running each week, you’d go from 20 minutes to 40 minutes in about 8 weeks and to 60 minutes in about 12 weeks. Not saying this is doable for everyone but it’s all about pacing yourself and just gradually building up strength and endurance. The fact that you’re losing weight at the same time makes it easier since you won’t be carrying as much excess load.
Addressing running specifically, you can also mix in walking with running. At the simplest this is something that just about everyone does intuitively when they first start - you run for a bit, get tired, and walk to rest/get your wind back, then start running again when you have recovered, repeat until you’re done for the day. There are plenty of inexpensive watches that will let you set intervals - you can set it so that you run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute, run 4, walk 1 and so on. This is what I did when I started getting into longer runs. As your conditioning improves you may find that you can increase the running intervals.
Arien, I think low-energy days are normal, too. Some days I love getting out and walking, and other days I have to force myself. I try to do something every day, but some days it’s a long, slow bike ride while I watch tv (I figure it might not be giving me a cardio workout or anything, but moving is better than not moving).
Let me add my congrats to you, Stinky Burrito - if you’re in plateau and you’ve moved down at all, that’s great! My weight loss plan is over two years - a half pound a week is right on track for me.
Started Weight Watchers a month ago at 307.something.
Last Saturday I was 294.4.
Will weigh in tomorrow morning.
It’s amazing how much more willpower I’m able to exert if I just write it down in the food journal. I think it’s because I’m finally being invested in getting healthy and eating the right things.
Now, if I could just get those darn kids out of the house so I’d actually have time to exercise instead of running them to dance lessons and scout meetings and orthodontist appts…
I finally broke past 55kg - 54.82kg! I’ve been in the 55s for a couple of weeks now, and when I saw the 54 at the start of the scale I just started grinning like crazy. Now it’s just a matter of inching down the 54s until I hit the 53s, and then I’m on the home stretch.
I’ve pretty much cut bread from my diet except for cheat meals. No big loss (except for the convenience) since bread tends to make me feel sleepy. I’ve been gradually eating smaller portions, and I get full much quicker now. Last week I ate about 75-100g of salt and vinegar chips and felt horrible afterwards, whereas I used to be able to eat the whole 250g packet - not regularly or anything - but it was something I could do pretty easily.
I found a photo of me at a sedentary 61kg (about 2 years ago) and there’s a big difference between that and the photo of me at a fit 61kg (about 6 months ago). I can’t wait to take a photo of myself once I’m a fit 53kg and compare all 3 photos.
Down half a kilo this week. I seem to be losing more bulk than that so I’m hoping that means I’m gaining some muscles. Go, muscles!
I’ve been losing about 1.6lbs per week since late December, for a total of 27lbs. I’m 164 now, and I hope to lose another 20.
My method is portion control and a strict daily caloric intake limit that scales as I lose weight. No foods are forbidden, just evaluated whether they’re worth the calories, and although I eat more fruits, veggies, and whole grains than I did before, I don’t eat anything I wouldn’t have before. I eat 4-5 times per day now, and breakfast is required.
The only significant change I’ve made is I don’t eat restaurant food anymore. If I do go out, I try to research the menu in advance and pick something healthy. If I pick something I consider an indulgence, I pack up half of it right away. I don’t really miss eating out, and it’s saving me money, so I view it as an all-around positive change.
I have not added any exercise. I do walk 40-60 minutes a day to get to and from work, but I’ve done this for years and doubt it’s a factor in my weight loss.
The restaurant food really is a hard thing to fit in; I still want to eat out because I cook all the meals in our house and I like a day or two off, though. I’m taking a lot of food home with me, too, and exercising extra to offset the restaurant food.
Yeah, it helps a lot that I only have myself to consider. I have coworkers whose weight loss/money-saving efforts are failing in large part because they have SOs or kids to feed and go out for lunch in big groups.
I do get tired of cooking everything sometimes, but I’ve found motivators around that fatigue. I remind myself how difficult it can be to account for restaurant calories. A simple thing like a grilled cheese sandwich can have higher-calorie bread, cheese, and butter than you anticipate, and it’s things like that that will undo my progress and hard work. I then tell myself I can still have my tasty grilled cheese sandwich and remain calorically responsible if I make it myself.
I also remind myself that eating out is expensive, and what I’d pay for a single restaurant meal has bought me between 1-5 days’ worth of meals from the supermarket.
I also buy foods I like that are quick to prepare. Being tired is an excuse I used a lot to eat out, so I try to make using that excuse unjustifiable. Breakfast takes 3 minutes or fewer, either Eggos in the toaster, a breakfast bar, or cereal. Sandwich materials are always on hand, as are salad greens. Lunch is often leftovers from dinner. Dinners are kept simple and usually are ready in 20 minutes or less. I keep frozen entrees for when I’m feeling lazy.
I’m trying to not get into the habit of thinking I can exercise to offset overindulgences, because I know that in the long term, I won’t exercise enough. A full-size Snickers bar, for example, has 270 calories, and at my pace and size, this means walking for two and a half hours to burn it off. I could do this maybe once or twice, but I can’t do this every time I overeat for the forseeable future. So I try to compromise with fun-size versions or Weight Watchers’ cakes instead and avoid creating that exercise debt.
This is contrary to the conventional wisdom, but I do think that it’s important to have 1-2 “safe” fast food options for when you are too tired/too sick of it all to cook, or when you get caught out. Planning in advance, when you are not hungry, means that when you are in the moment you won’t end up making a bad choice out of hunger (which makes me crazy) or ignorance. For me, it’s Chipotle with 1/2 rice, beans, meat, and salsa–that comes to under 500 calories even if they use a heavy hand. A McDs plain chicken sandwich is 340. What’s funny is that I almost never use these options any more–the longer I do this, the better I get at planning and the less often I get caught out with no alternative. But early on, these two things were essential to keep me from going off track when there was an emergency.
That’s not contrary to conventional wisdom at all. You can find a meal at most fast food outlets that fit within most dietary goals, you may have to ask them to leave the mayo off or something like that, but it’s pretty easy to do and certainly needed from time to time. Prepare ahead of time so you know what the nutritional values are, but food is food. There’s no reason an occasional trip to a fast food restaurant shouldn’t fit in your schedule.
Grilled chicken sandwiches are usually not crazy high in calories, either (I get them with mayo, then scrape most of the mayo off so there’s still a little grease on the bun).
I was worried about the scale this morning, I hadn’t weighed myself in for over two weeks on vacation and I hadn’t been eating that healthy.
There were the breakfast buffets at the hotels laid out with pancakes and bacon and I definitely drank my share of orange juice. Almost all of my lunches in Peru were served with some form of french fry. On two separate occassions, I endulged in McDonald’s and then Papa John’s in the airport with their delicious butter garlic dipping sauce. I even had a couple of Inka Kolas.
Somehow, despite a rather unhealthy couple weeks of food choices and not a regular work out (I did bring a resistance band), I still managed to lose a couple pounds.
The scale bounced around and finally settled on a number. I didn’t trust it, so I re-weighed myself one more time, checked the calibration, then did it a third time. My new weight is 221.6, down from 225.6 when I left.
My new goal will be to get to 208.2 by July 4th (bringing it to a total of 50.0 lbs lost since I started.
Starting over again, again. Starting out at 130 again, goal to lose is about 20 pounds.
I bought Sports Active for the Wii and I started the 30 day challenge and I’m on day 4. My calves are sore but after the 20 minute workout today I felt I could do a little more so I added an extra 8 minutes of tennis. There some annoying things about it but I wanted to try it out and I plan to also go back to the gym once I work out the soreness.
I am also trying to get back to eating right and getting rid of the junk food.
I seem to bounce around hour-by-hour. +3 lbs, -2, +3, -4… if I weighed myself every day, I’d go crazy. And there’s no logic to it! Exercise, eat well, lose nothing, or gain a couple. Eat nothing but carbs over easter, lose a couple.
*BUT… Exercise, eat well, lose a bunch *over the long haul.
Down 3.2 lbs this week, just a hair under 40 lbs total loss.
Tomorrow is my rest day, then my first 10 mile run on Thursday. I need to cook myself more meals, eat out less.
I’m down 2 pounds this week. Now at 153.2, just 3.2 pounds from my official Weight Watchers goal and 8.2 pounds from my ultimate goal of 145.
My friend and I are in a race to see who can get to her next WW trinket first; we both have 10 pounds to go, me to 75 pounds lost (when I reach 145) and her to 100 pounds. 
I’m still getting lots of “Wow, you look great!” and “You’ve lost a lot of weight!” and “You’re wasting away!” Can’t get enough of it!
I had to buy a new swimsuit this week; tried on my old one and it was BAGGY. 
Now I’m all set for the waterpark on Saturday. Hubba hubba!
I’m looking forward to hitting my 50 lbs goal eventually. I thought I wouldn’t ever get there, now I’m thinking about a lower goal than that.
Have you considered using a moving weighted average? I use physicsdiet.com. I weigh myself everyday without clothes on first thing in the morning after I use the bathroom, but before I put anything into my body. That method seems to smooth out the fluctuations somewhat, and then I enter the weight into the website, which then calculates the average. It’s that average number that I pay attention to and seems to coorelate well with how “good” or “bad” i’ve been recently.
I know different things work for different people, so I just wanted to throw it out there as an idea.
Still the same weight I was last week. I usually weigh myself twice a week, once on Thursday to check on how I’m doing and Saturday or Sunday morning which I consider official. I hope something changes in the next few days. I know I should expect the occasional plateau but this one is too close to the last one for my peace of mind.
Using a weighted average like physicsdiet is probably the most accurate but I don’t think I could weigh myself every day without being annoyed and worried every time it goes up. I have to cheat a little to keep my motivation up.